Classroom Climate and Management

In the classroom, I've noticed that there are the jock, popular, and other student cliques established amongst the students. Most students know each other and have a positive relationship with each other, but I've noticed a few students would like to be by themselves because of going into other areas of conversation rather than talking about math or how to go about solving a problem. Despite the different cliques about the classroom, there are some students that show they care about how others are doing, and others that don't make it known that they care about the other students in their group. The students are very respectful of Ms. Resourceful in the classroom. It is evident that the students care for her in a professional matter, and that she cares and respects the students in a professional matter. I've seen the students communicate politely with Ms. Resourceful and she had given responses back to the students in the same manner.

There are basic classroom norms established the first day of school. The rule of no phones in class had been told to students on the first day and is put up in multiple places around the classroom to serve as a reminder to the students. There's also a rule of aerosol spray in the classroom, since this was repeated just recently after a student sprayed themselves with perfume in the classroom and had a few students sit out of the class for 10 minutes. A different teacher had to come in and lock up the perfume in her cabinet so that the student wouldn't be able to spray the perfume for the remainder of the day. Otherwise, there's a list of rules placed in every classroom that was based on the school system and what they stand for.

Ms. Resourceful uses the system that the school established in each classroom on basic behavior by the classroom door, as well as no phone use established in different parts of the room to serve as a reminder for students. In a different part of the room, she put up a sign on when students are aloud to interrupt the teacher to serve as a reminder that the teacher must not be interrupted unless something on the poster is actually happening. She tends to reinforce the norms throughout the year, but establishes them on the first day by running through them with students. These norms are important to her, because she wants students to feel safe in a classroom and to have the independence that they deserve with also following the rules.

In her classroom, Ms. Resourceful has put some reminders about the school policy in one part of the classroom and other school norms posted around the room in order to give students an opportunity to refresh their knowledge of what is expected of them in the classroom. She hasn't found strategies that don't work in the classroom just yet, since she had been good at establishing these norms with her students beforehand. In the evidence of time in the classroom, these management strategies she uses are effective in that time.

I think that establishing my expectations for the classroom on the first day of school would be a plus in my classroom, and making sure I have posters on the walls around the classroom to serve as reminders for students what we went over the first day would save me from having to refresh their memories over and over again. I would have to remind students as the semester goes on what the classroom norms are and why I have them in my classroom, but otherwise, the posters up around the room should satisfy the students enough. If there is ever the chance I would have to refer back to a norm for one student, I would address the whole class to make this reminder and hopefully wouldn't have to repeat it more than once to 25 + students in the same period.