Classroom Management Techniques: Part 2
Mia Tarau
In this post I add to my previous musings on classroom management (which you can read here: https://shorturl.at/0vHPr) by looking at students’ understanding of teacher roles, and by briefly touching on the role of translanguaging in encouraging peer collaboration. These final tips are inspired by two ideas from the last two articles in this series, in which Jonathon Ryan talked about classroom management theories (https://shorturl.at/PslsK) and Michael Rabbidge reflected on creating an inclusive learning environment for our tertiary students (https://shorturl.at/xOhP7).
1. Establishing boundaries, especially for younger learners
As teachers, our job is to look after our students; most teachers who do this work as their calling often go above and beyond to ensure student success. This can often manifest as losing sleep over unexpected incidents that happen in the classroom, or as carrying the stress over student progress into our private lives (even when our level of care is not always matched by student enthusiasm and effort). In practice, this can be accompanied by behaviours that are damaging in the long run, both to us and our students. Our students should be aware of where our role as educators ends, and where their role as individuals who have to take responsibility for their own structured learning begins.
How I do it, at the beginning of each course:
An easy boundary that I learned to establish early on, once I started teaching large cohorts in tertiary settings, was to inform the students of the course rules around communicating with the teaching staff from day 1. The standard rules are simple:
-we will reply to emails only during business hours
-we do not offer assessment draft feedback via email, and especially not the night before the assessment is due (the stories we all have around this!). That is what tutorials/consultations/office hours are for.
Of course, this does not apply to students in special circumstances. We are all human, after all, and things happen – but these are some excellent generic ground rules when it comes to establishing boundaries around what we should and shouldn’t do in our profession.
Why should we do it?
Informing students of these time- and assessment-related boundaries will teach students many important life skills: time management, planning, and being organized. They can then learn to make the most out of the teacher’s role during class and before assessment deadlines. This will assist them in their future studies, but also in real life. Once these boundaries are in place, younger students in particular will (eventually) accept them and move towards a better understanding of how tertiary study and/or workplaces operate. For teachers, this allows us to at least try to establish some semblance of a work-life balance, although this is always a struggle in this profession which already comes with so much teaching admin and such a high mental load.
2. Encouraging students to take responsibility for their learning through peer work
The importance of learning activities based around peer work cannot be overstated. Learning tasks based around collaboration are a part of every course, and they are incorporated regularly into formal assessment. However, it can be a challenge for students coming from backgrounds where a teacher-led classroom structure is the norm to engage with their peers or see the value in learning from them. After all, isn’t that what the teacher is for? However, this is another fantastic learning opportunity for our students, and a great resource in their future professional life.
How I do it:
If I am teaching a group of students coming from a teacher-led background, especially in a foundation or TESOL course:
1. I will first model peer or group work for the class by working with the bravest students who volunteer for the task. This helps students be less nervous and turns the activity into something fun, especially for the students who volunteered.
2. I will then incorporate as many instances of peer work into each lesson as possible, initially allowing students to work with their friends with whom they are the most comfortable. I will also allow students to engage in translanguaging during peer or group work if necessary (there are exceptions, of course – for example, in language learning courses this would be reduced to the absolute minimum that would still allow for the tasks to be completed in English).
3. As we get more comfortable with this practice, students begin to brainstorm benefits of learning from peers. To encourage brainstorming, I emphasise the fact that group work will most definitely be an assessed component in most university courses.
4. We then gradually work towards waning off translanguaging practices, also veering away from working with our best friends. Instead, I focus on helping my students become more inclusive and more collaborative as a class. I always try to encourage them to identify some practical benefits of each of these collaborative learning tasks, incorporating this reflection into the lesson as a wrap-up activity.
5. OPTIONAL, course-permitting: students could make end-of-class lists of all the new things they learned while working with their peers on a particular task, and save these over the duration of the course. At the end of the course, they can look back on these lists as a way of reflecting on how far they have come and how much they have learned from each other, while also learning course content.
Why should we do it?
This helps establish good learning practices for the students, with a direct impact on part of their grades. It puts some of the responsibility for learning back on the students while increasing engagement in learning, and it allows us to also lean more into facilitator/moderator roles.
What other tips would you add to this list in terms of teacher roles and creating an inclusive classroom?