Classroom Management MEI14P

Teacher: Magdalena Martinez

Student: Margarita Martinez

April 30th, 2021.

SELF - REFLECTION

Classroom management is quite a challenge for all teachers, but especially for ESL
teachers is harder since greetings, instructions, commands, and the class itself are
conducted in students’ nonnative language.
Zauber, (2006) suggests to “establish a classroom climate” to maintain a pleasant
atmosphere. In this author’s opinion and experience, an enjoyable learning
environment is crucial to keep students motivated and focused in their goals.
According to Zauber to manage time efficiently, so teacher will reduce disciplinary
problems and a very good advice that Zauber shares is on establishing discipline.
Then, when teacher successfully sets a respectful atmosphere in class is believed
that disciplinary problems will be eliminated; nevertheless, in this writer experience,
sometimes the later will not happen since there are many students with special
characteristics and individual or family problems which they bring to the class.
In this author’s education, training in classroom management did not exist and in this
author’s experience as a student, poor behavior in students was not considered
because teachers were extremely strict. So, the lack of discipline skill meant that
some situations got out of hand, while others were not resolved in a manner that
made her proud of her actions.
Therefore, in order to teach effectively, teachers need classroom management skills
and this means to use organizational skills efficiently to not let room for
indiscipline. Good classroom management helps to attain the ideal learning
experience while addressing the health of both the teacher and the students.
Also, planning plays a very important role in classroom management. Having clear
routines and tasks established so teachers can give to students the maximum
learning possibilities to practice and opportunities to develop their skills. Planning
provides smooth transitions between activities and sufficient amount of time to
perform them.
Hence, communicating clear expectations to your students is crucial in maintaining
an atmosphere conducive to learning. Make sure that your students are aware of
what is expected from them at each stage of the lesson. This can take the form of
sharing the lesson objective with them from the start, modeling the activity with
volunteers in front of the class before they undertake it themselves or by scaffolding
examples of what you would like the students to produce.
It is also important to give clear and brief instructions, choose carefully the words to
use; if the task is difficult it may require longer explanations and several repetitions
to be sure that students understand what they have to do; moreover, it may be need
the use of their mother tongue in order to achieve a successful understanding.
Motivation is vital in classroom management because a motivated student wants to
achieve his/her goals and does not want to waste time in distractions. Be sure to
praise this motivation and the effort these students make in every class. And engage
the rest of the class to participate and compliment them each time they contribute in
the tasks.
In this author’s opinion: teachers should be positive and encourage to students for
creative activities. Teachers should be active and proactive using materials for
different purposes; moreover, teachers should be close to modern technology.
Teachers need to be energetic and broad-minded to maintain discipline in the class
without being rude nor authoritative.
Finally, all of the above is not easy and teachers do not possess a magic wand to do
magic; but with love, dedication and continuous personal training and preparation
teachers can accomplish a successful classroom management. When you love what
you do, you can achieve anything.
References:
Classroom Management. Chapter 4: Ability & Chapter 5: Discipline (pp 49 - 68)
(2020). IEXPRO University.