Teacher Interview

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzEH6SSMDG8&t=13s

I interviewed Mrs. Sumner, a teacher with thirty-two years teaching experience. She spent most of those years teaching fourth grade and was a very well liked and effective teacher.

She did sometimes use a token/reward system in her classroom. She would switch back and forth between an individual student reward system and a team-based system. If she found the token system was taking away from instruction or causing the child to be dishonest she took a break from the rewards for a while. Woolfolk mentions token systems on page 268 and recommends they only be used for a short time to encourage students that are really struggling. I believe I would occasionally use a token system in my classroom if it were well organized, and supported another learning concept (i.e. counting money).

One of the things I love most about Mrs. Sumner is the positive environment she creates for her students. She suggests using praise and having a positive attitude about student’s progress. Praise can be effective if it is not overused, it is sincere and specifically supports the desired behavior (Woolfolk, p. 263).

Her favorite strategy is to maintain good classroom management is prevention. She plans out each lesson ahead of time and has visual aids and supplies ready to go beforehand. She says that “dead time” in a lesson is when students take the opportunity to be disruptive. She maintains a steady flow in the classroom by seamlessly moving from one activity to the next. She is always active and engaged with the class, not with her head down looking for the next materials. Woolfolk states the importance of prevention on page 502. Woolfolk states that for the most part teachers handle discipline problems the same way, it was their preparation that predicted how many problems they would have.

The last question I asked was if she had any books on classroom management she would recommend and I just wanted to share those in case anyone was interested.

Discipline Quietly by Marion Stewart

The First Days of School by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong

The Essential 55 by Ron Clark

I am glad I have this video as a resource with a lot of great ideas from classroom management. I think my biggest takeaways from the interview were, stay positive, get creative when students need a little extra encouragement, and be prepared to make the class run as smoothly as possible. If anyone watches the video as has any thoughts I’d love to hear them.