Dylan Keiser

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

expectations, a justice oriented system followed with consistency, an adolescent oriented

curriculum, and the importance of a well engaged classroom.

Linsin and Feldman, two great authors in educational professional development

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

everything in the classroom, especially adolescents. There needs to be a feeling of organization

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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

worth being engaged in.

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

for bad behavior.

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

problem-based sequence of discussion and activity. Adolescents need to be constantly engaged

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
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connecting to their students to foster a lasting relationship. This is a two-way relationship;

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

way that fits their needs.

The necessity of a well-managed and well-engaged classroom is relatively obvious. If

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.
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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.

San Diego, CA: JME Publishing.

Perlstein, L. (2004). Not much, just chillin: the hidden lives of middle schoolers. New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux.