Give me five, if you can hear my voice clap once, counting backwards from five to one, using chimes, all teachers have a little pocket full of attention getters and classroom management strategies. But what happens when your strategies don’t really work? You know that your students know exactly what they should be doing, but they are just testing you because you have stepped in under someone else’s rules and expectations. How do you get them to give you the same respect they give their normal teacher?
Establishing a teacher presence is something we all have had to deal with as we have been taking over teaching more classes. It is difficult for students to have a change in their routine, and to add to that, we are young and enthusiastic upcoming teachers. They know they can test our limits. After I had stopped a lesson one day because my students were being too chatty and unfocused, I asked them why they acted like that around me and not around my cooperating teacher. One of my students responded, “Because you are fun”. That’s great; I would like to continue to be fun, because I know that students are most engaged in learning when they are having fun, but how can I establish a classroom that is “fun”, but also under control? Our challenge as we begin to full time teach soon is to establish clear expectations and to not be afraid to stop the lesson if it is not going the way we want it to go, as far as student’s behavior. Hopefully we can all establish our teacher presence soon.
--Sara Schroeder
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