Teach English in Gaotuan Zhen - Yantai Shi

What is management? Management is the administration of an organization. It plays a vital role in every field to maintain the balance in certain environment. Similarly, classroom management also helps teaching and learning to proceed in an efficient and safe manner. What is classroom management? Classroom management refers to the wide variety of skills and techniques that teachers use to keep students organized, orderly, focused, attentive, on task, and academically productive during a class. When classroom management strategies are executed effectively teachers minimize the behaviors that impede learning for both individual students and groups of students, while maximizing the behaviors that facilitate or enhance learning. Generally speaking, effective teachers tend to display strong classroom-management skills, while the hallmark of the inexperienced or less effective teacher is a disorderly classroom filled with students who are not working or paying attention. In recent years, classroom management has received an increasing amount of attention from education leaders, reformers, and researchers, who have begun to investigate, analyze, and document the effective strategies used by successful teachers. The growing emphasis on classroom management is based on the general recognition that effective instruction requires effective classroom management, and that strong management skills are the foundation of strong teaching. Classes are particular type of environment. They have distinctive features that influence their inhabitants. Lacking management skills in teachers enables potential classroom problems. In order to make management easier psychologists observed classes where teachers were whether effective or ineffective. In this way they were able to establish certain rules to follow, which eventually turned out to be successful. What are the reasons of discipline problems in classroom ? While there is widespread agreement in education that effective classroom management is essential to good teaching, there is often debate about which strategies are most effective, or what is the best way to approach the management of a classroom or other learning environment. Before focusing on techniques used in classroom management, it is appropriate to pose a question why disruptive behavior of students occur in classroom? Firstly, students tent to misbehave when they have nothing to do. This leads to boredom and discipline problems. Secondly, when the lesson is difficult to understand. Sometimes students find certain activities challenging to deal with, thus loose their motivation. Another reason is not being aware of school rules. Sometimes teachers don’t mention rules specifically. It leads confusion and ignorance over the rules. Loosing motivation and not getting enough encouragement from teacher, especially in beginner levels, brings about the sense of not belonging to group. Finally, when teachers are not fair and not reluctant at their principles. For instance, teacher changes certain rules of the game at the end. Without mentioning exact rules, it is impossible to achieve certain goal. Everything should be organized and potential forthcoming problems should be predicted. What are the goals of classroom management? Next question we have to consider is “Why there is a need for classroom management?”. First aim of classroom management is access to learning. Students should be aware that every student has the right to access learning. This can be done by establishing close rapport between students as well as with teacher. Respect among students towards each other and teacher can ensure smooth proceed of teaching and learning. Second goal of management in classroom is sparing more time for learning. Research studies suggest that lesser time is spent on actual learning than we imagine. Many minutes are lost due to interruptions, disruptions and late starts. Thus, organized classroom is likely to avoid such interruption, which eventually increases the time spent for learning. Another reason why there is a need for classroom management is creating positive learning environment. This can be done by creating student rights. Studies show that establishing student rights are far more effective than imposing rules. Moreover, students gain respect by respecting others and understand the importance of classroom management. Except this positive environment can be established by planning the space in classroom. Changing interior of the classroom or arrangement of seats enables student to be engaged and not getting bored. Interest corners should be created to hold students interested in subjects and being close to school. What are the techniques used in classroom management? There are a number of approaches which are used to maintain balanced and positive learning atmosphere. First technique is teacher-student relationships. The basic management task for teacher is to ensure harmony in the class by gaining student cooperation in class. Gaining student cooperation means keeping close rapport with students, understanding problems which they are likely to face, having materials ready, planning activities, making appropriate academic and behavioral demands on students. Setting the rules in the classroom is another technique, where rules considered to be a vital aspect of management. It is suggested to set rules at the first lesson itself to prevent further confusion. Initial lesson plays a vital role in managing the class discipline. It should be stated at the first lesson, very clearly and practising it if necessary. First and foremost, teachers should know school rules well and should establish their own rules depending on what environment they want to create in the classroom. Rules should be short and clear as well as realistic. One of the techniques being prevention quickly. This is accomplished by working to prevent problems and giving appropriate response before problem gets worse. There is an adage “Prevention is better than cure” Similarly, teacher should bear in mind that possible disobedience should be stopped before it occurs while creating rules. After rules are introduced every student must be observed whether certain rules are followed or not. If any student misbehaves, he or she should be explained how breaking the rules would effect other participants. Another technique is referred as student-oriented approach, where students form self-management skills and being responsible for their actions. This is one of the most effective approach which clears any pressure on learners and encouraging them to gain their self-esteem. This usually built up through the years and is vital aspect to prepare young people to be confident. There are number of mistakes which are made by teachers. These are imposing punishment, showing their anger when their techniques are not working well and aggressive discipline. These don’t lead to positive outcomes. However such mistakes can be faded away time by time while gaining teaching experience. To conclude, classroom-management techniques may appear deceptively simple, but successfully and seamlessly integrating them into the instruction of students typically requires a variety of sophisticated techniques and a significant amount of skill and experience.