Thankfully, most teachers that I deal with seem to have progressed past the idea that silence equates to learning. Just for the record, if you are unfamiliar with education, children being quiet can be a good thing, but if a teacher is lecturing to a silent room, there is a very good chance that a lot of students are daydreaming or zoning out. On the other end of the spectrum, a completely free form, chaotic classroom where students do whatever they want is not necessarily indicative of learning. So the question then becomes, what degree of control do we then attempt to exert over students?
My idealistic answer to this question has not changed much over the last 4 years, despite having some of the more difficult, at-risk students in the school. Here is some background on what I taught before becoming a library media specialist as a frame of reference. For two years, I almost exclusively taught reading intervention classes to at-risk students who were reading anywhere from a 2nd – 7th grade reading level in 9th and 10th grade. In addition, many had very long behavioral records, in no small part because of their frustration with school and reading, various types of ADD/ADHD, some genuine and some not, and a few were special education, although most just had not learned what they needed to for whatever reasons. 1 of these classes was actually 3 hours long. Needless to say, this particular group of students, who were mostly great individually, was often difficult as a group.
I taught two different reading interventions classes: Reading in the Content Area and READ180. READ180 is a very well researched course that focuses on direct and explicit instruction (this is eduspeak for giving very clear and direct instructions and explanations to students – little is left to guess or infer). In READ180, every minute of the day was planned by the curriculum, literally. This is definitely not my style. In Reading in the Content Area, I had the freedom to design a program around the needs of my students. It was nearly always much more collaborative, project oriented with the students having time to explore and construct with varying levels of scaffolding depending on their needs. Reading in the Content Area had more success for me, but that could have been because I was much more comfortable teaching it.
This brings us back to the original question. The two classes had very different philosophies. READ180 needed students to behave a certain way at certain times, and deviation from the behavior routines resulted in lost class time and, with every minute accounted for, it directly resulted in lost material and poorer test scores, which were seen as reflective of learning. Content was king. In RICA, there was more flexibility for the teachable moment; if something came up that a student or the class needed, we were able to change gears to meet that need. However, meeting those different needs would sometimes come at the result of content. Teaching the students how to think and be good people was just as or more important than content.
Now, I don’t want to think to miscommunicate my point; content and strict management are not necessarily linked, although they are linked in the mind of many teachers. Rigorous content had be learned through collaboration and projects, often more thoroughly than in lecture settings. In classrooms with strict management styles, it seems to be easier to transmit content; however, in this age, we are no longer in the business of simply transmitting content. Students have to be able to discover and construct new knowledge and that cannot be done through lecture. To be able to do so, students need to sometimes work independently (doing silent sustained reading once in a while does not count), work together, and be given some freedom about what they want to learn about. To accomplish this, an element of chaos must be introduced. As a side note, Google employs an interesting policy with its employees the principle of which can be applicable to education. It is the 80-20 rule where 80% of the time the employees work on what is actually their position, and 20% of the time they can work on something that is of interest to them as long as they share the results. They have had some truly interesting, innovative ideas. I actually used this as a jumping point last year where students for about 9 nine weeks could spend Fridays working on a radio show on a topic of there choice. The students appreciated the ability to choose their topic, worked diligently, and produced outstanding results.
The classrooms that I see on a daily basis working well with real learning going on tend to be barely controlled chaos. I do not in the least mean that students have free run. What I mean is that students are engaged in doing their own work and there is constant motion and activity. There are consistent policies that govern the way that the students function; the policies are thorough and consistent and in themselves allow for freedom and change. Could I be more vague? A good example is an English teacher in my building. She has a sheet on her door that any student signs when he or she arrives after the bell. I did not say late because students will argue and fight over not being late. She investigates after class to see if students were legitimately late or not, but the students’ tardiness never really interrupts the class or stops learning from happening. This is a policy that does not limit or smother the students, but rather is in place to help them learn.
In short, the correct answer, insomuch as there is one, is that we should seek the amount of control that best allows the students to learn. My opinion has always been that the best approach to classroom management is to find ways to keep the students interested, engaged, and active. I do not say this as though it is easy. It will always be a constant, difficult struggle, but I truly feel that if students are really interested in what they are doing, there will be much fewer discipline problems and much greater buy in from the students.
