Lesson on Classroom Management

On Wednesday I observed my teacher’s Algebra I B class for an hour and a half. I normally observe his Geometry CP class, which has a very different dynamic. This class talked a lot more and seemed to be a bit more disruptive in the sense that at least half of what they were talking about was not completely related. My teacher told me that all of the students in that class are in their third year of high school but are still in that class and that two of them had just gotten out of jail over the summer. His Geometry class stays on topic and is very quiet while working on problems, but this class talked a lot more and had trouble staying on topic. There were even some students walking around the classroom for a little bit (though they weren’t distracting other students). At the end of the class, he and I were discussing the differences in classroom management between normal upper middle class classrooms and minority classrooms. He told me (and I agree) that minority students are a lot more verbal and joke a lot more. As a result, he does not constantly hush his students but often jokes with them and tries to get them back on topic when they digress too much. He told me that the last thing he wants is for one of his students to drop out of school and end up on the streets, so he has to adjust the way he deals with his classes to keep them in school. His students are still eager to learn and frequently volunteer to write their answers on the board.

I told him that I feel nervous about next year because I do not believe that my education at Clemson will thoroughly prepare me to deal with a classroom full of minority students. He told me that he felt the same way and that his first year was very painful, but he has learned to approach things differently with his students. He constantly asks his students during class if they are doing okay. From this I have learned the importance of building relationships with students so that they will feel like you genuinely care and know that you are there to help them, not torture them. My teacher told me that he has learned a lot about dealing with minority students from doing lots of reading about it, so I plan on trying to do the same. I have learned that I will probably not have a cookie cutter classroom in which all of my students behave perfectly, but that you have to meet your students where they are at to help them learn. When I am a teacher, I will keep this in mind and prepare myself by knowing that my classroom of minority students will be a little more rowdy than other classrooms. I have learned that it is very important to evaluate how the strategies you use work with your students and to know that I will probably need to do things differently than my current classmates.