Rethinking Classroom Management

"Many of today′s discipline problems result from student responses to outdated practices. This book lives up to its title, providing innovative approaches that demonstrate leadership rather than management. Teachers discover creative and proactive ways to engage students in the development of learning environments that are positively charged, cooperatively structured, and self-governed." —Dutchess Maye, Fellow for Instructional Design North Carolina Teacher Academy, Morrisville, NC A classroom leadership model of prevention, intervention, and problem solving for both teachers and students! Emphasizing a leadership model for effective classroom management rather than relying on strategies for compliance and control, this updated edition of the bestseller describes a comprehensive approach that encourages teachers to reevaluate their beliefs, roles, and practices and engages students as partners in creating a powerfully supportive learning environment. Offering a unique perspective on classroom leadership that helps teachers address potential problems before learning is disrupted, this resource shows how integrating leadership into daily classroom life enhances learning by strengthening students′ autonomy, self-esteem, and connectedness with others. Reflecting the author′s years of experience and filled with more real-life examples, new techniques, and ready-to-use worksheets, the book: Provides an interactive process that allows teachers to foster leadership in themselves and their students Includes classroom connections, personal connections, examples, checklists, and reflective questions With its distinctive and creative perspective on classroom management, Rethinking Classroom Management, Second Edition encourages teachers to become mentors and facilitators, rather than classroom managers, as they empower students to actively participate in their own learning.

Provides new real-life examples, intervention techniques, and ready-to-use worksheets for addressing potential problems before learning is disrupted and demonstrates ways to foster student leadership in your classroom.

This empowering book illustrates how to achieve a positive classroom environment of respect and responsibility for all using techniques that include prevention, temporary intervention, and problem-solving strategies.

The debate over whether class size matters for teaching and learning is one of the most enduring, and aggressive, in education research. Teachers often insist that small classes benefit their work. But many experts argue that evidence from research shows class size has little impact on pupil outcomes, so does not matter, and this dominant view has informed policymaking internationally. Here, the lead researchers on the world’s biggest study into class size effects present a counter-argument. Through detailed analysis of the complex relations involved in the classroom they reveal the mechanisms that support teachers’ experience, and conclude that class size matters very much indeed. Drawing on 20 years of systematic classroom observations, surveys of practitioners, detailed case studies and extensive reviews of research, Peter Blatchford and Anthony Russell contend that common ways of researching the impact of class size are limited and sometimes misguided. While class size may have no direct effect on pupil outcomes, it has, they say, significant force through interconnections with classroom processes. In describing these connections, the book opens up the everyday world of the classroom and shows that the influence of class size is everywhere. It impacts on teaching, grouping practices and classroom management, the quality of peer relations, tasks given to pupils, and on the time teachers have for marking, assessments and understanding the strengths and challenges for individual pupils. From their analysis, the authors develop a new social pedagogical model of how class size influences work, and identify policy conclusions and implications for teachers and schools.

This book shows you how the powerful connections between character, content, and classroom structure shape the individual emerging inside each of your students.

Katherine Schultz examines the complex role student silence can play in teaching and learning. Urging teachers to listen to student silence in new ways, this book offers real-life examples and proven strategies for "rethinking classroom participation" to include all students--those eager to raise their hands to speak and those who may pause or answer in different ways. --from publisher description.

Have you ever entered a building or room for the first time and felt enhanced--felt your body relax and spirit elevate? The effect of human-made environments on learners’ brains is not subjective. According to research studies, we all have measurable responses to the design of a space. However, despite the many resources discussing how to decorate and design elementary school classrooms, few resources on middle and secondary level classroom design are available. This book fills that gap. Moreover, the purpose of this guide is to enhance learning spaces, boost student performances, and positively extend teachers’ influence.

In Rethinking Language Arts: Passion and Practice, Second Edition, author Nina Zaragoza uses the form of letters to her students to engage pre-service teachers in reevaluating teaching practices, thus bringing to life a vision of an alternative classroom environment in which the teacher is the prime mover and creative leader. Zaragoza discusses and explains the need for teachers to be decision makers, reflective thinkers, political beings, and agents of social change in order to create a positive and inclusive classroom setting. This book is both a critical text that deconstructs the way language arts are traditionally taught in our schools as well as a visionary text with clear, no-nonsense directions on how to provide much needed change in our schools.