Flashback to two semesters ago when one of my education professors first instructed my peers and me to show her our “mean/serious” faces in class. We all stood up at our seats and preceded to contort our faces into what should have been masks of seriousness. My face felt all bunched up like the flaps of skin folded over one another on a bull dog’s snout. The serious facade was broken by bursts of laughter: how silly it seemed to pretend to be serious. At that moment, I questioned if I would be able to actually manage a classroom in the real world. If I couldn’t fake being serious in a made-up situation, I worried how I would respond when face-to-face with a student.
Flash forward to today and my first practicum experience. A student calls one of her teachers a bitch while talking to a friend, loudly enough for me to hear without caring. Another student provokes an altercation:
“You took my pencil.”
“Why would you accuse me of that?,” the student retorts, “because I’m black?”
“I don’t care if you’re purple—you still took my pencil.”
The accused student then raised his hand and tried to get the other students in trouble for being racist. This same student would later ask me for a drink from my water bottle and call me selfish when I told him no.
All of these scenarios involve real-life classroom management skills. Though I did not have to directly deal with each of these scenarios (because my cooperating teacher did for me) I considered how I would respond if I were the teacher. I can tell you that, on a positive note, the serious/mean face comes naturally. As these students made decisions that violated the classroom or school policies for appropriate behaviors, I was able to rebuke and correct them in a respectful manner, all while keeping a straight face.
Real-world classroom management, though, involves more than just a straight face. Students are unpredictable, so, unfortunately, I have learned that teachers cannot practice many of the skills needed for classroom management. Though my practicum has presented multiple behavioral issues to which I can respond, I know that I am simply dipping my toes in the water.
Future educators, I encourage you to know that some of the skills for classroom management, like the mean face, come naturally. You learn as you go, and you learn more with the more behavioral situations you encounter with students. I love control, but the real-world classroom is an unpredictable environment. Classroom management is all about balance: how much of the classroom will you allow your students to control, and how much you must control to maintain order.
My real-world classroom experience has been the best educational experience I have had thus far because I am developing management skills that cannot be taught or practiced in a college classroom. A classroom full of students is a daunting thing, but the more practice you have working with those students, the better teacher you will be. If you are an education major in a practicum right now, will be in the near future, or even have a few semesters to go before then, I would encourage you to push yourself past your comfort zones while in the classroom; this is how we become better teachers, through trial and error.
Sarah Smith is a senior at Indiana Wesleyan University studying English Education and Writing. She lives in Kokomo, Indiana with her husband, Tyler, their three goldfish, two dogs, and a kitten. In addition to reading and writing, Sarah loves watching movies, running outdoors, and cooking.