Classroom Behavior Managment: Common Mistakes Essay

Mistakes are common in the classroom, but there are tips on how to manage your classroom that will eliminate the chaos and help your students learn. Prevention is an effective form of behavior management. From the beginning you need to establish a set of rules and regulations so that the students know your expectations. There are twelve common classroom behavior management mistakes, but are followed by suggestions as to what we should do instead. The systems should be able to meet the changing needs of the classroom and students. The first few mistake rules are basic concepts that teachers need to know. One is being able to define misbehavior by its function not by how it looks. Number two and three is to assess the behavior directly instead of asking a question or approaching the problem in a different way instead of trying harder for it to work. Number four is to set and establish classroom rules right away, but do not have too many because it makes it more difficult for both the teacher to enforce and students to comply. The fifth one is to treat some behaviors as â€Å"can’t dos† like lack of skills not all as â€Å"won’t dos† as in lack of motivation. Number six is an easy fix by planning transition time appropriately instead of lack of planning. Number seven has true knowledge by ignoring wisely instead of ignoring all or nothing at all. Make sure to understand what you should ignore and what you should not. Number eight moves onto misuse and overuse of time out. The student’s reinforcement opportunities are withdrawn when in time out. Moving onto number nine is that you should have clear expectations of your students that you reinforce consistently. Your students are more likely to obey when the teacher is consistent than when they are inconsistent. Number tens mistake is not including others in your management efforts. The classroom will be more effective if parents, students and others are involved. Number eleven and twelve are about using academic instruction as a tool and taking the misbehavior professionally not personally. A brief review on the common mistakes is useful for developing a comprehensive behavior management plan. Reflection: I enjoyed reading this article because the main thing I look for when I go into my field experiences is the different classroom settings and figuring out how each classroom is run differently. Teachers have their own behavior management techniques and they all handle situations differently. This article is really going to help me in my future because I now know the common mistakes teachers make and I can look for them when I am in my fields. I thought that this article was well written and gave just enough information and examples for each mistake. What I think is most important is prevention because if you can stop it before it starts then hopefully you illuminate the problem all together. I really do believe in getting the ground rules set early so that the students know your expectations. You should not over load them with tons of rules but if you have a good set of four to six rules that could govern classroom situations then I believe that you will have less behavioral problems. I think that this article is worthwhile and I would recommend it to other teachers because maybe by me passing on this article I could help another teacher get their class behavior under control. Some teachers are old fashioned and need new direction and passing an article on like this one could be beneficial for any teacher. I really thought that this article was knowledgeable. I learned more than I thought I would and any teacher would benefit from reading and applying this to their classroom.