J's Classroom Management

My classroom is organized to be used effectively for both labs and lectures. The tables are arranged at the front of the classroom, leaving space to work on labs and activities at the counter in the back. The students have assigned seats, which change from time to time, but they are usually allowed to choose their own lab partners and lab stations. The seating arrangements keep the students on task and help to handle some of the behaviour issues in our classes during lectures. In contrast, keeping students working and on task during labs is up to the vigilance of the instructor. My cooperating teacher does an excellent job of actively moving around the classroom and monitoring the lab groups and their progress throughout the course of every activity.

As an observer, I realized that my cooperating teacher doesn't demand attention in the classroom the way that I would have expected. She speaks clearly and in a normal tone and expects the students to listen to her instruction. Sometimes they talk during her instructions, but they generally listen and stay on task and they appreciate that she trusts them to be responsible and accountable. I was pretty concerned about this because I associate good listening with a respectful learning environment. Now that I am co-teaching the class and participating more I have found that the students respond well to me asking them to be quiet and listen. They are attentive and understand that I am asking them to be quieter than my cooperating teacher sometimes does, but they respect that and are willing to do so. (We'll see how long this continues... haha).

My cooperating teacher also pushes really hard to use every possible moment of the class that she can. She has a "Do Now" activity on the board at the beginning of every class and she works to ensure that her activities take up the entire period. She can use the time the students are working on the "Do Now" problem to take attendance and take care of anything she needs to get in order before the class begins. If we ever end early, she expects students to work on practice problems that she has ready for each subject we're covering. She also tries to use any time that is remaining in classes to go over any off-topic questions the student had during the course of the activity/lecture. An example of this was discussing black holes at the end of a period during which we had been talking about our solar system and the milky way.

I am excited to begin teaching my own unit and seeing how the class responds, but I am also really happy to be working with my cooperating teacher because I feel like I have a lot to learn from her about how to successfully manage a classroom. Her style is very different from my own, but she manages to run her classes very successfully and the student seem to be engaged in their learning. This term will be a very interesting learning experience for me.