The conversation I had with my CT provided much insight into how the school worked to create a positive learning environment within the school and the individual classrooms as well. We also discussed some of the classroom management strategies that I have observed over the past few weeks during her lessons.
The school has a comprehensive framework put in place to help support students and help establish a positive school and classroom culture. This includes the presence of trained personnel such as barne-og ungdomsarbeider, which were child-and-youth workers, in the school to help support the students in terms of their social and personal issues. Activities to help students to bond and get to know each other better within the class and within the larger school community were also conducted, such as a class breakfast held at the end of the semester.
There are also opportunities provided for students to play games with each other and make new friends during their midday break, be it board games in the library or sports in the courtyard. Student surveys are also done during the year to find out how each student is coping with school and how his or her social relations are like with the class. This helps to flag out potential issues such as a student being isolated in class or even bullying of a student, which in turn allows the teachers to take prompt action. In addition, the teaching staff also meet up to discuss students’ progress and their well-being, thus ensuring that all subject teachers are kept in the loop regarding the students’ development, which allows them to have a full picture of how the student is doing in school. From these points that were brought up by my CT, I could see that the school had a comprehensive system put in place involving different levels of staff to ensure a positive school culture, which supported the students and provided adequate coverage to create a safe, positive space for learning in school.
At the classroom level, my CT shared some of her strategies she uses to help foster a positive classroom culture and to manage the students effectively. In terms of handling pupil misbehaviour, for some students who are repeatedly recalcitrant and continually talk to their peers in class, my CT shared that it was often more effective to address the other party and get them to stop talking and to pay attention. With the misbehaving students, constantly addressing them will make them feel as though the teacher was targeting them personally and might also result in them continuing to misbehave and disrupt the class. While it was important to be fair, it was also essential for the teacher to have alternative approaches and be open to using other methods that might be more effective in minimising disruption. While with-it-ness, an aspect of Kounin’s Group Management strategies that we learnt about in our Teaching and Managing Learners module, encompasses the ability to display awareness and being able to address the misbehaving individual directly and accurately, I feel that this example shows a different form of with-it-ness, that of being aware of the relative ineffectiveness directly addressing the main misbehaving student will have, and thus using the approach that, although might seem slightly counter-intuitive, was more effective.
Routines were also established in the class, mainly for starting and ending class. Students had to stand behind their desks and wait for the teacher to greet them before the class starts and before they are dismissed. This ensures that the students are ready for class or dismissal. Also, established rules with the class included the appropriate behaviour for different classroom activities. During lessons which are more lecture-style, there would be no talking or discussion; with lessons that have more discursive activities, a reasonable level of talking/noise would in turn be expected. Such routines help to minimise disruption to the class and can also contribute to the positive class culture established, especially when the teacher is not required to stop the class periodically to remind them of such rules. Also, the teacher uses repeated verbal reminders before escalating to the use of the ‘black mark’ demerit points, ensuring that there is a progressive element to the escalation. This helps prevent students from perceiving the teacher and the reminders/punishment as unfair and arbitrary. Hence, the students are kept aware and understand the rationale behind the teacher’s actions, keeping the classroom predictable and safe, important characteristics that can help ensure a positive classroom culture.
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