Classrooms are busy, crowded, and complex places. The all requests
lay on the teacher and to think quickly to make suitable decisions before
having to act. Most of the time teachers have been left on their own to solve
the problems that are related to creating well managed learning environments
that will facilitate not interfere with learning. The teacher’s job is not only
to explain the lesson and left the students with homework or activities, beside
this major job the teachers have to manage their classrooms and students by
rules to organize them. So that learning and teaching go hand in hand with
managing and organizing.
Classroom management refers to all the things that a teacher does
to organize students, space, time, ad materials so that instructions in content
and student learning can take place. It includes all of the things that a
teacher must do toward fostering student involvement, cooperation, and a
productive working environment. Teachers have different ways to manage and
organize their classrooms; also managing differentiates among classes, so that
managing grade 1 is not like managing grade 10-11 and 12.
I’ve been observing grade 3, English class, for 3 weeks. As an
observer we have to look deeply for everything happened in the classroom, the
actions and the reaction of the students and the teacher. For classroom
management; first there are a set of rules hang up on one of the bulletin
boards.
One of these rules are for
hand gestures; so there are 4 kind of gestures each one means something for
instance instead of saying may I go to bathroom, student raise three fingers so
the teacher know what they want.
Also if they want to answer they just have to do like this:
The teacher will immediately know that they have answers.
Eating in the class is not allowed, many times the teacher asked
their students to through the gum, and if they were eating something she
prevent them. I think she have to do this because lower grades have 2 breaks so
they can hold it and eat in that time not in the class, also eating in the
class will cause distraction and annoying.
When the students become noisy, and they are not listening to the
teacher, the teacher said to them: “hands on head”, so they put their hands on
their heads, “hands on shoulders”, so they put it on shoulders, “hands on nose,
hands on mouth”, and then they put it on their mouth, so they keep silent and
re-engaged to the learning process. This way is good they may also sing a song,
or make a fun activity that helps the teacher to gain student’s attention. Add
to this that the teacher that I have been observing in her class, never raised
her voice, she always talk to them (not when she is explaining a lesson) in a
low voice, I asked her why? She said that, if she raised her voice too much
they will keep raising their voice, but when she talks in a low voice she is
forcing them in indirect way to quit so they can hear what she said. Actually I
did not believe her, until I observed her successful way several times.
In a
case that there are a problem with one of the students, the teacher asks him to
go outside the class, then they talk alone for one minute, then they came back
inside. She may advise him or warning but not in front the class, because it
will hurt them especially if his colleges make fun of him.
In
managing our classrooms as teachers we should not have a free or waste time. So
we should plan to use every single moment beneficially. What is happening in
this class is that sometimes they just look at the board waiting the teacher to
finish writing these 5 minutes are expensive, so instead of waiting and looking
she can gave them an activity to prepare until she finished, or to read and try
to guess the meaning of some words or also give them a game like preparing a
riddle in English, so they can tell. There are many ways to fill the empty
moment.
Teacher
faces a lot of weird, tuff, and complicated situations. So she had to think
carefully and deeply before making a decision and to have an act, because
sometimes a wrong act makes the situation and the problems worst.
For
example: a story happened with a girl in grade 12, life science section, 2010.
This
girl was in grade 12, she was clever, and always far from troubles. One day she
was so sick and her doctor decided to make a surgery for her, because this
surgery she stayed at home without going to school for 3 months. After she
became good she went the school, at first it was so hard to engage with her
friends and to follow with her teachers. One of the teacher which is a science
teacher was making fun of her, and said that she was resting at home and this
is her problem not the teachers problem, this girl was so depressed and she
decided to stay at home, and the next year she will study again. And that what
happened she stopped the school and the next year she re entered and made her
official exams and she had a very high grades.
In
this case the teacher should take in her consideration that the student has a
medical situation, and instead of making fun and hurting her, she should, and
this her job, to offer some help, maybe by giving summaries of the lesson, or
meeting her outside the school to cover what she missed. Moreover the teacher
has no right to say a bad word in this case because as I said before the girl
has a medical situation. The teacher should always think about her words before
having an act, because of teacher’s wrong act, the girl stopped the school and
hated the subject.
Finally,
yes we are teachers, but our job told us that we are mothers, sisters,
teachers, and friends for our students.