There are many different factors that contribute to classroom management; however, after reading the "Classroom Management 101" blog, it really is as simple as fostering relationships and keeping your students engaged. Creating relationships with your students is pretty self-explanatory. Talking to them outside of class, getting to know what their interests are, and generally just being a friend instead of just the teacher can be an easy way to show students that you care. What becomes seemingly more complicated is all the different ways to engage students, or rather things that will prevent the students from becoming engaged in the material being presented.
Something we recently addressed in class, and that was addressed in Dr. Kruse's article "That's Not My Style: the Myths of Learning and Teaching", is the idea that students have different learning styles. Often times, teachers give their students tests to find out if they are audio, visual, or kinesthetic learners. I know that this was the case in not only my elementary, middle, and high school years, but even within the School of Education here at Drake. I have always had an issue with testing for these so called learning styles because I never really clearly fit under a particular category. Yes, over the years I noticed that I preferred to see things when learning them but that didn't mean that I couldn't take in and process information by hearing it, or by doing it. In fact, it was the combination of those things that really made the material click. So this is where I really connected with our discussion of "learning styles" in class.
Because these learning styles essentially label students, it allows the students to give an excuse for not learning something. If I am told to read a chapter in a text book, I can then go on to say that I won't learn the material that way because I am a kinesthetic learner. It is true that I may not remember everything that I read, but the reality is, text is often a reinforcer for the information being learned. That being said, developmental learning theory tells us that all students benefit from a more concrete, often a more hands-on, demonstration before building that bridge into abstract thinking about the topic. That means that everyone is essentially a kinesthetic learner.
The problem arises when students use their supposed learning as an excuse. If a student believes they are an auditory learner and knows that they are going to be listening to a lecture, they may pay less attention to the material because they believe they will acquire the information easily through just hearing it. This lowers their active mental engagement and when a student is not mentally engaged in the classroom, that is when classroom management issues start to arise.
When I have my own classroom, I will not support the idea of learning styles. I will encourage learning is a variety of different ways because that is what has been proved as effective. I want my students to get the most out of their school experience, at least while in my classroom, so I do plan to take the advice of the blog I mentioned earlier and foster deeper relationships with my students as well as provide them with diverse learning opportunities that with get them engaged. If students have previously been told they have a particular learning style, I will work to show them that it is simply a preference of how they acquire the information and that they really can learn in all different ways. Without learning styles inhibiting their thinking, I am hoping that small part of classroom management will be resolved. There are many other things that contribute to the aesthetics of the classroom like what policies are put into place and the personalities of the students themselves, but I am hoping that those things will become insignificant by putting these two practices into place.
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