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Dominique Hache
Dr. Anne Hewson
Classroom Management
4 November, 2016

Classroom Management Plan: Striving to Reach the Standards of Best Practice for 21st Century
Learners.

The way a classroom managed is, perhaps, the most essential aspect of student learning.
The needs of modern students have drastically changed since the modern classroom was
designed; rows and columns of desks, authoritarian lecturers placed at the front of class, harsh
punishments, specific curriculums, etc., are no longer considered best practice for teaching to
21st century learners. In my classroom, I aim to break free from the traditional and outdated
classroom experience, providing my students to work collaboratively with myself and their
peers, to express themselves and the ways they learn in a multitude of ways, and to receive an
education that is both meaningful and practical to their lives as students and citizens.
If one thing stands as the most important aspect to the notion of a healthy and effective
classroom management plan, it is the concept of community building. Gone are the days of
authoritarian rigour in the classroom; research has rendered it ineffective and damaging to
student learning and development. As Mary Ellen Beaty-OFerrall, Allan Green, and Fred Hanna
collectively argue in Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students, teachers are the
harbingers of community, and creating both positive and empathetic environments are one of the
many key components to effective teaching. As they argue in this article, healthy relationships
between teachers and their students have not to do with whether or not the students like the
teacher; if the teacher uses best practice - knowing their students and designing their lessons
accordingly, modelling structures for learning, establishing clear learning goals that students are
part of designing - then respect is earned and learning increases, drastically. For starters, an
effective strategy is to come up with a set of classroom rules agreed upon by yourself, the
teacher, and your students. It grants students autonomy in their own day-to-day lives, and also
sets expectations for a sufficient and manageable classroom. This can also be applied to the
students work, where teachers grant students to option to present their learning in ways that they
feel they can best express themselves: films, posters, essays, poems, artwork, song, etc. Being
multimodal in our pedagogy allows for student autonomy in their learning, making them
responsible for their own progress as students, ultimately as people.
Knowing your students, as well as showing interest as to who they are as people is what I
value as the most crucial element to being an effective teacher. If teachers do not know their
students, best practice becomes an impossibility. Regardless of subject, grade, exceptionality,
etc., teachers need to know their students and their interests in order to coordinate effective
lessons. As the most recent test results released by the province of New Brunswick show,
teaching to the specifics of outdated curriculums through seasoned pedagogy is not effective.
20% of grade six reach numeracy standards, 25% reach the standards in understanding basic
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science, and just over half have the literacy skills deemed appropriate for their age. Clearly, then,
knowing your students interests and teaching them in ways that relate to their experience as
human beings is what needs to be implemented in classrooms instead of teaching what simply
comes next on a list that was, perhaps, made 25 years ago. Teaching outdated curriculums and
the pedagogies that accompany them is not working; by 21st century standards, the student is the
curriculum, and establishing community is essential to knowing who and what your curriculums
demand you to teach. Though teachers cannot immediately change policies or curriculums in a
bureaucratic way, we are still the ones on the front lines, and we need to implement best practice,
nonetheless. That said, I am not suggesting that we abandon all current curriculums and their
outcomes; we need to be dynamic enough with the resources that we have in order to make these
outcomes accessible to our students, because as these recent results have shown, they are not
accessible.
If we strive to meet the needs of all students by teaching to their needs, inclusion takes
place, naturally. Many students today have all sorts of exceptionalities that require our full efforts
in catering to them: behavioural, mental, physical, etc. In the past, students with these types of
exceptionalities have been removed from the class so that the larger demographic would not be
affected. Thankfully, recent policies have been put in place that recognize these students are part
of said demographic, and have the same right to learn as any other student. That said, exercising
these policies must be part of every teachers classroom management plan, and this varies
teacher to teacher. As part of my plan, catering to students with exceptionalities falls under the
scope of the communal classroom. Whichever the exceptionality, having a communal classroom
allows for more effective learning as well as a sense of belonging, which typically combat many
behavioral issues. As a teacher, the community established in the classrooms allows for
behavioural exceptionalities to be catered to by offering an empathetic sense of understanding
towards the issue as to what may be causing the student to be acting out (Beaty-OFerrall et al).
Further, including those who have neurological or learning exceptionalities also benefit from the
communal classroom by having their needs met to be included, socially. The classroom is not
only a place to learn; it is a place to develop as a human being, and everyone deserves that right.
Reaching the needs of students, whichever their capabilities, is our jobs as teachers. This, too,
applies to students with physical exceptionalities, and the classroom must be organized in a way
that is both effective and safe.
Considering the wide range of student needs, the way the classroom is organized has
many preceding factors, and must be something that is considered thoroughly. We can
simultaneously address the need to work collaboratively while offering practical arrangements
for students with exceptionalities. Rows and columns, in many contexts, have rendered
themselves outdated. By having dedicated reading areas, seating arrangements that promote
group work, pairing certain students up with others, and granting students the opportunities to
move around, we allow learning to become a collaborative experience. Students learn both the
content and the ability to work with others in ways that make sense to them, and not through
ways that make it easier on the teacher (i.e: lecturing). We must also consider those who require
a certain position in the classroom such as those with audio/visual problems, any other physical
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exceptionality, those with the needs to come and go frequently due to medical/ other problems,
those who require their own space, etc. If one student needs to be in a certain place in the
classroom for any of these reasons, we must place them somewhere that allows for their most
optimal learning experience.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we, as teachers, are the facilitators of growth. Our
students are people who are finding themselves in countless ways. When behavior problems arise
on what will certainly be on a daily level, we address the problem and not the student; students
are welcome, some behaviour is not. There must be a healthy balance between restorative and
punitive justice, though more liberal approaches with restorative justice is preferred. That said,
there are instances, such as ones that affect other students learning and safety, which require
punitive justice. With all things considered, creating a communal classroom is the best action to
take against behavioural issues, as well as providing an optimal learning environment for all of
our students.