In this journal entry I have been asked to write about my philosophy of classroom management and explain how I am implementing it.  I wish I could sum up my philosophy of classroom management in some catchy phrase, but I am afraid I cannot.  My classroom management style varies a great deal depending on the situation.  I am new to public schools and high school students so I have yet to settle on some classroom management approach that I am satisfied with.  Currently, I am working with what I have done in past situations and trying to apply it appropriately.

            One classroom management approach which I am trying to implement in my new environment is the array of classroom interaction techniques that were prescribed to me by Ron Schwartz when I worked at the SMU TESOL program.  These impressed me a great deal and they seem to be appropriate for this circumstance I am in now.  When teaching at SMU TESOL, Ron discouraged us from relying on the frequent use of long and poorly managed group work that so often characterizes many teachers’ application of Communicative Language Learning.  In its place he prescribed an approach of sorts for teaching our content.  His approach aimed at creating frequent, short, and highly managed speaking opportunities in which students would “prove” that they comprehended the content by producing language.  For example, after explaining something to the class, the teacher might have the students do a very short TPS in which they would respond to the input in some way.  The type of response would be stated by the teacher and would include anything from a word-for-word repetition of what was said to some sort of opinion about what was said (Bloom’s Taxonomy spells out a number of ways students can offer “proof” of their cognitive actions).  Thus, the teacher would speak for a minute or less and then the students would be given a chance to demonstrate their knowledge or apply it in some way.  Being that student responses were so short, it was easier for the teacher to give feedback on their accuracy in content or form.  This in turn often initiated the negotiation of meaning. 

I have decided that this classroom management approach is suitable for a few reasons.  The first is that, no matter how well I structure groupwork, there are always a few students who use it as an opportunity to degenerate.  At first glance it seems like they are just being bad, but I suspect that they start goofing off because they cannot actually do what they are being asked to do.  They don’t know how to start and don’t want to publicly admit it.  In short, they are embarrassed and frustrated and their bad behavior is their reaction.  I have found that I must break groupwork tasks into short segments and work in lock step, stopping to check each step with the students before going on to the next in order to maintain control of the class.  Ron’s classroom interactions work well for this because they hold students accountable for what they are doing in the groups and offer many chances to negotiate meaning and clarify content in front of the whole class.  Yet another reason why I find these interactions suitable is that ESL students are very good at hiding their gaps.  They can avoid producing structures they are unsure of while managing to sound like a typically inarticulate American teenager.  This is perhaps the main reason why they don’t get the help they need; they simply don’t appear to need help.  For example, like most teenagers, their production consists largely of sentence fragments roughly connected with fillers and unclear, ambiguous, unqualified, or unsupported statements.  Even worse, they just avoid on-topic production altogether by being a wiseass. 

Ron’s interactions often leave no room for such avoidance.  Not only do they allow the teacher to control the discourse and stipulate what the student will do, but it even stipulates how it will be done.  For example, I might ask a student to summarize some point of content involving a causal relationship but I might specify that they use a specific form or follow a model, such as using the “If-then” first conditional.  The gaps come out then.  I know this sounds humiliating and sounds like an offense to student autonomy but the overall effect on the class mood is often much more positive than one might expect.  Since all the students are having difficulty producing accurately and all are being exposed, they all feel somewhat equal.  It becomes clear that they all have gaps in their competence, and they realize they are not alone in their problems.  The teacher exposes their gaps but then consoles them, telling them it is only natural, and then encourages them to take the chance to fill those gaps while they have the chance.  Yet another reason why I like this method is that it involves the teacher calling on students to speak instead of always asking for volunteers.  This keeps their attention.  Nobody doodles or sleeps in my class.  They know that at any moment they might be called upon to demonstrate their comprehension.  Due to this tension, during group work or pair work, students might use the chance to ask other students to explain some aspect of the content or form to them.  Often, when they find that their partner has the same question, they will gang together confidently and ask me their questions.  Students who are usually afraid to speak but really want to also appreciate the chance to speak that they get from being called upon.  Strong students and answer grabbers cannot push out the other students and deprive them of speaking opportunities.  Students who like to speak and who would volunteer under normal conditions still get many chances to speak but they don’t feel afraid of looking like a show-off or getting ridiculed for being a teachers pet.  In conclusion, although the pressure I put on my students shocks many observers and new students, the overall effect is generally to let off a lot of pressures that normally exist in a classroom in which strong students are allowed to dominate while weaker students feel they must hide their language problems in shame.

The problem is that my students have not learned how to work with my methods yet.  There is a lot that students have to learn in order to function in my classroom and meet my expectations.  We haven’t had time yet because I am the new teacher and school has constantly been cancelled due to bomb threats, fires, and snow days.  Their other teachers don’t expect such interactions from them; in fact, their other teachers don’t seem to require that they produce much language at all.  They generally tolerate one word answers from whatever student is willing to give it to them.  This is easier for them because it allows them to manage their classroom and deliver the content that they are required to deliver.  They are afraid to do what Ron has taught us how to do, and frankly, I am a little afraid too.  It shocks and confuses people.  Students often don’t understand what I am trying to do and don’t get its purpose.  From my experience at SMU, students generally need about a week to be trained how to interact in such a classroom.  For example, when students are starting some group work and the teacher asks them, “What are we doing?”  They have to learn that they should at least respond by saying, “We are doing group work.”, or even better should respond by restating the instructions or task---“We are scanning the text to find the year that the Declaration of Independence was written.”  I am faced with a class that already has some established norms or its own that they are comfortable with, and I am an invader trying to step in and change those norms to something they are very unfamiliar with.