My inquiry topic of positive and relationship-based classroom management strategies has provided a strong opportunity for me to trace my development as a teacher. Since being unexpectedly placed in a 6/7 grade level, I have slowly come to truly love working with youth of this age and to view myself as a future intermediate level teacher. However, the question that I still need to continue exploring is how to both form strong relationships with my students, invest in them as individuals and use management strategies that focus on empowerment rather than control on the one hand, and maintain my professional authority, have students view me as a teacher and never as a friend, and retain appropriate management on the other. The challenges of navigating this duality are heightened by my young age and youthful appearance. While I wish to learn how to instill effective classroom management in order to ensure that all students get the most out of my teaching and learn how to display appropriate classroom behavior before they enter high school, I do not want to fundamentally change who I am or who I relate to students. Therefore, my next steps revolve around testing different strategies of management to see which both fit best with my personal teacher identity and help me manage my particular classroom effectively.

To this end, the course “Cultivating Supportive School and Classroom Environments” has proved to be helpful and inspiring. The philosophy of this course aims to show student teachers how they can move away from coercive practices of classroom management which focus on a teacher’s control over their students and towards more inclusive methods of building classroom environments which focus on allowing students to regulate their own behavior and set their own community values. Through reading articles on strategies such as restitution and social and emotional competence, I have been able to add to my toolkit of strategies. I now look forward to having a chance to implement these practices into my classroom and adapt them to fit the needs of my current students.

So far in my practicum visits, I have been able to test a variety of management strategies, especially since my school advisor emphasizes the importance of my finding my own voice in the classroom and not simply adopting her strategies. I have brought in a box in which students are free to put anything that they wish we as teachers knew about their day, either at school or at home. While some students have used this box as a way to complain about other students’ small actions, there have also been serious situations that have come to light because of its anonymous and private nature. I have also introduced my students to the ‘quiet coyote’ hand signal. Although this strategy was more powerful the first day I brought it in than now when I have used it repeatedly, students show an ability to respond to it. Finally, instead of simply listing my own behavioral expectations for them, I have allowed students to generate their own ideas for behavior guidelines before each lesson. Particularly in one of my lessons, this strategy seems to set a positive tone for the classroom as a whole.

With all of these influences, the research I have read through the development of this inquiry, and my own ideas in mind, as I move through my long practicum, I intend to continue using the management strategies that show success, cut those that do not seem to work, and try new approaches. I will take the time to note down the different strategies I emphasize each day, and what their apparent effects appear to be, while also remembering that there are many environmental factors that can change the general behavior of a classroom or the particular behavior of a student. By the time I graduate from this program, I hope to have a firm understanding of how to foster relationships and management in the classroom at the same time.