PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. Ed.

312




Philosophy of
Classroom
Management.

September2014


HOW TO TEACH STRESS-FREE

IN THIS ISSUE
I firmly believe that every human being
has the power to change the world in one
aspect or another. I see it as my dream
and my duty to make certain that each
child I am given the opportunity to teach
has the drive, self-worth, and passion to
change the world. I did not come to this
conclusion without people in my own life
pushing me to my limits and making me
see that my opportunities are endless if I
am willing to work hard and put forth the
effort. I wish to instill this motivation in my
students; it is my personal drive to inspire
students to have this mentality even after
they leave my classroom.
This driven attitude is only one aspect to
my philosophy of education. I believe
there should be many goals made for
myself as a teacher, for what I want my
students to achieve. However, these
goals are not specific to academic goals;
they should focus on personality traits
that I see as important for students to
withhold. Honest, hardworking, motivated,
caring, and dependable are all traits that I
see as crucial to being an outstanding
student. I say these goals are for myself
as a teacher because my students will not
achieve these characteristics unless I am
a perfect model of what it means to
possess these traits.
I believe that instructional methods are a
key factor in how a classroom runs. My
philosophy on this area is that interactive
instruction is most beneficial. By relying
mainly on interaction, sharing and
discussion based teaching students are
able to feel like they are an important part
of the class and of the lesson being
taught.
In order for students to succeed in the
classroom they need a safe work
environment. Students who live in fear of
judgment are not apt to try new things,
take risks, and use their imagination. I
want students to feel like once they set
foot inside my classroom they are in an
environment like none other, a place
where they believe in themselves, feel the
support of those around them, and where
everyone is accepting of each others
differences. In order to have a learning
environment such as this, classroom
management is key.
Once it comes time for students to leave
my classroom and venture on to another
stage in their life and another classroom,
it is my wish that they will not go back to
their old ways of learning and interacting
with their classmates. Each teachers
philosophy is going to be different, but if
they can carry anything away from my
classroom, I would hope they know that
they have the power to change the world.

Personal Style & Philosophy of Classroom
Management
by Lindsey Boeve
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. |













I believe Teacher-Parent
communication to be the
core of a healthy classroom
environment. In order for
your students to trust you, it
is vital that they witness
their caregivers trusting you.
Building the trust of a parent
takes time and patience.
There are vital parts to
building the trust of a
parent.
First, listen to them. Actually
take the time to listen and
understand their comments
questions and concerns
regarding their student. Not
all parents will communicate
their comments or concerns
with you directly. In order to
avoid any bad relations with
parents, give them
opportunities for feedback.
Send out questionnaires a
few times throughout the
year and respond to the
feedback you receive.
This falls into another key
component: communication.
And communicate often. Do
not limit yourself to a few
questionnaires or
newsletters a year. Send out
weekly newsletters
informing the parents of the
happenings in your
classroom and in their
students lives. Offer
opportunities for parents to
get involved in the
classrooms. Not all parents
will be able to give to the
running of your classroom,
but many will take
advantage of any
opportunity to get involved.
Even if this only means
bringing in supplies for a
classroom project.
In every classroom there will
be problems that arise. The
key component when
dealing with parent relations
and obstacles that come up
is to document every
interaction. Both parent and
child relations should be
documented because as a
teacher you never know
what is going on at home
and you never know what
the other side of the story is.
What is behind that door
could be something that
could harm your student and
as their educator, you spend
a lot of time in the day with
their child. Documenting any
interaction is detrimental, in
some cases, to save your job
and your student.





Here is an example template of what a
weekly letter home to parents could look
like.






Working with
Parents
By Lindsey Boeve
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. |







How to Build a Positive
Relationship


A good teacher can inspire, hope, ignite
the imagination, and instill a love of
learning
-Brad Henry




The task of the modern educator
is not to cut down jungles, but to
irrigate deserts. C.S. Lewis



Teach love, generosity, good
manners and some of that will
drift from the classroom to the
home and who knows, the
children will be educating the
parents.
Roger Moore











Most teachers spend roughly five to six
hours with their students per day, and
that excludes lunch, recess and specials
time. Teachers and students have a lot
of time to create relationships with one
another. These relationships can outlast
one school year if they are created in a
proper way. Establishing relationships
can be a positive experience with some
students and a negative experience with
others. A teachers dream is to have a
positive relationship with all students,
and it can become a reality if gone about
the right way with the proper amount of
time and effort put forth.
Students remember the teachers that
were at their events that occurred
outside of school. The best thing you can
do for your students is show you care for
them even when you are not within the
walls of the classroom. Go to sporting
events, dance recitals, piano recitals, art
shows, and fundraisers. Be a cheerleader
for your student outside of the
classroom.
Dont grade, give feedback. Think about
your time as a student. You remember
the notes with feedback that were
written on your papers, projects, or
tests. You dont remember the letter
grade. Or conversely, maybe you do
remember the letter grade, but in a
negative way. Positive and constructive
feedback has more power than a letter,
but only if you take the time to write out
meaningful heartfelt responses.
Be transparent with your students, treat
them as an equal. I remember the
positive relationships I had with teachers
that were honest about what their life









was like outside of school. I then felt
vulnerable enough to tell them about my
life outside of the classroom as well. I
am sure they did not tell me everything
that was going on in their life, but as a
student I felt like the teacher valued my
companionship as well. In the same
sense showing you care about your
students lives is key. Showing that the
dramas of life as a third grader are
valued is important for building an
honest and trustworthy student-teacher
relationship.

The teachers that have the best
relationships with their students
are the teachers that have a
relationship with each and every
student.

Each and every student needs to feel
valued, not just the popular students or
the students that always find their way
in the center of everyones attention.
The teacher sets the stage for the
classroom environment and if you treat
each student equally, then they will
treat each other with the same respect
and value.
Establishing Relationships
by Lindsey Boeve
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. Ed. 312


Having a classroom full of students who are
intrinsically motivated to learn is a teachers
dream. I believe that every individual has the
internal motivation to learn. With that being
said, not all students have the internal
motivation to learn how to properly write a
five paragraph essay or how to solve for x.
If students are given some freedom to
choose what they are learning, they will have
a sense of ownership over their education
and their knowledge. There has to be room
for student choice in every situation. Not
necessarily in what they are learning, but
always in how they are learning. If a student
wants to stand in the back of the room while
you teach them about plate tectonics, let
them. If a student needs to have one earbud
in their ear with classical music on while you
teach them about World War II, let them. If a
student wants to write a play about the water
cycle instead of creating a 3D model, let
them. I believe the worst thing a teacher can
do is limit their students thinking. With
student choice, the possibilities for learning
are endless and students get excited about
this.
In one of my field placement classrooms, a
seventh grade classroom, my mentor teacher
was always very explorative with his teaching
and let the students have a lot of
responsibility and leadership in their
learning. At times his classroom got quite
chaotic. When he noticed the students
getting off task he would quietly get out his
guitar and start playing it and singing a song.
The students would focus on him for a while,
sing right along with him, and then refocus
their attention on the task at hand. It was
always very subtle, yet they noticed his
motives for getting out his guitar. At the
same time, the students werent worried




about getting in to trouble or being
disciplined. He had built this relationship
with the students that didnt require any
harsh behavior management because of the
level of respect that existed.
Creating a positive and uplifting classroom
environment helps create an environment for
learning as well. A place where students
come eager to learn, collaborate ideas, and
share joys for learning with one another. If
students do not like the environment they
are in, then they will not want to explore,
create and learn. They will attribute their
negative classroom experience to a negative
learning experience.
The safe classroom environment does not
have to be limited to the walls of the
classroom. Providing students with the
opportunity to learn in places outside the
classroom will motivate students to learn
once they leave school at the end of the day.
Field study is a very real-life learning
experience that students could benefit from
if they are struggling to make the connection
between their interests in life and the need
for an education in things that may not
directly deal with that interest. Taking the
time to bring in guest speakers, plan field
trips, and ways to connect with the
community and the world around them can
help with this.
Helping students to set personal goals
multiple times throughout the school year is
a good way to keep students motivated
throughout the entire school year. When you
are meeting with students on an individual
basis and building that student-teacher
relationship, goal-setting should be a priority
of the conversations. Checking in on goals,
asking them what they need from you to
achieve their goals, self-reflection and
encouragement along the way will help them













to strive to be better. Goals do not have to be
limited to academics, they can be solely
based on who they want to become as a
person. They still motivate students to learn.
One of the key components to motivating
students to learn is to show excitement as
their educator. Get excited about solving for
x. Dress up as a World War II soldier. Create
a song about how to write a five paragraph
essay. If students see your excitement about
the material, they are more likely to be eager
to learn. Everyone remembers their the
teacher they had growing up that talked in a
monotone voice and did not express a single
emotion. On the other hand, maybe you
dont because you were sleeping in the back
of the classroom for the duration of the
school year. Get excited about learning, and
your students should too.



Enhancing Student
Motivation
by Lindsey Boeve
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. |



Guidelines & Procedures

When creating classroom procedures, promises,
and contracts it is important for you and your
students to recognize the difference between
these three.
There is a time and a place for each of these
classroom management tools, but they need to
be distinguishable and identifiable.
First, classroom procedures are a set of unwritten
processes for day to day things that occur in the
function of a classroom. For example, there
should be a procedure in place for using the
bathroom, sharpening your pencil, getting a drink
of water, asking a question, coming into the
classroom at the beginning of the day, leaving the
classroom at the end of the day, and so on.
The procedures for day to day things need to be
explained, and demonstrated for the students
multiple times the first few weeks of school. Each
teacher has different procedures for these things,
and students need time to learn your procedures
before being expected to know them without
reminders.
To demonstrate and explain these procedures
students need real-life, real-time examples. As
the teacher, you need to take moments to stop
and what you are teaching to explain a procedure.
If a student shouts out I NEED TO GO POTTY!!!
you will need to stop and explain the proper way
to ask to use the restroom, or ask another student
to explain that procedure to the rest of the class.
The first few weeks of learning the classroom
procedures will be nitpicky and will seem like a
hassle, but once they are learned it will be well
worth it.
Any classroom management tool that you find to
be useful with your students will be most
successful if it doesnt take much thought. For
example, in one of my field placements in a third
grade classroom a teacher had created a system
for a positive classroom environment for her
students that involved being bucket-fillers, not
bucket-dippers. There was a board with different



attributes of a good student stuck to it, such as
being a good friend and helping out others. Any
time the teacher witnessed one of the behaviors,
either in a bucket-filling or bucket-dipping way,
that student would have to either take the
attribute off of the board and put it in the bucket
to fill it, or they would have to take it out of the
bucket and back on the board, thus dipping into
the bucket. The goal was to have a full bucket by
the end of each day. This sounds like a fantastic
idea, however, the teacher did not take the time
to recognize all of the attributes, and there were
about 25 of them on the board. If this would have
been simplified a little bit, it could have had the
power to be highly successful.

Classroom Promises

Classroom promises are similar to procedures and
can also be referred to as rules in the fact that
they deal with the day to day functioning of your
classroom; however, they are the core values to
which your student body adheres to. In order to
create an effective set of classroom promises,
students need to take almost complete
ownership.
This would ideally be created on the first day of
class in order to ensure that each student
understands this is the core to their relationship
with classmates. The students are divided up into
groups of 2 or 3 and are asked to come up with a
list of qualities that should be found in Ms. XYs
student body. Students are free to use any
outside resource to come up with adjectives that
describe what students should adhere to.







Once the groups have come up with a list, the
teacher creates a list of all of the words from each
group, and check marks are placed next to words
that are repeated. The teacher will create a word
collage using www.wordle.net. This is where the
classroom contract comes into play.

Classroom Contract

The classroom contract is a printed version of the
word collage, in the form of a poster. This poster
will be hung in the classroom where it is set apart
from anything else on the wall, showing its
importance.
Before the contract is hung on the wall each
student will sign the poster. This symbolizes their
understanding that they promise to adhere to
exemplifying these personal qualities in and out of
the classroom.
The contract will also be printed out on small
pieces of cardstock for each student to have and
take with them. This way they can remember the
contract they are promised to when they leave
the classroom.


Here is an example of what a classroom contract
in the form of a word collage looks like.

Guidelines and Procedures:
Classroom Promises &
Classroom Contracts
by Lindsey Boeve
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. |








Above is a classroom floor plan that I have created. I placed my desk in the corner of the room in order to see what is going on in all areas of the
classroom from my desk. Although I do not intend to be at my desk while students are in the classroom, it is the most convenient place for a teachers
desk. I put the kidney table in the opposite corner because I will spend time there meeting with students on an individual and small group level in this
location. From here, I am also able to see the entire room and can have an eye on each student. The desks are organized in a horse-shoe shape with
the exception of two desks in the middle. This way I will be able to walk around to each desk at any time, they will be next to classmates for easy
collaboration, and students who prefer quieter or less collaboration can sit in the middle desks. Each student also has clear view of the front of the
room. The corner with the sofas and beanbag chairs is a quiet work and reading area. It is not limited to reading, because students need a more
comfortable option for working as well, if this is what works best for them. The various shelves around the room will hold books and other supplies
that students may access at their leisure. The student table is where groups can go and work on any given task, or where a student can work
individually if they need more space and quiet. The rug in the front of the classroom is where I would hold morning meetings if this were a lower
elementary classroom. This classroom set up would be ideal for any age group.
A personal experience that I have had with classroom management would work well in this classroom layout since the teacher can stand anywhere in
the room and see all students. One of my past field placement mentor teachers used hand signals for just about everything with her second graders.
When students needed to use the bathroom, when they needed help with something, when they were unclear of what was to be done, and when they
needed the sound level of the classroom to go down. She also had hand signals that only she used when she wanted everyones attention, when they
needed to quiet down and when she wanted them to meet her on the rug in the center of the room. This may seem like a lot of hand signals to handle,
but the students knew them by heart and it created a quiet and calm classroom environment which perfectly resembled her teaching style.
In one of my kindergarten placements, my mentor teacher used music and paired it with movement. She attributed most behavioral issues that her
students had to being stagnant for too long of periods at a time given their age. She would bring all of the students to the rug for a short brain break.
Most often she would just play a fun song and let the students do crazy dancing for the duration of the song. There was no structure to this which
allowed them to take a break from having to focus on specific instructions and just dance. Sometimes there would be a bit more guidance as to the
type of brain break. However, she tried not to do this often because then it totally defeated the purpose. Yes, they were taking a break from what they
were previously doing, but they were still trying to follow specific instruction. I have learned a lot from field work, but learning about different
classroom management tools has been by far the most beneficial. I am able to use classroom management tools in any grade level, any subject area,
and any region of the world.


Classroom Layout
PHILOSOPHY OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. |



References

1. Bainbridge, Carol. What Is Intrinsic Motivation? About. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2014.
http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/intrinsic.htm.
2. All images are available via Google images

Reference to Theorists ideas that I attribute some of my own philosophies to:

3. Marvinmarshall.com
4. www.alfiekohn.org

Philosophy of
Classroom
Management.

Created By: Lindsey Boeve












Reflections

I have come to the conclusion that I find great
importance in the relationship that I create with
my students. Showing students that you are fully
invested in the relationship you have with them
will force them to want to succeed in your
classroom. I always remember the teachers that I
felt like I was letting down when I didnt come
prepared for class or didnt give an assignment my
all. I valued their opinion and their relationship so
much that I held myself to a higher standard in
their classroom. Once a solid relationship is
formed with each student, the rest will fall into
place. The nitpicky parts of classroom
management included.