By Christa Rawlings (MEd in IE; Grade 6 Teacher, Learning in Depth Teacher)Welcome back to: The Heroic Classroom. Over the course of this year I am on the hunt for two things:
1. Reflections on my lessons and how various Heroic Qualities present themselves.
2. Observations of how/if students recognize Cognitive Tools in action and how they put the tools into use themselves throughout the school year.
I hope you continue to follow along on our IE adventure!
The Heroic Classroom: April 13, 2020
Heroic Quality of the Day: Management
It is becoming more and more clear to me that management is an important Heroic Quality to keep in mind as we extend our time as educators into this pocket of history. Classroom management is always a major piece of working with a group of students. If you don’t have that classroom management part sorted in your practice nothing will happen …nothing. For those of us who have been at this teaching gig for a while, Classroom Management is second nature. This, in turn, allows us to focus on diving deeper into curriculum, connecting with families, or thinking about pedagogical theory. We grow as teachers because we have been able to establish the foundation of how our classrooms run year to year.
Well people, our foundation has been shaken. Big time! We need to go back to the basics in terms of managing our ‘classrooms.’ How that looks for each of you is going to differ vastly depending on your comfort level with technology, online learning or in some cases just change in general. While we might not have to manage who is talking during your lesson or who needs to be in which Learning Support room at what time, Management is still a massive block of our foundation right now. There are so many more things to think about managing than the students. A lot of it is going to be about managing yourselves.
Some questions to consider during these times…
- Are you giving yourself adequate time to learn new platforms, websites etc?
- Are you spending too much time learning about a new website that does not fit with your philosophy of learning?
- Are you giving yourself permission to find something that works better for you and your students while still keeping in line with your districts expectations?
- Are you keeping things slow and steady for your students?
- Are you keeping in mind all of the obstacles facing your students and their families when assigning work?
- Are you keeping in mind all the obstacles facing you and your family when assigning work?
- Are you giving yourself time to think deeply about why the assignments or lessons you are giving are relevant and worthwhile?
- Are you making sure that you establish office hours? Just because we are home and within arms reach of a device does not mean that we are on call 24/7.
- Are you asking for help from peers and admin?
- Are you managing?
- How are you?
We are experiencing fast paced adjustments to our profession. Things are uncertain and uncomfortable for a majority of educators. Take care of yourselves and lean on one another for support. We’ve got this.
Need to catch up? Take a look at some of the other posts from my Heroic Classroom series:
#1 Introduction to The Heroic Classroom
#2 The Heroic Classroom – Trust and Ownership
#3 The Heroic Classroom – Flexibility and Story
#4 The Heroic Classroom – Perseverance and Purpose
#5 The Heroic Classroom – Endurance
#5 The Heroic Classroom – Patience
Other posts by Christa Rawlings:
Check out this post in which I describe why I use cognitive tools in my teaching:
The Selfish Teacher
Using Cognitive Tools to teach Place Value to Grade 6 and 7 students: Place Value and Really Big Numbers
