Perhaps the best time to work on our classroom management skills is not during the year but in the summer. We must at some point when we are not in the middle of the fray take a step back to take a good look – if an uncomfortable one – at how we managed our classroom over the past year and maybe think about making some changes for the next.
It is my position that classroom management works best when it builds intrinsic motivation, when it ceases to be us-versus-them and becomes us-working-with-them. Simply loving kids is not enough. Guiding and developing them in a loving, firm way, plus loving them, is what is needed.
All the CI skills in the world will come to naught unless the students are actually hearing the input that we so carefully provide to them. Managing student behavior to maximize attention is the foundation of this listening. And listening is the basis of language acquisition.
Whether the reader finds it comfortable or uncomfortable, I will begin now here on the PLC a series of articles on classroom management, for those who agree with me that this necessary internal work is best done in the summer when we are bombarded with too many other things to worry about.