New Teachers Get Tips on Classroom Control

Reprinted from the Rockland Journal News
• September 8, 2008
by Randi Weiner

THIELLS, NY - Only about a third of the brand new teachers standing in front of a classroom have any training in handling student behavior. They may be experts in their subjects and able to handle computerized attendance and bookkeeping, but they are unprepared for the first child who challenges their authority or pokes another child to make them squeal, longtime educator James Gilbert told a dozen new North Rockland teachers in preparation for last week's school opening.

A veteran educator himself with 34 years' experience as a North Rockland middle school and high school teacher, plus time teaching graduate education courses, Gilbert's spending his retirement these days passing on the basics to newcomers. His formal title is staff developer with the Rockland Teachers' Center Institute, and one of his specialities is classroom management.

Classroom management is the formal name for the human art of teaching a roomful of kids to pay attention, stop fidgeting, stop whispering, stop texting, keep their feet under their own desk, answer when called on, do the assignment and learn something. It's a teachable skill, but one that usually isn't part of a teacher's own education until graduate school.
Gilbert asks his graduate classes how many of them had had a classroom management course; about one out of three teachers had them in undergraduate school, he said. That means that two out of three new teachers face their first classroom with no idea how to handle their first defiant, bored or disengaged student.

Too many teachers plan everything for their first week of school, from the clothing they'll wear to the essays they'll assign, and never think that the kids won't be riveted to their every word until they face a disruptive class and see it isn't so, he said.
Gilbert recalled his first experience with classroom management: "I was blindsided," he said frankly. "The kids give you a honeymoon and then the third day comes ... actually, it's more usually a week or two."

He outlined the three characteristics of effective teachers - good classroom managers, those who know how to deliver instruction and the need to have positive expectations - and told them the most important element in their classrooms, after themselves, was consistency.
He said humans require some very specific things: both certainty and uncertainty, to feel significant or capable, to feel connected, to feel they are contributing and have value, and to see growth.

Then he spoke specifically about problem students: how to recognize them, the reactions they evoke and possible ways of dealing with them.
"Students misbehave to achieve one of four immediate goals: for attention, for power, for revenge and a fear of failure," he said.

The attention-seeker will irritate and annoy a teacher because he or she must be reminded over and over again to behave. The power player makes the teacher angry and gives the teacher two choices: to confront them or to give in to them. The vengeful child makes the teacher angry and hurt and makes retaliation seem like a good idea. The child afraid of failure frustrates the teacher.

Gilbert outlined strategies to deal with these children, from moving a child to another desk to sending them to a time-out room.

Much of his advice is distilled from his own experience, but much comes from authors he recommended, [Linda Albert,] Harry and Rosemary Wong and Jane Nelson.

"I love teaching new teachers," Gilbert said. "They need to know how to regulate a classroom. A lot of these people spend a lot of time learning their craft. They should be experts in their field. But if you can't control the classroom, you can't teach the material."

Peggy Porrovecchio, 29, was one of the dozen teachers in Gilbert's class. She's been hired as a North Rockland High School math teacher and has two years' experience in a Bronx classroom.
"It definitely brings back a lot of memories," she said.

Reach Randi Weiner at rcweiner@lohud.com or 845-578-2468.