Classroom Management

What's currently working and what's not working for me in my classroom. What is working for me is the relationships I develop with my students and parents. When my students come to the resource room they work hard for the most part. That's about it for whats working. What is not working is the amount of students on my caseload, administration not involving me in discipline issues or when sped students are accepted and not having any assistance with sped population. Next year there will be some changes that will make it easier to handle the sped population. Denise

April 26, 2018 To meet the needs of the students on my caseload I do a variety of things. All of my students are mainstream so they come to the resource room for service minutes and for additional help with class assignments. When time permits I do go to their classes to assist with gen ed  instructor with accommodations/modifications, and assist students if needed. I speak with the gen ed teachers on a daily. Denise

How do I engage students in my classroom? Being as I have a resource room my engaging my students is a tad bit easier than a gen ed class. Most of the time when I work with my students as a whole we are working on transition skills. Some of the transition skills I have worked with them on are completing employment application, resume writing, career interest survey and independent living skills. For the most part they all want summer jobs to make a little money. So working on employment applications kept them very engaged. Talking with them about living on their on and the cost to have their own home was very enlightening. None of them had a clue on what it took to live on your own. They had a lot of questions. So the key to keeping them engage is to make it real life related. Denise

This topic makes me think about my classroom management and instruction delivery. The two things that are going well for me are my level of communication with each student and being flexible. I work with a challenging student population. My goal is to get to know each of them as their teacher and as someone they can trust. Some of them need that trusting individual to open up to and others may just need a little motivation talk to push them to do better. Of course you have the students in between. At my school being flexible is definitely a must. Even though I am a Sped Instructor at any given moment throughout the day I will have change hats from sped to school mother, therapist, and sometimes mediator. The two things I need to work on is organization and being aware of timelines. I do so many other things at the school that by the time I sit down in my office to do any sped paperwork the day is gone. I try to stay organize by writing a to list everyday and that has not been so succ...

Good Classroom management is essential if a instructor wants to reach the students in their class. Classroom management can make or break a instructor, no matter how knowledgeable they are about their content. I have seen it done over and over again each school year. Also, without it its impossible to teach. My first year teaching high school students was in 2006 and at that time I was given the best advice (I learned many things over the years but this was gold). On day one of school make it known what your expectations are, class rules (non negotiable), and never crack a smile the first (joke) but let them know there will be a time to play and a time to learn. Will that approach work for everybody...no. However, it works for me. After the relationships are cultivated I definitely loosen up and lifetime bonds are made.  They begin to buy into what I am teaching and understand the importance of learning. Not only do I create a relationship with my students I create a relationship...