Module 3 – Who’s in charge?

In this week’s readings in Woolfolk were Chapter 7 Behavioral Views of Learning which focused on undesired behavior and  managing behavior in the classroom and  Chapter 13 Creating Learning Environments which focused on developing and creating a positive, encouraging environment for children, managing behavior and using communication to set the expectation for desired behavior.

One of our weekly assignment was directly tied to Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 as we were to complete a classroom management project. For this classroom management project I chose option 2, the teacher interview.  I decided to interview, my friend, neighbor, son’s math tutor, and fellow Trinity student and graduate Becky Kessel.  Becky has been teaching elementary school for 10 years and has taught everything from Kindergarten to eight grade.

I found this interview quite interesting.  Becky and I have talked about being a teacher in the past including how she handled her class in various situations but I never saw some of Becky’s tools that she used for classroom behavior. Although I’ve seen posters and such for behavior management in classrooms before somehow, seeing some of Becky’s tools for behavior management almost immediately after reading chapter 7 and 13 made more of an imprint than just seeing posters in my sons classrooms or the prior conversations I had with Becky regarding classroom management and special education.

For example on page 472 under subtitle The Basic Task: Gain Their Cooperation it explains how to maintain a certain level of corporation and obedience in the classroom.  Becky touched base on this when she talked about helping the little boy in math and making a “deal” with him. She used his desire to be acknowledged in the classroom to not only improve his behavior but improve his level of work completion and corporation level within the classroom and with other students. Becky also touched base on the topics on page 476 - Creating a Positive Learning Environment throughout the entire interview as she talked about classroom rules, broken rules, refusal of work, defiant students, parent contact, and finally what classroom management is to her and what her classroom looks like.

All in all I appreciated this week’s assignments as they have pushed me to look outside the box and reflect on what type of teacher I plan to become.

You can see my interview with Ms. Becky Kessel here: https://youtu.be/xyyGVSIpOLw