The
students generally come in quiet and sit in their assigned seats. They sit through introduction activities with
little to no disturbances but often engage in talk unrelated to their art while
working. In general observations of my
classroom, I have noticed that often times my field teacher tries to not give
students who are doing little things they shouldn’t attention in hopes that
they will stop. Unless they are being
very disruptive, she will just wait for them to stop. If the behavior persists, she will first make
eye contact with the students; they get “the look” and usually listen and cease
what they are doing. If this approach
doesn’t work, she will stop her talk and point out the student by name,
requesting that they stop, sometimes asking a questions like, “is that how we
treat our pencils?” or “what should you be doing now?” and letting the student
know they really need to behave. I have
not seen her use incentives or punishments too much, at least in a way that
would prevent the student from making art.
Occasionally, a student will go to a think spot, away from the others,
however, upon starting a project, they are allowed back at their seat. There are usually not many problems while the
students are creating. When the class as
a whole does get out of hand, however, my teacher will stop what she is doing
and as a school wide classroom management strategy says, “students give me
five”, which entails them putting one hand in the air (five fingers), putting
down all supplies, not talking, and eyes on the teacher. At this point she uses a more assertive,
“teacher” voice and sometimes a more power assertive role in which art making
privileges are questioned and the possibility of them being taken away is
presented.
Only
once two boys were playing around, hitting each other and scooting the other’s chair, and after repeated
instructions to stop the behavior and actually work, my teacher had the two
boys write up think sheets basically. These involves the students writing down
what they did to deserve the sheet, what they had been asked to do, and what
behavior they should have had to prevent this as well as their behavior from
now on. What I found most interesting
about this is even after being told numerous times that they shouldn’t be
touching one another, should be working, and that there were alternatives to
their actions, they still wrote down that they did not know why they were in
trouble or how to fix their problem.
They seemed completely unaware of the implications of their actions and
were not taking the class seriously.
One
incident that stands out clearly in my mind occurred one day when I was working
on glazing a bowl for my teacher and I overhead a table that was about two
tables away from me throwing around the phrase “the ‘F” word” and how one of
them knew what that word was, etc. but I only caught snippets of the
conversation so I wasn’t sure what provoked the actual saying of the word. I think it came about as a challenge to the
student that maybe they didn't really know the word, or didn't have to guts to
say it, but they said it, and my teacher definitely heard it. She was immediately at the table (I don’t
even know where she came from) and singled out the student who had said it,
using a stern but quiet voice only heard by the students at the table so as to
not disturb the rest of the class, and told talked to the student about words
we do and don’t say and how the student knew very well that the word was one
that should not be said in any context, especially at school. She then continued to walk around the class
to help students working on their projects.
But the table continued to talk about it and so she came back and sat
down with the students and gave the whole group a bit of a lecture about how
those type of words and basically told them they had to stop talking about the
situation entirely or they would be in serious trouble.
I think,
overall, by host teacher handles her classroom management well as the students
for the most part are very respectful to her and the time they have in class to
work. The classroom is well organized
and I think I would have handled the situations very similarly. I think some of my classroom management would
depend on the philosophy of the school district and how they approach the
subject. But I would also base it on
student input, letting them create rules beyond what I believed to be essential
in the first place. I think it is
important for students to have a say in the rules that will govern their
behavior and in this way they will be more likely to hold themselves and others
accountable for actions.
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