Competency 005
DOMAIN II-CREATING A POSITIVE, PRODUCTIVE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT
The teacher creates a classroom environment of respect and rapport
that fosters a postive climate for learning, equity, and excellence.
Defense
Up until this semester, when I thought of classroom management
I thought of disciplining behavior. I now realize that classroom management
is preventing behavior before it occurs. One way to prevent poor classroom
behavior is to develop procedures and guidelines prior to starting the learning
process. Students need to know what is expected of them, how the class
will be run, and what will happen if they do not follow such guidelines.
A well-informed student will be less likely to make poor behavioral decisions.
At the beginning of the semester, I outlined my classroom expectations and
shared with the students my classroom procedures. Compared to previous
years, I have had a lot fewer discipline issues and we have been able to
get further along in our lessons than what I had originally expected.
My students are aware of what I expect and I believe that we spend much less
time going over discipline and much more time having fun learning.
A few things that I have seen that truly make a huge difference is the posting
of a few simple expectations at the front of my classroom and passing out
a printed copy of my classroom expectations for the students to have.
Any time a student has a question about the appropriate action to take, they
are able to look back at the paper that I have given them and find the correct
procedure to follow. A handout of classroom expectations also helps
me when I have to administer discipline because I am able to show where the
student has been warned about the way their behavior would be handled.
Samples: