Barriers and Strategies for Classroom Management in Urban Poverty Schools, Creating Caring Classroom Communities
Format
Individual Presentation
Location
Verelst
Strand #1
Social & Emotional Skills
Relevance
Creating a safe, caring community students are able to recognize their own value as part of the classroom and school and teachers see their students through a different lens, focusing on their worth, rather than on their deficits. When classroom management is addressed in the research on urban poverty schools, it combines teaching strategies and classroom management into one category, rather than addressing them as two parts of a whole. In culturally relevant teaching, teachers must acquire knowledge of students' lives outside of school to make connections. These connections will help to build trust and understanding between the teacher and the students as well as between the students, thus creating a feeling of community. Teachers must gain students’ cooperation by establishing an environment where teachers address, rather than ignore, the cultural, social, emotional, and cognitive needs of the students.
Brief Program Description
Strategies for developing a successful classroom management approach in urban poverty schools must have a well-developed classroom management plan. Using a combination of approaches to classroom management (Conscious Discipline, Dr. Becky Bailey and Responsive Classroom), provides an underlying understanding that the responsibility for classroom management is the responsibility of the teacher. When the teacher is in an urban setting, culturally relevant practices need to be infused with the aforementioned approaches. An understanding of the brain and how the brain stem, limbic system, and frontal lobe work
together to ensure consciousness of behavior by the teacher and the students is an underlying theme in successful classroom management. Conscious Discipline is an emotional intelligence approach to discipline. It focuses teachers on their own emotional intelligence, so that they can then move from an external model of classroom management (based on tangible rewards and imposed punishments) to a relational-cultural view of classroom management based on a positive cooperative class climate and conflict resolution.
Summary
Strategies for developing a successful classroom management approach in urban poverty schools must have a well-developed classroom management plan. Using a combination of approaches to classroom management (Conscious Discipline, Dr. Becky Bailey and Responsive Classroom), provides an underlying understanding that the responsibility for classroom management is the responsibility of the teacher. When the teacher is in an urban setting, culturally relevant practices need to be infused with the aforementioned approaches. An understanding of the brain and how the brain stem, limbic system, and frontal lobe work together to ensure consciousness of behavior by the teacher and the students is an underlying theme in successful classroom management. Conscious Discipline is an emotional intelligence approach to discipline. It focuses teachers on their own emotional intelligence, so that they can then move from an external model of classroom management (based on tangible rewards and imposed punishments) to a relational-cultural view of classroom management. This would be based on a positive cooperative class climate and conflict resolution (Hoffman, L.L., Hutchinson, C.J., Reiss, E. (2009). When establishing successful classroom management plan, it is necessary to highlight the importance of creating a classroom community, an understanding of the Seven Basic Principles of Discipline, Morning Meetings, classroom rituals, a climate of caring, and the concept of positive intent. Research is limited in the area of preparing teachers in urban poverty settings to establish classroom management strategies which provide a safe, caring, orderly classroom where students can reach their full potential. Some of the issues which arise can be assigned to novice teachers being hired in urban poverty settings with little preparation for this population. These are concepts which are universal. The aspects unique to urban classrooms are the understanding that these strategies need to align with a respect for, and understanding of diversity. It is important to build a classroom environment based on Culturally Responsive Teaching strategies to enhance teacher–student and student–student relationships. Hoffman, L.L., Hutchinson, C.J., Reiss, E. (2009). On improving school climate: Reducing reliance on rewards and punishment. International Journal of Whole Schooling,5(1).
Evidence
Teacher preparation programs who teach the pre-service teachers clear strategies for implementing culturally relevant teaching strategies for classroom management document candidates as being more successful in classroom management in urban classrooms and higher academic achievement. Additionally, when emotional intelligence is a part of the classroom management approach, both students and teachers benefit. This is evidenced by observing classrooms where both Conscious Discipline and Responsive Classroom are infused in the classroom management system. It has also been documented by pre-service teachers who work in urban poverty classrooms. Further, a Title 1 charter school serving families from predominantly poor, African American families reports that with the shift in classroom management from a rewards approach to using Morning Meetings and Conscious Discipline, there has been a drop in reported behavior issues.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Levin has an Ed.D in Child, Youth, and Family Studies. She is on the faculty at the University of Central Florida in the College of Education and Human Performance. Dr. Levin teaches in the Early Childhood Development and Education Program.
Dr. Levin developed curriculum for the course, “Classroom Management and Guidance of Young Children.” She has taught this course for eight years. In addition, Dr. Levin spent a semester in Harlem, New York working at a Head Start site and is continuing this connection through a longitudinal study on the impact of a quality preschool experience for children living in poverty and their social and emotional development from kindergarten through high school graduation. Her areas of interest are social and emotional development of young children and urban poverty communities.
Keyword Descriptors
classroom management, culturally relevant teaching, creating a caring classroom community
Presentation Year
2015
Start Date
3-3-2015 1:00 PM
End Date
3-3-2015 2:15 PM
Recommended Citation
Levin, Judith N., "Barriers and Strategies for Classroom Management in Urban Poverty Schools, Creating Caring Classroom Communities" (2015). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 122.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2015/2015/122
Barriers and Strategies for Classroom Management in Urban Poverty Schools, Creating Caring Classroom Communities
Verelst
Strategies for developing a successful classroom management approach in urban poverty schools must have a well-developed classroom management plan. Using a combination of approaches to classroom management (Conscious Discipline, Dr. Becky Bailey and Responsive Classroom), provides an underlying understanding that the responsibility for classroom management is the responsibility of the teacher. When the teacher is in an urban setting, culturally relevant practices need to be infused with the aforementioned approaches. An understanding of the brain and how the brain stem, limbic system, and frontal lobe work
together to ensure consciousness of behavior by the teacher and the students is an underlying theme in successful classroom management. Conscious Discipline is an emotional intelligence approach to discipline. It focuses teachers on their own emotional intelligence, so that they can then move from an external model of classroom management (based on tangible rewards and imposed punishments) to a relational-cultural view of classroom management based on a positive cooperative class climate and conflict resolution.
