Introduction to Chapter 5: Creating a Strong Classroom Culture

The techniques in chapter 5 help make your classroom a place where students come to work, collaborate, behave, and do their best.  But, before getting to the techniques, theThe author lays out 5 Principles of Classroom Culture.  These are five aspects of your relationships with students.  They are:

• Discipline
• Management
• Control
• Influence
• Engagement

Discipline: this is a noun -- a practice of doing something correctly and completely.  In the classroom, the teacher needs to model this, by having self-discipline in his teaching, demonstrating good work habits.  "Teaching with discipline implies a front-end investment in teaching your charges how to be students." (p 147)

Management: is the process of reinforcing behavior by consequences and rewards.  This is what people call "discplining" -- a verb.  I am not going to cover this, as at the college level, it doesn't apply -- and especially for me, I think.

Control: "Control is your capacity to cause someone to choose to do what you ask, regardless of consequences."  (p 148)  Notice that the student still has a choice, but the student chooses to do the activity or comply with the culture of the classroom, etc.  Another quote:

Teachers how have strong control succeed because they understand the power of language and relationships: they ask respectfully, firmly, and confidently but also with civility, and often kindly. They express their faith in students.  They replace vague and judgmental commands like "calm down" with specific and useful ones like, "Please return to your seat and begin writing in your journal."  They actions evince clarity, purposefulness, resolve, and caring.  if you can get students to do what you are delegated with help them to achieve, you are doing your job, and you've also saved your consequences for when you need them most. (p 149)

Influence: this is the next step beyond control.  Influence gets students to want to do well.

Engagement: this is keeping your students busy with productive activities.  The busier they are in learning, the less time they have to misbehave.  And, if they are busy with positive activities, they change from the inside-out.  They see positive activities and behavior as the norm.

Most of the techniques in this chapter focus almost exclusively on Discipline and "on the Systems and routines that are the hidden foundation of any classroom culture." (However, many of the techniques incorporate parts of the other principles.)