Classroom Management 

“The best classroom management tool is a well-prepared teacher.” This belief guides my mission as an educator. My purpose is to create a classroom that adjusts to the diverse academic, cultural, linguistic, and social needs of every student. Our classroom will provide a safe, positive learning environment that values cooperation, creativity, and equity. Diversity-whether cultural, linguistic, or neurological, should be treated as a powerful asset that enriches learning. Students will be active participants in the educational process, developing academic skills, social-emotional understanding, and the confidence needed to reach their full potential. My purpose is not to manage behavior, but to build a community where students feel seen, heard, respected, and empowered.

Strong relationships are the foundation of all effective instruction. Child psychiatrist and educator, James Comer, argued that “No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship,” which I will prioritize from the first day of school. Every day, this involves greeting students as soon as they enter the door, building personal rapport through morning meetings and informal conversations, identity-confirmation practices, and communication with families.

Once individual relationships are established, I will intentionally cultivate a strong classroom community where collaboration and diversity are celebrated. This will include community-building activities, such as weekly class meetings to reflect on challenges, successes, and community goals. Additionally, there will be team-building games, including STEM challenges and collaborative art, as well as routine cooperative learning structures like think-pair-share. To support these activities as well as other activities I will assign clear routines for group work, conflict resolution, and peer support, and rotating classroom jobs to teach responsibility. To teach cooperation and diversity, students will learn that diversity is an asset through activities that highlight individual strengths, lessons where multilingual abilities, cultural knowledge, and different learning styles are consistently recognized. Cooperative learning strengthens academic achievement, communication skills, and empathy, important skills for social-emotional learning.

When it comes to whole-class and individual behavior management, I believe in being proactive rather than reactive. For whole class proactive strategies I believe in co-creating rules with students on the first day of school using positive phrasing such as “We respect ourselves, others, and our learning, modeling consistent routines and clear procedures, proactive scanning, proximity, and positive reinforcement, and a clam, predictable environment with visual supports which is particularly important for ELL students and students with ACEs. My approach is rooted in Glasser’s Choice Theory, which emphasizes student ownership of their behavior and the need for a sense of belonging. power, freedom, fun, and by meeting these needs proactively, misbehavior decreases. I will respond to negative behaviors by redirecting with clarity and calmness, private conversations rather than public reprimands, and logical consequences directly connected to the behavior. Consequences will be clear and specific, connected to class expectations, and natural and logical. I will use restorative practices to center on repairing and rebuilding relationships. This can look like restorative circles for class conflicts, opportunities for students to express how they feel, and opportunities for students to reflect, apologize, and make amends. This aligns with increasing students’ internal control by helping them understand that their actions have predictable, meaningful outcomes.

Families are essential partners in a healthy classroom. Strong home-school communication supports academic growth, builds trust, and ensures consistency for students. I will contact families within the first few days of school to introduce myself, allow for multiple communication methods (ClassDojo, email, newsletters) to accommodate all parents, invite families to classroom celebrations, conferences, and learning showcases, provide translation or multilingual communication when needed, and collaborate with families on goals, interventions, and celebrations. Families bring cultural knowledge, strengths, and perspectives that enrich the classroom. Their involvement strengthens the bridge between home and school this benefiting student motivation and behavior.

Engagement is a core component of management. Students who are actively learning are far less likely to be off task. My lesson planning is purposeful and aligned with engagement strategies from CIED 314.  Some engagement methods for movement include brain breaks, learning stations, gallery walks, and hands-on activities reduce cognitive overload. Collaboration is another tool that can include frequent partner and group work, discussion routines, and interactive modeling. I am very passionate about hands-on learning, such as STEM tasks, manipulatives, real-world problem solving, and project-based learning. To scaffold for diverse learners, I will use visual cues, sentence stems, vocabulary supports, and multimodal instruction. These strategies foster deeper understanding, provide multiple entry points for learners, and create a positive environment where students are actively involved in the learning process. When students feel challenged, supported, and successful, classroom management strengthens naturally.