You have spent the previous three inservices providing simple, useful, easy-to-implement techniques for improving classroom management. However, no teacher ever finishes learning to manage a classroom. Your best teachers are always hungry for new tips, tricks, and strategies, and your less-than-best teachers desperately need them. Today your teachers will receive yet more tips, techniques, and strategies for improving classroom management. But this time, they will be learning from each other.
Begin today’s inservice by sharing the following poem:
After sharing the poem, say, I see many wonderful management techniques working well in lots of our classrooms. So today I’m going to ask you to share some of your own management tips with each other. Take a minute or two to think of a management strategy that works particularly well for you. Then I’ll ask some of you to share those strategies.
Next, spend a few minutes allowing teachers to share their successes with one another. Because this is a ten-minute inservice, you will not have time for everyone to share, and that’s okay. You simply want to get them thinking and talking. When you call on teachers to share their ideas, don’t just call on your star teachers. But do call on a few of them. Also, it’s a good idea to have one of your less than effective classroom managers write the ideas on chart paper as they are shared. You want these teachers actively involved in these types of activities.
One principal shared the following experience with us:
I conducted a ten-minute inservice where I had each teacher come up with one management strategy to share with the faculty. My most effective teachers were eager to share. The others were not so exuberant. I knew that would be the case, of course, before I gave the assignment. But I wanted to get everyone thinking about the importance of good classroom management. And it’s a good idea to make your struggling teachers feel a little uncomfortable from time to time. First, they need to realize that what they are doing is ineffective, and second, they need to know that there are strategies that actually work. I won’t allow them to blame their lack of success on the students.
When it came time to share the strategies, I made it a point to call on some of my best teachers, some of my mediocre teachers, and some of my most ineffective teachers. I didn’t ask for volunteers. I simply called on people to share. Then, when we ran out of time, I gave them each the task of writing about one of their most effective management strategies. We then compiled these and shared a copy with everyone. I had every teacher pick one new strategy from the compiled list to try in their own classrooms.
This ten-minute inservice brought amazing results. My best teachers were thrilled with all the new ideas. The mediocre teachers were more than willing to attempt some new strategies. And the least effective teachers were left with no more excuses. A few of the teachers asked to see the techniques in action in other teachers’ classrooms. I was more than happy to make that happen.
The assignment this week is to send all your teachers off to write about one classroom management strategy that works well in their own classrooms. Remind them to keep their explanations to a few sentences. Set a quick deadline, ideally within a few days. Ask a volunteer to combine all ideas into one document, then provide each teacher with a copy. This is an excellent way to quickly add to everyone’s bag of tricks!
As an added benefit, this provides you, the administrator or staff developer, with a nonthreatening reason to observe particular teachers who may need some extra guidance. For instance, you might say to Ms. LIM (Lacking in Management), “I liked the classroom management strategy you mentioned in the group document. I look forward to coming in and seeing it in action, because I’d love to find out more about it. Thanks.”