Classroom Management | Learning Environment

What is classroom management? How is it related to people management? Does this help one in honing leadership skills? Does it involve mindset transformation? Is it skill to be acquired or a mindset/thought-process to be imbibed? Does enable a happy learning environment? Is it a one-time investment? Does it yield recurring dividends? Is it viable given that a teacher gets a new class of students every year? Wondering why a photo of Obama adults while talking of classroom management? Read on!

Let me start with the raw facts. Teachers get about 40 mins every day, to teach 20-45 students. Assuming about 30 weeks of instruction (this is on the higher side, 8 weeks of summer, 4 weeks other holidays, 10 weeks through exams), it comes to 1200 minutes or 20 hours per subject per year, to cover about 15-20 chapters. This can be neck tight if not managed properly. This is something like making 20 dosas in 20 minutes, probably doable only when the chef can multi-task and shuffle between the micro-elements. What if the chef fumbles while multi-tasking? Well, let's look at the micro-elements in a classroom.

1- Ensuring that students have their textbook or notebook or both open. Many teachers realize this in between the class. They question the child who is idle and get to learn that the child has forgotten the book, they scold him/her and this disrupts the momentum as the class gets disturbed. Many teachers have realized this and so they follow a ritual- they ask the kids at the beginning, they ensure that the essentials are already on the table. They realize that every operation they ask for, consumes 2-5 mins of time, as kids are slow.

2- Making sure kids' pencils are sharp enough. This is another ritual followed by teachers. Kids tend to forget this small task which has a huge potential to disrupt the functioning of the class. When one kid gets distracted, it leads to a domino effect and eventually the whole class gets disturbed, this irritates the teacher, her facial expressions change and the class loses interest. Good bosses handhold their employees until they are comfortable, they do this until it is ritualized. Likewise, good teachers can spend first 2-5mins on essentials to ensure a smooth flow over the next 20-25 mins.

3- Kids tend to talk to each other while the teacher is in the classroom. Parallel noises can affect the concentration level and the intensity of the discussion. This happens even more when the teacher provokes kids to think, they feel like discussing with their peers. Two things here- the teacher can give sometime to the kids to talk and then cut if off. It is much easier to cut them once they are done sharing their Eureka moments. This helps in deeper comprehension of the content being discussed in the class.

4- Discipline issues can be handled lot more gracefully. Teachers tend to frown or shout at kids when they see disciplinary issues. Kids tend to dislike adults who shout, they start losing interest in the subject or the freedom to think. Sometimes, it is not clear as to why the teacher is angry. Even if the teacher scolds some other student, the kids think they made a mistake. A positive approach is to stay calm, stop the class and look at the child. I tried this in a school, I'd put my finger on my lips and stay quiet. Some kids would look at me and ask their friends to keep quiet. This saves my throat and also nurtures trust in the classroom. This takes may be 5 - 10 periods to develop as a habit, but all teachers can leverage this habit to execute their classes seamlessly.

5- Facial expressions and body language ensure better engagement in the classroom. I experience few difficulties with classroom management, due to better engagement in the class. I used to take 3 hour long History classes at Tejasvi Vidyaranya for 7th graders, they enjoyed the discussions. We have linguistic input and we have input through body language. Kids find the latter much easier to comprehend. Language is a very advanced tool and very few adults comprehend the intent out of content, let alone young learners who are still trying to figure it out. In a nutshell, if the class is engaging, need for classroom management comes down. Good teaching along with continuous investment of trust yields amazing results.

Why do this?

Teaching can be a great opportunity to hone leadership skills within. Managing 20-45 young learners develops the following core-management skills which can be transferred into several other industries. The picture of Obama leading with a smile, securing engagement of his team and winning his goals is no different from a teacher working with students!

1- Interpersonal communication: Spending time with kids, with appropriate involvement, ensures better body language and dynamic response. One learns to adapt content based on the response of the kids. An adult may keep up with a lousy speech when the stakes are high, but a kid just cares about the aesthetics of the content. So one learns to try different ideas and spend more time on those ideas which work with the child. This dynamic adaptation of content, while keeping the structure and objectives intact, is a crucial aspect of interpersonal communication, which most professionals lack- look at the lousy speeches!

2- Empathy: This is possibly the most important faculty for a professional to develop, to ensure seamless execution with stakeholders. It is probably lot easier to develop empathy with kids, in comparison to adults who work with vested interests. Empathy developed in this nursery can easily be transferred into the corporate jungle!

3- Multi-tasking: A game called Age of Empires requires the player to manage the economy by instructing farmers, miners, woodcutters, besides managing the military by looking at production of weapons/soldiers, overseeing war formations and strategies. This simulation teaches the player to be able to handle atleast 6-10 parallel tasks. Classroom is probably a deep simulation as well. Teaching experience helps in managing 20-45 minds at once. Classroom is much easier than a corporate environment due to the goodwill which comes in, one tends to like children (that's how we evolved) and the inner drive makes it easier.

4- Vision and Purpose: People tend to work better when they understand the bigger picture, the vision and the purpose for the action. However, adults tend to do away with this when the perks are good. They see their family as the bigger picture and they do their work very mechanically. However, good learner learn the art of communicating the vision to people who do not want to listen. On the contrary, school students are very keen on knowing this, they like to question and they like to bring in lateral connections, they see no boundaries or constraints while thinking. This can help in mastering the key component of leadership- creating a common purpose which the team chases together.

5- Questioning and Creative Thinking: Kids are born Philosophers, they ask very deep questions and they bring in amazing theories or explanations involving lateral connections. If a teacher can capture value back from the classroom, the teacher would be evolving a deeper philosophical understanding of various domains. Once a teacher learns to learn, he/she can effortlessly pick up multiple subjects. This is why it is not surprising to see many polymaths amongst good teachers. The time deadlines in the classroom help in honing this.

Handling kids and working with adults are fundamentally different. Adults bring in egos and it calls for sensitivity in communication. Having said that, many people who can communicate with kids struggle with kids. They think they are unable to reach the kids' level, but the reality, as said by Richard Feynman and reinforced by Elon Musk, is that they don't understand their thought well enough to articulate with simple words. One can spend some time picking up the emotional intelligence to deal with egos, but the inner drive can be nurtured by working with students who are pure and driven by purpose.

Classroom management is an art, it asks for a connect between three vertices of a triangle- soul of the teacher, souls of the students and the soul of the subject (aesthetics). An initial investment is required to connect with the students and the subject, but once one steps in, the classroom sucks the stakeholders in and it continues to evolve them. This requires a fundamental transformation of mind, body, heart and soul, to bring in form. Once form comes in, these rules and rituals don't matter, everything just happens on the fly!