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MUSE353 Gerrity
Classroom Management
Any good classroom environment begins with successful classroom management (CM).
Ask any teacher, and they will likely agree. Linsin, the author of The Classroom Management
Secret, even shows the jealousy found in teachers who just cannot get ahold of their classroom.
The beast that is CM aside, the adolescent classroom presents even more problems than normal
with developing brains, raging hormones, and often brutal judgement. Jewels of learning
experiences may be found throughout Perlstein’s Not Much, Just Chillin in respects to CM, and
it is my duty here to point out a couple of ways to best engage (not just manage) the middle
school classroom. In this short document, I will discuss procedural management and
materials, agree that great classroom management is best achieved when the students understand
the “how to’s” of the classroom. In Feldman and Contzius’ book Instrumental Music Education,
there is an entire chapter dedicated strictly to effective classroom engagement (the term they use
for CM). In this chapter, they break CM down into three different aspects: rules, consequences,
and procedures. Rules are the simplest concept here, and any teacher has their list of rules
clearly listed on some poster board on the wall (or at least in their syllabus!). Consequences will
be a discussion further along in this document. The often overlooked, and crucial step to having
a quick, efficient, and well engaged classroom are understood procedures and expectations.
These need to be established on day one of school, and need to be upheld, retaught as necessary,
and reinforced constantly. Students need to understand that there is a procedure for just about
and formality in a classroom; those formalities foster a reverence and respect for the learning
environment. If a teacher wants a well engaged classroom, they need to create an environment
Many different situations in Not Much… delineated just how justice minded the
adolescent is. If there is to be a well-managed middle school classroom, it will be one where
there is consistency. In a chapter near the middle of Not Much…, a child named Eric was
described as struggling in an unruly math class. Though he personally enjoyed the teacher, the
class was very under-managed due to a lack of respect for the course, an unconfident teacher,
and inconsistency. The teacher often let procedures and boundaries be pushed, and often did not
punish particular students for offenses others might be in serious trouble for. At one point, Eric
is described as simply walking straight out of the classroom and ignores the teachers demands to
come back. What is worse is that the teacher later confides to this student that he made them
emotional and pleads for him to not do it again rather than enacting the consequences that should
be set out for the classroom for such behavior. Any other student in that class would feel cheated
by an unfair display of favoritism. There is no wonder this classroom was in disrepair: there was
not consistent reinforcement of procedures and rules, and there were no consistent consequences
Most CM problems tend to go away when adolescent students (or any for that matter)
are properly engaged in the content being taught. Adolescents tend to be best engaged by a
by solving one problem to the next, and should always have some form of active engagement
with the material. To have students feel motivated to solve these problems, however, they need
to feel invested in and connected to their teacher. Teachers must spend time everyday
3 Dylan Keiser
teachers should prompt students to share about themselves, and the teacher should also share
about themselves to their students. From these relationships, teachers can find ways to connect
their lesson material to ideas that most interest their students. Giving students choices
throughout the lesson, a sense of autonomy, will go miles in having students invest in the
classroom. The reason Feldman and Contzious call CM classroom engagement is simple; they
believe that a classroom is well managed if the teacher is properly engaging their students in a
students do not wish to participate or pay attention in the lessons of the classroom, there will not
be any learning to be found there. The adolescent is going through so much change in this time
of their lives. If the classroom does not feel like a system of balance, a system they can
understand, relate to, and count on, they will likely be mentally anywhere other than that
classroom. Adolescents are very quick to make those judgement calls, and will quite literally
dismiss the authority of a teacher if they do not provide good organization and a deep sense of
authority in their conduct. If a teacher wishes for their students to be successful, and to truly
learn the content of their respective course, they need to properly engage their students.
Teachers need to lay down the procedures of the classroom on the first day, continue to
reinforce and enforce those procedures and rules consistently, and provide an engaging
curriculum designed to fit the needs of the students in order to provide a well-managed
classroom conducive to learning. There are many more strategies for how to best display/create
efficient rules, for consequences that work, and much more. Classroom
management/engagement is one of the most asked about subjects in education, and every
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upcoming teacher has reservations and fears about how best to manage their future classrooms.
The good news is that there are tons of resources available from books, seminars, conferences,
and other professional development opportunities to explore the many techniques that work for
different teachers. The best teachers are the ones who never stop being a good student.
5 Dylan Keiser
References
Feldman, E., Contzius, A., Lutch, M., & Battisti, F. L. (2016). Instrumental music education:
teaching with the musical and practical in harmony (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Linsin, M. (2013). The classroom management secret: and 45 other keys to a well-behaved class.
Perlstein, L. (2004). Not much, just chillin: the hidden lives of middle schoolers. New York: