Why Manage Your Classroom

Those who have taught English longer will tell you that despite all your best efforts to
plan your lesson, there will be learners who will make you feel that you are this alien
inside the session, talking about something and getting blank stares for a reaction.

Maybe the problem is in how well you know the lesson. Maybe not. Maybe the
“planning” is the problem. Then again, maybe not. Maybe what needs more “work” is
your understanding of the cultural background of your learner. Maybe you did not
foresee how his reason for learning English affect his attitude in your session. Maybe
aside from learning the language, he also faces challenges adapting to class rules or
requirements.

These “maybes” tend to multiply every single time you feel you are not getting through
your learners.

What can you do so you have a better chance of connecting with your learner and
achieving learning outcomes?

Know effective strategies in classroom management.

What is classroom management?

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), the father of Scientific Management asserted

that management in business “knowing what you want to do” and seeing that it is done
in the best and cheapest way.
What F.W. Taylor said is not something very different when you think about classroom
management. Borrowing from F.W. Taylor we can assert that classroom management is
knowing what you want to achieve and how best to do it. It is knowing your goals and
identifying what strategies and practices are best to affect your objectives.

For teachers whose “business” in the classroom, the starting point is the “creation of
curriculum that is meaningful to students and with teaching that is engaging and
motivating” (Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2005, p. 37).

For most English language teachers, the curriculum is there, already created for
implementation. In fact, the curriculum is something you must follow, something you
cannot change.

But what happens when a student whose unpleasant experience with English language
learning makes him think that your best-designed session is more or less be the same
as his worst ever class? What can you do so that you do not lose your patience over a
fairly advanced student who is uninterested most times and when he deigns to
participate, it is only to interrupt other learners whose limited ability to use English
makes them challenging to comprehend?

You can resort to implementing rules and procedures. But what rules? What
procedures?

Again, plan. Classroom management is contingent on your plan.

You need to realize as early as now that “classroom management is not a spur of the
moment thing, certainly not something you think about only upon meeting your student
(Weber, 1990).”

Classroom management is everything you do before a class, during class, and after
class so nothing interferes with instruction and learning. This entails organizing your
students, space, and time. Among your concerns are behaviors you expect of the
students, availability, and accessibility of the materials that will be needed for various
lessons, ways of addressing inappropriate behavior, and processes you follow for
instruction.

Note also that your learner’s daily behavior is the result of so many things. So what
worked yesterday may not necessarily work all the time. So again, how much you know
about classroom management will definitely benefit you in the long run.

Long and Morse (1996 ) assert that ineffective classroom management skills will hinder
you from being an effective teacher. Cangelosi (2004) further claim that classroom
management skills impact how long you will remain in the profession. Those who have
stayed long in the profession will more likely claim that they generally have cooperative
students. Their encounters with disruptive behaviors are minimal and generally, glitches
in class are also rare. Those who are thinking of leaving the job, on the other hand, will
more likely share that their struggle with student misbehaviors is constant and real and
what happens inside their classroom is far more disappointing than they expected.

So why bother with classroom management?

It is the basis for effective teaching. Teaching entails:

1. instruction – the presentation, demonstration, and assessment of a curriculum

and
2. management – all activities are done by the teacher before, during, and after an
interaction with a student/class which ensures learning.

To be an effective English language teacher means that you have to be effective at

instruction and management. Some may argue that your education prepares you to
be effective at instruction. How you manage your class better, they say will be the result
of your insights from your teaching experiences.

So what do you manage as an English teacher?

Everything.

You need to understand that an English language class may be participated in by just
one student whose first language is not English or several students coming from diverse
backgrounds and manifesting varying abilities to use English.

You need a structure to achieve your session objectives. You must ensure that students
have adequate opportunities to practice, participate, and perform. You must also make
sure that the resources you need – physical facilities, equipment, materials, classroom
layout – are appropriate, adequate, and/or available.

You have to manage your learner’s behavior through policies created and implemented
so that no time is wasted. Speaking of time, you have to monitor that it is efficiently used
and there’s enough allocated for everything you want to accomplish in your day-to-day
session.

You can liken your task to that of a conductor in a symphony, a maestro. In front of you
are musical geniuses and you have to know the musical score by heart so that all
instruments are played at the right time and in full harmony.
If you want, you can think of it also in terms of business. You manage all the resources
so that much is achieved with less effort from your learners, and of course, you.

Not an easy feat. We agree on that. To make this clearer for you, you may want to
check the diagram showing what you manage.

If you are adept at classroom management, your work becomes easier, your sessions
are more meaningful, your teaching more sustainable. Do you want to build a career in
teaching? Classroom management will help make that happen.