Making connections and hitting the reset button.

Hello,

I'm Chad Ownby, I am a recent graduate from Longwood University. Last fall, I completed my student teaching experience for theatre education . And what an experience it was. I kept thinking throughout the entire placement that it would be an awesome sitcom. I figured this blog would be a good place to share the experience I had with fellow teachers, aspiring teachers, or anyone interested. 

Classroom Management: Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of my time student teaching was attempting to manage five different classrooms with five different classroom environments. So for this post I want to briefly talk about my attempt to learn how to manage these classrooms and the one important rule I learned about class room management.

As stated before, each individual class was unique. Some students were incredibly enthusiastic. Other students could not have been more bored. Some students were super sweet. other's acted with hostility. As a teacher it was my responsibility to cater to each one of these students. 

Of course this was no easy feat. I found however that one of the important rules about classroom management is to establish an individual connection with each class. I know this sounds like text book knowledge, but it is one thing to read about it and another thing to actually experience it. 

There were a few ways I helped to accomplish this. For one, before each class I would give the students the opportunity to share anything (school appropriate) that they wanted with one another. This made the students feel more of a connection to one another and to the class. If the students ever got out of control or the lecture was not going well, I would stop class and calmly address the negative behaviors. This allowed for me to basically put the reset button on the class and I believe this also helped make the class room environment more positive. Any individual issues with students would be 
handled on an individual basis.

In college, I learned that the most effective form of class room management is effective instruction. I found this to be very true. I also found that effective instruction means adapting instruction. For example, if a class is growing restless during a lecture, it is a good idea to break up the lecture and let them do a theatre warm up or work on a scene in order to provide them with a little variety. Conversely, if the students are doing independent work and the majority of the class is off task, it may mean that they no longer need that time and it time to come back together as a class.  In other words,Taking theatre classes would be a great idea for any teacher to learn how to gauge a crowd as well as how to help think on your feet.