Educational Quote: Classroom Management

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Educational Quotes 9: Classroom Management

Creative classrooms need to be flexible enough for a wide range of individuals to feel at home, able to express their particular personalities , learning styles, and particular range of talents and gifts.

Creative class management is the art, or craft, of creating the conditions that provide students with enough security and structure for them to take the learning risks to  required to develop personalised learning. Too much chaos leads to disorder - too much structure reduces the learners ability to make decisions and choices. Most current classroom management procedures are determined by unquestioned routines and habits that reflect a past age.

'If there is any other situations fraught with danger for mental health as that of a class held rigid by fear, it is a class exposed to the anxieties engendered by unlimited freedom. There is nothing as terrifying to the immature human being as a completely unstructured situation. Without a recognisable structure they feel the teacher has abandoned them - and so he has- to their own impulses, all of which are by no means always constructive.' B Morris

'I would caution student teachers to always be flexible with kids, but not to leave them with no structure, because many times we are the only structure these kids have.' Kouzes and Postner

'It is significant to realise that the most creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing ones. The artist's studio, the researcher's laboratory, the scholar's library are each kept deliberately simple so as to support the complexities of the work in progress. They are deliberately kept predictable so the unpredictable can happen.' Lucy Calkins

'Without containment, spontaneity, exhalation and freedom of the mind could seep into license and anarchy, where all day has no shape. A benign routine helps our child to gain responsibility and our school to stability.' Sylvia Ashton Warner 76
 
'The word 'freedom' can never be uttered unless accompanied hand in hand with the word responsibility. It is kinder to keep the lid on the school for a start, lifting it little by little, simultaneously teaching responsibility, until the time comes when the lid can be cast entirely aside and only two conditions remain - freedom and responsibility'. Sylvia Ashton Warner

'Some classrooms are unintentionally uninviting' Harry Wong
 
'All battles are won before they start.' Sun Tzu
 
'The schools schedule is a series of units of time; the clock is king.' Theodore Sizer
 
'Children who grow up in ..situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feelings of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible.' Csikszentmihalyi
 
 
'Persons are not quite the same thing as solitary individuals, nor are they a crowd. Persons are living networks of biology and emotions and memories and relationships.' Tilby
 
'Half of what you will accomplish in a day will be determined before you leave home. Three quarters of what you achieve will be determined before you enter the classroom door' Harry Wong
 
' The number one problem in the classrooms is not discipline; it is lack of authentic learning tasks, procedures and routines' Harry Wong
 
'In an effective classroom students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how'' Harry Wong
 
'Schools should look behind classroom doors and determine the factors that contribute to the kinds of interactions between teachers and students that promote student achievement.' Heckman 1990
 
'Some initial fuss reduces subsequent fuss: that some apparently complicated initial procedures actually simplify procedures in the long run; that formal routines free the teachers for closer relationships.' Michael Marland

'Today the evil twins of  literacy and numeracy have all but gobbled up the whole curriculum'. Anon

'The river flows at its own sweet will, but the flood is bound in the two banks. If it were not thus bound, its freedom would be wasted.' Vinoba Bhave,
Indian leader