No-Fail Recommendations for Classroom Management

This Substack is all about breaking barriers to language and literacy, not classroom management. But, I know from my own experience and from witnessing young teachers I coach that 100% literacy (or any other learning) is not attainable in a chaotic classroom.

When I share the following with young teachers, they often tell me that none of their professors, coaches, coordinators, or school leaders have ever mentioned it to them.

• You are responsible for your students’ learning, and learning is not possible amidst chaos.

• You must manage your classroom, not your students’ behaviour.

• If you find yourself switching between shouting, pleading, and feeling surprised when a student actually follows your instructions, you need to learn classroom management. You cannot hope your way out of this.

• Classroom management needs to be learned; it does not come naturally to teachers.

• Classroom management is not about rewards, punishments and rules. It’s about procedures and routines.

• Learning classroom management takes time. Depending on how consistent you are and the history and context of your students and school, it can take anywhere between 1 and 4 years.

• Classroom management has nothing to do with your personality or level of extroversion. You can be an effective classroom manager even as an introvert or even without extraordinary public speaking/charming skills.

• While effective lessons are as important, even veterans often teach lessons that fail; but their classrooms don’t devolve into unsalvageable messes soon after. Yes, you must learn to teach your subject well, but that alone will not let you bypass classroom management.

• Quick fixes and shortcuts don’t exist. They stop working just as quickly as they start.

• Don’t Google your way through this work. While it’s not rocket science, you need to learn it within a structured framework rather than in fragments.

• Classroom management is definitely easier in some contexts. Consider yourself lucky if you’re not in one of them. The harder it is in your context, the better for you. You’ll learn it so well that you will become fearless in the face of any kind of disruptions in any classroom/school in future.

In fact, the kind of education teachers receive pre-service ranges from advice about being ‘strict’ to creating documents like the classroom culture plan, both of which have very little to do with classroom management. Although the actual B. Ed. curriculums across states do include information on this topic, it is rare to see it transacted effectively in teacher preparation institutes.

In-service teachers are not given any structured support either. Some are asked to be assertive, some others are asked to wait for a few years before things magically ‘settle down’, and a few are even looked down upon by experienced teachers for not having it together.

The frustration and stress poor classroom management causes in young teachers is immeasurable. It can lead to a large range of issues from health problems in the teacher to teacher attrition to irrevocable losses in student learning. In highly violent contexts, good classroom management can be the difference between whether girls and bullied students continue their education or not.

But the good news is, even though learning classroom takes hard work, it is simple and anyone can do it if they go about it methodically. So I find it difficult to understand why this aspect is largely ignored in teacher education and ed reform, at least in India.

On the other side of the paywall below, I share with you my recommendations for including classroom management in teacher education, both pre-service and in-service. It is a simple yet effective plan that includes

• a curriculum document

• resources and recommended books

• a slide deck on Procedures and Routines that can be used with pre-service and in-service teachers, plus

  • detailed and complete speaker notes

  • a sample comprehensive list of procedures

  • a template to create a procedure + a sample procedure for transitions

  • other handouts and a feedback form

PS: I am currently opening slots to support teachers with classroom management 1-1 and in small groups. Reach out if you’d like to learn classroom management once and for all so you can devote the rest of your teaching career to advancing curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.