Colegio Los Robles- Buenos Aires, Argentina
Last week the director of the
English department at asked me to observe the first grade boys class (the
classes are divided by gender until the 7th grade) and give her some
feed back the teacher’s the classroom management. I was surprised that she
asked me to observe a classroom evaluate my CT since I am pretty in experienced
myself, but I was happy to give my input. The way the classroom was organized
reminded me a little bit of the scenes of classrooms in old movies. The desks
were all arranged in rows facing the chalkboard with the teacher’s desk facing
all the students. The room was pretty sparse, with very few decorations and
materials. One of the few things hanging on the wall was a list of rules, but I
got the sense that the teacher did not spend much time explaining the rules and
setting expectations. The students came in from recess and began talking to
each other and did not stop until the end of class. When the teacher was
explaining the activity none of the students where listening, so when they
began the activity she had to go around and explain it to all them
individually. The students were not given any instructions on what to do when
they finished their work so they just turned and chat with their friends. This made me realizes how incredibly
important it is to have established routines in a class. So much time was
wasted telling at the students to be quiet and transitioning between
activities. I think this also put a lot of extra stress on the teacher because
she was behind in her lesson and had no methods of regrouping the class other
than yelling at them.
The language also added a new
challenge to classroom management that I had never seen before. The teacher
spoke to the students only in English, but since their understanding of English
is very limited, it was difficult for them to pay attention and understand what
the teacher wanted. I think that if the students had some other materials to
refer to while the teacher was talking, such as a handout or visuals posted on
the board, the might have been more engaged and less disruptive. As a way of
encouraging the students to speak only in English the teacher told them that I
do not speak a word of Spanish so they have to speak to me in English. This was
really hard to do because when I spoke to the students in English they gave me
that blank stare indicating that I could be speaking Martian for all they knew,
so I eventually started repeating the phrases in Spanish. This of course led to
a minor freak out when they all realized I actually could speak Spanish and
suddenly started bombarding me with questions.
The main method of discipline the
teacher used was talking away recess time when the students misbehaved. I was a
little bit surprised by this because the whole time I was thinking that the
students could benefit from 10 minutes of running around the playground to get
out some of their pent-up energy. At my last placement they gave students
breaks as a form of discipline. When a student was acting up in class the
teacher would ask him or her to step outside of the class and take a break
until they regained focus. Several of the boys had to stay in for recess so by
the end of the day they were bouncing off the walls.
I shared these thoughts about the
teacher’s classroom management with the director of the English department but
felt a little strange sharing my observations and making suggestions because I
do not yet have a degree or much experience managing a class. However, she said
it was really helpful to hear my thoughts because I brought in a new
perspective after having completed two pre-pracs in the United States. I went
into this whole experience thinking about what I could learn from completing a
pre-prac abroad but I never really considered that it could be two way street
and the people I work with would be interested in learning from my experiences!
