Gabrielle Riggins

9/23/2016
EDU 402: Classroom Management
Dr. Wilcox
Ron Clarke Reflection

Ron Clark has not changed my life. He has not made me rethink the way that I plan lessons or

the way that I present think about the classroom. Ron Clark has given me ideas. He and the

people that he amasses around himself have helped me to become a better teacher by presenting

to me a new idea of teaching. I think that Ron Clark and everything that he does is great. I

enjoyed going into the school and meeting all of those amazing people, adults and children alike.

I liked being able to read about it before watching everything that I read come to fruition in real

life. I like that every person that I met at the Ron Clark Academy was an actual person. I like that

the teachers were not all just perfect or imperfect copies of Mr. Clark. It shows that you can have

the results that he has without doing everything that he does. I can be me and still be a great

teacher. I feel that my experiences with Ron Clark have reaffirmed the philosophy of teaching

that I had been cultivating so far- it has given me proof in my thought that excellence within the

classroom is not just for high school and up. Starting to teach for excellence at a young age only

gives the students an even better chance of becoming something great.

The one thing that really stuck with me from all that I have seen at the Ron Clark Academy and

what I have read in his book is the expectation of excellence within the classroom. I really liked

the way that Mr. Clark demanded that his students be able to have a presence in any room. I

enjoyed watching him guide the fifth graders and I especially liked seeing the fruits of his labor

with the sixth through eighth graders. All of my life I have looked up to people who had
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presence and could command a room just by being. I try to model my interactions after people

like that and it has always been my goal to empower someone else to want that kind of authority

over their own intellect. I want to see my students stand up and introduce themselves to a room,

full of confidence in what they say. I want my students to realize that they are representing in

everything that they do and that they are proud of it. It is something that has always been

important to me. So in that sense, seeing the students at the Ron Clark Academy really was like

seeing one of my dreams come true.

The Ron Clarke Academy is very much every teacher’s fantasy school. From the supportive

faculty and staff to the willfully over achieving students to the customizable classroom space.

There is very little there that a teacher has to complain about. She could come in to work every

day and teach without boundaries- that is what envisioned my life would be like when I set out to

become a teacher and I doubt that I was the only one to think that way. Most schools are very

much restricted by tests and standards and other cumbersome obstacles that teachers and

administrators have to work around with over and under just get into the classroom and attempt

to teach students. Unlike the students at the Ron Clark Academy these students are not excited to

learn. They have not been told by everyone around them that the experience that they are about

to have is one that was crafted especially for them. Their teachers have not smiled at them once

since they entered the room nor do they know their names. The Ron Clark experience obviously

is not the standard by which we judge all schools. It would be great if all schools were like this,

but it just cannot be done. We can however take some little bits of what they do at the Ron Clark

Academy and use it in the everyday classroom. In my field study classroom, the only subject

taught all day is Language Arts. Three different classes rotate through the same one hour and

fifteen-minute regimen of checking homework, silent group work, maybe if there is time a short
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whole group session, and then moving on to the next class. The entire time everyone is expected

to remain silent, seated and on task. Now just asking an adult to sit still for ten minutes is a

stretch, but for over twenty-five students under eleven years old sitting doing all of that for over

an hour is bordering on physically impossible. One thing that I saw at the Ron Clarke Academy

and read about in the book is the use of chants to release small burst of energy and help keeps the

kids on task. The kids in my class would really benefit from a couple of fifteen second chants

dispersed throughout the reading block. It would help with minor classroom disruptions and class

morale- the atmosphere would not be so suffocating and the students would enjoy the time spent

in the classroom, while the teacher would be able to use her time more valuably. The chanting

technique is about increasing the value of the time spent in the classroom both in the eyes of the

students and those of the teacher as well. From everything that I have seen with Ron Clark his

brand is about the value of time spent with the students and how you use that time.

The most valuable thing that I have gotten from this is my experiences with the children from the

Ron Clark Academy. Having read the book and seen the movie about this man and his amazing

ability to grow students. I think that we kind of forget that the students are the deciding factor in

his legacy. In going to the academy I saw the students who had received his tutelage for four

years and had been shaped into future leaders of our nation, but I also saw the fifth graders who

had only been in under his wing for a week who were making great strides in trying to keep up

with the goals that he had set and the expectations of excellence that they themselves were

starting to foster. Seeing the kids in and out of the classroom environment was so valuable to me

because it made the experience more real- it made what Ron Clarke does and what he stands for

more accessible. It made it easier for me to see these kids and understand that yes it is hard, but

after a while they actually get it. Ron Clark states continually in all of the works that we have
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viewed from him and during our visit, “the only limit to what we can do is the one that we set for

ourselves’.