Beyond the Classroom Doors

Classroom management is all about learning how to work with a large of group of diverse children in an organized and controlled manner. Like parents, a teacher needs to get through tasks that may not entertain the child at all times (parents have to grocery shop/teachers have to teach long division). The activity may not be inherently interesting to the child and therefore, behavior can become an issue as they try to entertain themselves. One skill that a teacher employs is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement  is an action that occurs after a positive behavior is shown. For example, if a child raises his hand instead of blurting, he gets a reward. Or, if a child says "please" and "thank you", they are rewarded. It gives treats to good behavior and therefore increases that chances that the behavior is done again. The child wants the reward, so they repeat that good behavior. There are many ways to do this in the classroom and at home: Nonverb...

My previous post detailed the strengths of Common Core . While there are a lot of great parts of Common Core, it is not a perfect system. Here are the 4 cons of Common Core: 1. It's a big change: Many teachers have been constructing curriculum and instructing on content tied to state standards. Introducing such a big change all of a sudden requires a lot of readjustment. Veteran teachers may not be willing or able to shift their teaching styles so quickly, especially if they have seen results with the state standards way of teaching. 2. Standards are not specific: As shown before, the standards go from being very clear to being more broadly written. The point is to ask more questions and test more skills. However, when you are teaching, it feels daunting to address every part of the standard. It is difficult for teachers to deconstruct what is being asked and feel confident that their students met all parts of the standard. 3. Expensive: The Common Core standards don...

Common Core. It's the set of standards in tens of thousands of classrooms throughout the country. However, it is also a hotly debated issue all over the place. Politicians can't agree. Parents can't agree. Teachers can't agree. It's a series of standards that are not well understood and have people coming down hard on either side of its legitimacy. Vocab lesson---a standard  is an academic goal for a subject area. For example: Here are 4 reasons why Common Core is a good idea: 1. They are national standards In the past, each state set their own curriculum standards. What this did we create some states (like Massachusetts) to have very a rigorous set of goals for their students while other states had more flexible and less stringent benchmarks. Additionally, it meant that a student who moved from state to state would be learning different things at different grades because there was no national curriculum (for example, weather and geology may be ...

Homework.  Kids & parents alike get stressed out just thinking about it.  It is the catalyst of fights, a source of frustration and is responsible for countless broken pencils and snapped crayons. If everyone hates it so much, why does it exist? Why are teachers so cruel as to foist homework on children when it makes everyone furious? Don't worry...there are reasons. Homework is there for a few purposes: To be a bridge between school & hom e: It keeps parents informed as to what their child is learning at school. It lets parents know HO W things are taught as well the level of expectation of the teacher for their child. It lets the teacher communicate with the family on a daily basis. In turn, the parents can speak to the teachers with authority. Allow for reflection : Because there is no time limit for that math worksheet, children can take as long as they want. It allows them to think slowly, reflect on their work and double-check what t...

Teachers are seen as some kind of martyrs in society. There is this odd amount of condescending respect for teachers. Most conversations go like this: Person: What do you do? Teacher: I'm a teacher Person: Aw...that's awesome. How fun... But this is the disconnect. The public appreciates teachers but sees them as simplistic service workers who have fun jobs. They remember their own teachers and recall the basics of a school day and extrapolate from that.   How could teaching be that hard, my own teacher barely did anything. And there comes the disrespect in society. Teachers suddenly become this overprivileged group that is mocked in the public sphere for being greedy or lazy or both. There are three reasons for this disconnect in society: 1. A Typical Teacher's Work Load is Not Understood Most people have attended school and had a teacher. They know that their teacher stood at the front of the room, had them read from books, assigned homework and gave grades. It ...