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Candace WilliamsClassroom Management Plan
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”Mahatma Gandhi
Part 1: Ideology
Why teach?
Long story short, I teach because there are children. Children are society’sprecious gems. In them, we see reflections of the past as they internalize the goals of our civilization, and take on our traditions. We see flashes of the future. In time, theircuriosity and ambition will rearrange the building blocks of our civilization. I believe allchildren deserve to have a stake in this decision-making process. People must have thefreedom to choose elected leaders, career paths, where we live, and who we associatewith, without undue influence from socioeconomic issues of birth. In our society, thisfreedom is not free for all. The culture of power has many gatekeepers. Lisa Delpit saysthere are many codes of power, from ways of talking, to how one dresses. These codesare a reflection of the middle and upper class because they define economic, political,and social success in our society.
I believe all members of society, regardless of class or culture, should have thechance to redefine these codes as time progresses. As Delpit says in
Other People’sChildren
 , “ I also do not believe we should teach students to passively adopt an alternatecode. They must be encouraged to understand the value of the code they alreadypossess as well as to understand the power realities in this country. Otherwise they will be unable to work to change these realities” (40). Giving students access to the culture of power is not my primary goal. The word “access” seems too passive. I want mystudents to take a leadership role in redefining the culture of power. Freire says “Themore people become themselves, the better the democracy” (145). I want to help create aworld where people see themselves reflected in institutions of power.
If I could see them in 15 years....
“Ability to redefine the culture of power” is not an assessment criteria found ontests, rubrics, content standards, or curricula. It would be too easy for me to say “I wantstudents to be critical thinkers”. Critical thinking has become a meaningless catch-allphrase for all productive behaviors. If I saw my students 15 years after I met them, Iwould want them to:
 
1.Be curious: To have a genuine interest in learning about the world. Not immobilized by fear of what they do not know or the hubris of thinking they know everything.2.Develop their own process of research and investigation: To be confident in theirability to use their skills to investigate the world and figure things out.3.Solve problems: To make value judgments using evidence and use these value judgements to solve intra- and interpersonal problems.4.Work in a diverse community: To feel like valued members of a community and useinterdependence to meet community goals.5.To persevere: To set goals for themselves and have strategies for when they do notmeet their goals on the first try.These five traits are a combination of content knowledge, metacognitive strategies, andsocial skills. State and district content standards, school goals, and the goals of parentsare important. I will help students devise their own standards of success while meetingthe goals others have for them.
How do students learn?
I believe knowledge is constructed from experience rather than passivelyreceived from teachers. In order for students to construct understandings fromexperience, the experiences must:-Be developmentally appropriate: students need experiences that build uponunderstandings they already have while challenging them to formulate newunderstandings. Vygotski used the term “Zone of Proximal Development”. Learningrequires a delicate mix of challenge, conflict, safety, and familiarity. There is not asingle linear progression that fits the learning trajectories of all students.-Stay rooted in students’ curiosities and experiences: If students are not curious aboutthe topics, they will not engage in the material. In my experience, students tend to becurious about topics that relate to their experience in the world. Students have to makethe choice to engage in the process and integrate new understandings into their lives.Freire says “When students come, of course, they bring with them, inside of them, intheir bodies, in their lives, they bring their hopes, despair, expectations, knowledge,which they got by living, by fighting, by becoming frustrated” (156).-Honor multiple intelligences: Students show strengths across multiple intelligences.There are many literacies students need to access information in our society - fromnumeracy and technological literacy to verbal literacy. Classroom environments mustgive students experience working in their preferred modalities as well as give studentsa chance to build skills in other intelligence areas.
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-Focus on building relationships and bridging communities: Students are building theirself-identities in school and figuring out how they fit into different communities.Students must have experiences at school that affirm the codes they have learned intheir homes and communities. Families are the first source of student learning andstudents want to be active members in their home communities as well as their schoolcommunities. Schools should focus on the idea of community membership andvalidate the many communities students serve. Students must have the experience of working within a learning community. In school, students should have theopportunity to ponder social issues, talk about solutions, and begin to enact thesesolutions.
What is my role in the learning community?
Freire sums up the primary concern of my professional practice: “but thequestion is how to take advantage of the reading of reality, which the people are doing,in order to make it possible for students to make a different and much
deeper
reading of reality” (158). I believe the best way I can help students “make a deeper reading of reality” is to lead a democratic learning community. The learning community isdemocratic in the sense that there are structures built-in for students to take charge of the decision-making behind rituals and assignments. Myles Horton says “Youexperiment with people not on people. There’s a big difference. They’re in on theexperiment. They’re in on the process” (148). Students learn when they have the self-determined goal of engaging in the learning community. In the end, I cannot controlstudents, or make them learn. I can be a leader. I believe that given a structureddemocratic community, students can build upon their understandings of the world, andlearn from their mistakes over time. It is my job to uncover the understandings studentshave and expose them to challenging experiences that help them grow. In
RethinkingClassroom Management
 , Belvel and Jordan contrast lead teachers with authoritarian andrescuer/enabler teachers. They say lead teachers must help students process their ownmistakes, interpret the behavior of others, and facilitate decision-making withappropriate questions. Lead teachers question and model rather than preach. Wesupport students as they experience natural consequences. The focus is on relationshipsand decision-making rather than control and compliance.
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