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Class Management
We used to call it simply "discipline",
but there is more to it than simple control,
even if that is the bottom line.
- My
second supply teaching job was in 1964.
I was an undergraduate, and I had just
returned home for the summer vacation
when the local education officer rang
me. On a Sunday. He said that the longstanding
Headteacher of a primary school (ages
5-11) nearby had just died suddenly
of a heart attack: could I start on
Monday to take his final-year class
(for £10/$15/e15)
a week)?
- First,
the pupils had to be told, which was
done at morning assembly by the deputy
head-teacher. They were all in shock,
especially the head's own class. Anyone who
had thought it through would have allocated
me—this totally unknown and incompetent
19-year-old—to another class to free
up a longstanding teacher to spend at
least a day with his old class, but
it was not to be. I got his class.
- Many
of them were in tears. Several who went
home for lunch did not re-appear in
the afternoon. I did not have a clue
what to do, even in terms of their scheme
of work. I set some reading exercises
and was very lax and permissive out
of respect for their grief. Later I
took them out onto the playing-field
for a game, just to pass the time.
- By
Wednesday, they were back to their old
selves: they had decided that I
was a "soft touch", and I
battled with trying to manage them for
the remaining month of term. Other teachers
occasionally came in to "help"
when the noise from my classroom distracted
their classes, but of course all their
presence did was further to undermine
my authority.
- One
lunchtime, I found an old textbook on
teaching in the staff-room. I desperately
looked up "discipline" in
the index and leafed through to the
single reference. All it said was to
the effect that if the pupils were motivated
and sufficiently interested it should
not be a problem. There was nothing
about what to do if it were a
problem. Clearly a teacher who had discipline
problems was beneath concern.
That is a very teacher-centred, survival-oriented
account, but it underlines a couple of basic
points:
- Only recently has the professional
literature deigned to take seriously
the problems of class management, partly
because the of the decline of "respect"
for positional authority which characterises
our times, (for better or for worse),
and partly out of a recognition that
discipline problems are not simply
a function of the moral inadequacy of
the teacher.
- It has been argued (see the side box for link) that one of the major sources of teacher stress is not serious challenging behaviour by pupils and students, (there are procedures to handle that) but constant, low-level, niggling class management problems, which have to be dealt with on the spot and in the room.
- The first rule, in the opinion of
many experienced teachers, is, "Start
by being firm with pupils; you can relax
later." For the best-intentioned
reasons, I violated that rule, and I
paid for it.
Class management in post-compulsory education
is slightly different. Extreme problems are
thankfully rarer: students are not legally compelled
to attend and so many "problem" students
just do not appear (to their own loss), and
classes other than formal lectures are generally
smaller. On the other hand, sanctions are fewer
(although there aren't many in ordinary schools
nowadays—for better or for worse). The following
pages will explore some aspects of the issue,
from the premise that you need to establish
an appropriate degree of authority to enable
students to work.
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