7. Rethinking Classroom management

There is an important issue of discussion around teachers, Classroom management. If we want to be good teachers, we have to take into account this important aspect.

To analyse the teaching and learning management, we need to consider three interrelated areas: The organisational, the curriculum and the social.

First of all, if we want to achieve a good classroom management, it’s important to think about the organisation. In the classroom has to be rules. These rules should be the result of a process of negotiation. This can help students to carry out the rules because they decided what we can do in the class and what not. Also, if we want to foster good behaviours, rules should describe desired behaviours rather than unwanted one. Furthermore, rights and duties in the classroom and at the school must be clear and explicit, the reason is that if we want that our students accomplish all the rules, they have to be aware about it and understand properly rights and duties. Moreover, as teachers, we have to be proactive. What does it mean? A proactive teacher is who foresees the attitudes and situations that can create conflict and he anticipates them.

Secondly, we have to consider the curriculum issue. Basically, we have to meet the curriculum and analyse. We have to wise up if the curriculum is according to the schools and the classroom context. To do a proper classroom management we need to have the curriculum adapted to the students features. It’s impossible to have the same curriculum in a St. Peters Schools, that in Escola Popular de la Mina. In both schools, students are completely different, so they have different needs, behaviours, interests, contexts and so on. Moreover, it’s really important to engage students and motivate, giving them opportunities to learn. We should plan task that allows cooperative and individual work because pupils like to work in different ways. What can we do to achieve that? We can work in small groups; work in cooperative environments such as moddle, blogs and wikis. Also to foster individual work, students can do portfolios. A good and balanced combination of both types of work will define a good way of teaching.

Thirdly, it’s important to treat the social issue which I think is the most important. The relationship between teacher and student has to be reciprocal, that helps to the good climate in class. It is known that students learn more and better if they are in a good climate classroom. What I mean to good climate classroom? I understand that it is a classroom where all the students feel good, happy, secure, when students enjoy being on it. That is really useful because it develops values and aspects like self- esteem, confidence, respect, security, good expectations, and responsibility. So in the classroom, teachers have to foster the affective side of learning.

From my point of view all these aspects are really important to do learning and teaching management. So, if we are capable to achieve it, our students will learn in a successful way, that it’s teacher main goal.