For the benefit of my non-teacher reader, I should explain “management” is short for “classroom management,” which is an actual course of study taught at teacher colleges across the country. There are dozens of books and textbooks on the subject of classroom management.
According to Wikipedia: “Classroom management is closely linked to issues of motivation, discipline, and respect. Methodologies remain a matter of passionate debate amongst teachers; approaches vary depending on the beliefs a teacher holds regarding educational psychology. A large part of traditional classroom management involves behavior modification, although many teachers see using behavioral approaches alone as overly simplistic. Many teachers establish rules and procedures at the beginning of the school year. They also try to be consistent in enforcing these rules and procedures. Many would also argue for positive consequences when rules are followed and negative consequences when rules are broken.”
A lot of teachers’ lounge chatter is dedicated to the subject. War stories and vicious rants! Tales of unruly, outrageous kids…”Gotcha!”…doughnuts, coffee, vents and frustrations are all served up daily in the faculty lunch room. The poorest teachers are easily identified: They are the ones who complain the most.
To be fair to my colleagues I must say, young teachers generally have more problems than experienced teachers. It really does take time to figure it all out, classroom management. Young teachers with great potential have more discipline problems in their first three years of teaching than they will during the course of the rest of their careers. For poor teachers, each year is worse than the last.
Furthermore, it must be said, middle-schoolers and high school 9th-graders are probably the toughest kids to deal with on a daily basis; still, some middle school teachers are very successful, others are abysmal failures. The failures generally blame the kids.
Finally, most teachers are good.
In 1981 the US National Education Association reported that 36% of teachers said they would probably not go into teaching if they had to decide again. A major reason was "negative student attitudes and discipline". (Wolfgang and Glickman)--Wikipedia
So why were those nearly 40% still teaching? Once failed, why didn’t they “decide again?” Why didn’t they leave the profession for one better suited to their talents? When realtors fail to sell houses, they leave the profession to find a job that pays or they starve. When actors fail to get the part audition after audition, they wait tables. When politicians lose elections they become consultants. But, when teachers fail, they stay in the classroom.
They stay in the classroom for decades passing along thousands of kids who learned nothing in their classes. They call the kids stupid, unmotivated, rude, and disrespectful, as they assign mindless book work, twenty definitions, and ditto after ditto after ditto. Students receive passing grades for “doing their work.” Much of the work goes unread, while the teacher sits at their desk surfing the Internet, staying, collecting their paycheck, writing referrals, complaining September to June about how terrible kids have become.
Failed teachers demand respect, like Christian love, unconditionally. They offer their students no reason to respect them. When a student, feeling caged and bored and lied to, lashes out [as if to say, “You have nothing at all to offer me!”], his honesty is rewarded with a referral to the principal for discipline. He is suspended from school for three days for “insubordination.” Any understanding of justice he may have had is lost. Chalk up yet another word he can not define!
To be sure, there are as many management styles as there are teachers. Every excellent teacher I’ve ever met had their own management style and exactly one thing in common. They all relied almost entirely on their lessons, the quality of their curriculum, to manage the classroom.
Discipline is not punitive. Students engaged in real learning discipline themselves. Teachers should never demand respect. Like everybody else, they must earn it.
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