This week, I mainly focused on implementing new positive relationship-based strategies into my own classroom management practices. As classroom management is one of the areas I hope to grow in, I thought that my Thursday visit to my practicum school on February 16th would provide the perfect opportunity for me to begin to assess which strategies would be worth exploring in conjunction with both my own personality and the environment of my current classroom, and which would need revision before being of use. One of the strategies I tried during the weekly class meeting at this particular Thursday visit was having the students pass a stone around when it was each person’s turn to speak, and tell me, as well as the rest of the class, one quality or behaviour they would commit to bringing into my drama lesson. I thought that this would be a strong way to phrase rules for an activity in positive language, to allow students to take ownership over their own behaviour rather than being forced to comply with a set of predetermined rules, and to foster a sense of community and mutual respect for each other’s learning in the class. Many of the students selected participating and being respectful as their commitments, which fit well with my personal goals for the lesson. During the course of the lesson, I also introduced the ‘quiet coyote’ hand signal as a way to calmly signal a transition from busy activity to quiet discussion and to gather them back to the group when their attention began to wander. Finally, I circulated throughout the room to interact with, and be able to encourage, all of the students during the activities. Although my management of the class was not perfect and I still have some ways to go in developing my skills in this area, I found that these strategies helped the students make a vast improvement in their behaviour as compared to the previous visit. Putting aside variables I cannot change for now, such as students’ experiences at home in the morning or the quality of the breakfast they ate, I think that the comparison between the visits is a good indication of the effectiveness of my new management techniques, as the lessons I taught revolved around the same movement skills and busy, full-class activity. Compared to the previous lesson, the students were more attentive, showed more positive interactions with each other, and demonstrated much better control over their bodies and actions. Although a longer and more detailed inquiry is needed to truly examine the connections between different management strategies and students’ responses to my lessons, the success I found this week demonstrates that positive strategies can have true effects and that I do not have to change who I am as a teacher in order to be able to assert leadership in my classroom. Rather, I can use positive and relationship-based techniques that work from my strengths as a teacher and as a person to ensure all students show appropriate behaviour in the classroom and find success.
