My Philosophy of Classroom Management

Every teacher has their own Philosophy of Classroom Management. Personally, I have thought about and adjusted what my philosophy is multiple times. Being that I am an Art Educator, I have a very unique style and outlook on teaching. I get to see students for very short periods of time during the week but I get to see and work with so many more students than other subjects. I want all of these kids to use my classroom as a safe space where they can make mistakes, try new things and not feel judged. It isn't easy taking risks and trying new things, especially now, but that is why I want my classroom to be that space. So not only can they take risks in art, but they can use those skills to take risks in other aspects of their learning. I have always been a fan of student centered teaching rather than teacher centered teaching. Students are there to learn and honestly they know how they learn best so it is not my place to tell them how they learn best. I want to make sure that the content we are covering and the way I am presenting it to them is in the way that they want. I have found multiple articles that talk about student centered teaching and most of them have found that student engagement is higher but not significant enough to be extremely positive.

When thinking about all of the students I see in a given week, I have a high likely hood of seeing many different kinds of backgrounds, behaviors. I am compassionate, caring and also somewhat relaxed with the way I run my classroom. That being said, I know when to stop things before they turn into something bigger, I know when to say enough, and I know when to ask for help. My strategies for keeping my classroom organized behavior wise is using positive incentives to motivate all students to try their best. I believe that experience rewards are more successful than physical rewards because it teaches students to appreciate doing things rather than having things. Items such as face paint, free art activities day, or other art related activities within reason. I also use the technique of "Give me 5", made famous by Cindy Wong, to gather students attention and refocus. This technique only works in elementary so for high school I would adjust this method and turn it into a call and respond clap. Effectiveteaching.com has the complete procedure write up and I plan to have this in my classroom where students can see it as a visual for the strategy. I have seen this used in high schools successfully before and I like the action and sound of clapping. It also does not make the students feel lesser or like young children while gathering their attention.

Every teacher's instructional style is different. In the past, teacher centered teaching was very popular and there are many teachers' that still use this style. But a new wave of teaching has come to light which is Student centered teaching and this is the style that I implement in my classroom. This style naturally works for me as I am naturally very caring and always put the students needs first when it comes to learning. Education is as much the teacher's job as it is the student's. Holding students accountable for their work as well as making sure the subject's we are using in our lesson plans are relatable to the students and are things that student's are interested in learning. There have been recent studies done on the effects of student centered teaching and the findings show that there is a moderate increase in student involvement and engagement (Bradford, J., Mowder, D., & Bohte, J. (2016).

Bibliography

Bradford, J., Mowder, D., & Bohte, J. (2016). You Can Lead Students to Water, but You Can’t Make Them Think: An Assessment of Student Engagement and Learning through Student-Centered Teaching. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(4), 33-43. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i4.20106

Procedures: For the Classroom. Getting Students Attention. (n.d.). In Effective Teaching. Retrieved from https://www.effectiveteaching.com/userfiles/kcfinder/files/17_Give_Me_Five.pdf

Give Me Five: Poster