Xinglin LIU (July)

Inquiries into Teaching and Learning

Beth McDonald & Barbara Anderson

Expo Question

11/16/2

013

Expo Question: What is “control” in a classroom? In

progressive class, how does a teacher manage the

class?

Introduction

Before I came to the US and learnt progressive

education, I defined control in classroom—with my own

learning experience---as teacher did a lecture as well as

students took notes silently. In that case, teacher played

an important role and the whole classroom is the teacher-

centered one. However, I have realized that students had

more opportunities to discuss and brainstorm when I did

field work. Teacher provided students with more time to

learn together and made instructions when a student did not

focus on his task at hand or became distractive.

Given that situation, I would redefine control as the

ability of a teacher to keep students focused. In students-

centered or progressive classes, sometimes students are not

attentive in a class if the teacher does not exert enough

authority, or if the teacher is not alert or enthusiastic.

Besides, control also can be defined as a capacity of the

student—that is, how well a student is able to concentrate

on context when they do interactions. In either case, it is

at least partially a teacher’s responsibility to maintain

the whole class goes well and to make sure students’

thoughts not drift off into other subjects. Since that, it

does raise many questions: How does a teacher manage the

class? How much authority should a teacher has in class? How

does a teacher make instructions when the class is in chaos?

This research is helpful in demonstrating the management

of classroom, especially in a progressive classroom.

Complied with my conversation with an ESL teacher in Sunset

Park High School, the research enlightens me and gives me

many valuable hints that I plan to adopt in my classroom.

Annotated Bibliography

Journal Article:

Bell, Roger T. “Classroom Management: A Gallon In a Pin

Pot?” System Vol. 12 (2003): 107-115. Print.

In this study, Roger T. Bell demonstrates that

“classroom management”, focusing on teacher-learner

interaction, is too narrow. It is proposed that the

management roles of the teacher be examined in the light of

three overlapping and interacting sets of responsibilities

carried by the manager: to the task, to the group, and to

the individual. Such a starting point for the explanation of

the ethnography of the classroom, it is suggested, could

provide analysts with an approach where would put in

perspective the multiple functions played by the teacher and

facilitate the building of a balanced and adequate model of

the teacher-learner interaction.

The teacher, sharing a fundamental responsibility with

a manager, needs to organize individuals into a cohesive

work-team to complete a task. In a progressive classroom, it

is clear that as teachers, we design syllabus, divided them

into units of a feasible size, speed up or slow down work in

response to the extent to which learners are coping. As for

the management of group, teachers also face the problem of

turning an aggregate of heterogeneous individuals into an

effective working group. In order to solve these problems,

teachers often appoint sub-leaders through group-work

techniques. With regards to the individual, individual

requirements, abilities and motivation should be concerned,

which allow them to become “beings for themselves”, instead

of “beings for others”. Roger T. Bell, taking many real

cases happened in classrooms into consideration, holds the

opinion that Maslow’ hierarchy of needs could give teachers

implications of the classroom management as well as achieve

the educational goal—finding ways of discovering what the

individual is seeking from classes and help him towards the

attainment of a goal which he will fee is worthwhile for

himself.

Website:

Foley, Dave. “6 Classroom Management Tips Every Teacher Can Use.”

NEA. 1 May. 2012. <http://www.nea.org/tools/51721.htm>

Dave Foley has taught in junior school in Michigan for

29 years, where he also worked as a coach on classroom

management. He defines effective teachers as passionate ones

when they educate their students. They will spend their time

teaching, rather than dealing with classroom disruptions.

Therefore, he lists 6 tips of classroom management that

every teacher can use.

1. Take Charge of Your Class: It is essential to get

every student’s attention before beginning class. That

means the lesson won’t be started until everyone is in

his or her seat paying attention.

2. Focus on the Disruptive Student:

a. If students aren’t paying attention or busy doing

other things, getting them focused by using

nonverbal signals of disapproval.

b. If they are talking, pausing and looking toward

them.

c. If in front of the class, continuing with the

lesson but walking toward the problem students and

stopping near their seats, while still teaching.

3. Let Students Choose Their Seats

4. Give Incentives to Do Their Best on Assignment: It is

helpful that telling students you will randomly

collect one person’s warm-up assignment.

5. Keep an Eye on Your Students: As teacher work with a

student at his or her desk, placing himself and seeing

most of the class

6. Establish Consequences for Misbehaving

a. Determining what consequences will be effective

with students

b. Telling students that there will be consequences

for misbehavior

c. Following through with consequences for misbehavior

and showing students that teacher will be serious

Book:

Tauber, Robert T. Classroom Management: Sound Theory & Effective

Practice. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.

This book contains the frameworks of classroom

management and many effective methods, which provides me

strong support both in theory and practice. In the first

chapter, Tauber, Robert T. comes up with a question--what is

your philosophy of discipline and education—and he thinks

the latter is a prerequisite for the former. The model he

raises is Philosophy, Models, and Strategies, which can be

interpreted as the way form classroom management. I totally

agree with the idea that the strategies teachers adopt in

the classroom can resonate both their mold of management and

philosophy of education.

In the chapter 7, Glasser, who is a practical and

experienced teacher in NYC, says that “reasonable rules” can

be firmly enforced. He believes that students should know

the rules. Although ignorance of the law is no excuse for

breaking the law, there is little to be lost and much to be

gained by clearly displaying the school rules. Reasonable

rules are those in which cause-and-effect relationships are

clear. In fact, if teacher cannot show the existence of a

cause-and-effect relationship for a rule, the need for the

rule in the first place will be doubted. Since that, the

first step of classroom management is making explicit of

reasonable rules.

Wai-shing, Li. “Effective Classroom Management.” Classroom

Management. HK: Hong Kong University Press. 2005.

At the beginning of Chapter 3, Effective Classroom Management,

the author Wai-shing Li refers the mottos of American

Federation of Teachers (2005-06): A good classroom manager

carefully plans everything that occurs in the classroom from

the seating arrangements to instruction for children who

finish planned activities early. What impresses me deeply is

that he categorizes class management into four types, those

are, management of the physical environment, management of

learning, classroom procedures and rules, and managing

discipline. Teachers have very little control over the size

of their classroom, but they are able to decide how to

utilize the limited space with them. For floor space, a good

seating arrangement is one which facilitates specific

learning tasks and activities and communicates a teacher’s

beliefs about learning and teaching. In the high school I do

the field work, some teachers leave sufficient space for an

“interior loop”, which I think is paramount to give teachers

easy and efficient access with students. Besides, the

teacher I interviewed, Karen Bollaert puts her desk in the

middle of classroom, which split the students’ desk into two

parts. She considers that students in high school do not

need a “guardian”, but a friend. It allows her to oversee

the whole class easily.

Besides, the author puts his emphasis on communicating

classroom rules. If student involvement in developing

classroom rules is impossible, the teacher must communicate

the rules clearly to the students so that they fully

understand their purposes and rationale; otherwise, they are

more likely to be seen as unfair, unreasonable and

arbitrary. In other words, it is better to express the rules

in positive, rather than negative terms.

Conversation:

Karen Bollaert is an ESL and Literacy teacher in Sunset

Park High School. She has taught English and American

Literacy for nearly 10 years and is full of experience in

the field. In my conversation with Bollaert, we discussed

how she manages the classroom, meanwhile, engages students

in active learning. Bollaert mentioned one of the most

important facts that students’ characteristics and

personality should be taken into consideration. At present,

she teaches the junior students who have their own features,

like puberty. As she said (and I paraphrase): puberty is a

special period that the transitional nature of adolescence

is most acutely felt by all those concerned. At this time,

adults attempt to set the tone for the social and emotional

of development of adolescents, while adolescents themselves

try to affirm their own autonomy.

On account of the issue, Bollaert provides students

with freedom to talk in classroom, concerns about their

emotions, and not require them to sit for a long periods of

time. In this semester, she teaches students how to make a

lesson plan and students work in groups to work on topics

they are interested in. In her perspective, talking with

their peers in class also can make contributions to

students’ development of communication ability, information

exchanging and self-assessment, so besides group discussion,

she allows them to talk when she is near the talking

students in order to make sure that they are still thinking.

She emphasized that students would keep learning if

they did not feel bored as well as they were respected. It

is counterproductive that pushing students forward and

forcing them to learn, which might lead the whole classroom

to disordered. Her responsibility of managing classroom is

that making certain the majority of students have a good

environment to learn, and they learn according to their

level, capacity and preferences, in other words, learning

with their self-discipline. If the talking student disturbs

other students, she will make instruction with eye contact

or walk to him to let him know. In the end, she gave a

valuable advice that getting a better understanding of your

students could help teacher do the management.