CHILDREN NEED TRAINING … CONTINUED

First and Second Level Ownership

The way classroom procedures are developed confers first or second-level ownership. Children who feel a part of the ownership stratagem are more likely to be compliant and act according to agreed procedures than otherwise would be the case. (There will be exceptions, but aberrance may not be tolerated and quickly corrected in a ‘recalcitrant’ by the collective.) Rules break down and lose impact when there is little commitment and scant adherence on the part of children.

1. It is essential to develop rules ‘with’ children rather than ‘for’ children.

2. Expectations need to be encouraging rather than punitively worded.

3. It follows that if children participate in creating classroom procedures, they will regard them in a prime rather than a secondary sense.

All this points back to the need for teachers with new classes to spend time in a ‘getting to know and understand you’ phase with children and students.

Part of this will be (or should be) developing the class environment through shared shaping of agreed-upon procedures. Several essential precepts come to mind. They are simple, based on common sense, and easily overlooked.

1. Children and students need to be organised

2. Children and students are best predisposed toward being organised if they share in creating organising structures, including classroom rules and procedures.

3. Establishing routines should be based on fair and predictable management and administration. Impartiality and even-handedness are needed in all situations.

4. teachers can’t teach control but should teach in a way that gains control. This happens best in classrooms where the principles included in this paper are applied.

Rules, organisation, routines, and procedures are essential. They need to be established by teachers working in an environment that sees the first days and weeks spent getting to know and understanding children and students in classrooms. Students and their teachers need to get to know each other. This is extremely important and ought not to be overlooked.

Once this has happened and ground rules are in place, teachers can teach with the confidence that underpins successful teaching and learning strategies.

Teachers who go full-on from day one and ignore the need to establish management strategies with children may well set themselves up for a period of tiring and frustrating teaching effort.

CLASS RULES AND PROCEDURES 

I have pointed out that teaching is more effective once controlling devices are in place. It’s not a case of irrevocable ‘locking’ because circumstances may dictate the necessity of change. Fluidity is essential. However, the general precept stands. If controlling and managing measures are in place to underpin classroom operations, teaching will be more effective, and learning will be more meaningful than would otherwise be the case.

Rules and procedures are best developed via memorandums of understanding. That happens when those with a stake and interest in a learning domain contribute to their formulation. Creating is but the beginning. Outcomes and consequences and how those involved adhere to statements and precepts will be mainly based on the shape and wording of documents. All need to feel ownership of the process.

To indulge in lots of ‘dos and don’ts’ and ‘cants’ is opposing overkill.  Children will look. They may shudder, but one can bet they won’t comply, at least not willingly, with forceful and aggressively worded edicts. ‘Softly, softly catchy monkey’ is the smart way to go.

I have pointed out that establishing procedures facilitating class management and control needs to come before teaching. That process is best developed when the whole class feels ownership of what is put in place. Dictatorship is definitely not the best way forward. Classroom teachers should never be educational Idi Amins.