| Understanding and managing students: the key to effective classroom management |
Understanding and managing a room full of students can be one of the greatest challenges for a new teacher. To address this, districts are providing explicit training on classroom management to help teachers build closer relationships with students and prevent disruptions. “A lot of new teachers have this slightly romanticized idea about what their classroom is going to look like,” explained Megan Ryan, the mentor coordinator for teacher professional development at the Louisa County, Va., public schools. “They were in a wonderfully managed classroom [as student-teachers] with their cooperating teacher, and I don't think a lot of them got to see the work in the background that went into that. They just feel like all students are going to listen and be engaged—and they don't.” Since 2018, Louisa County has participated in the My Teaching Partner program, developed at the University of Virginia. Participating teachers learn to record and analyze their own lessons, looking for and analyzing students' social cues and behavioral triggers. In two-week cycles throughout the year, Ryan records and analyzes lessons with each of her teachers. She seeks three, one-minute clips in which the teacher uses strong, effective, and specific communication with their students, rather than general critiques. After eight of these two-week cycles, a study found teachers who participated in the mentoring program were referring fewer students for discipline outside the classroom and had no discipline gaps between Black and white students.
