The SCM approach to classroom management isn’t complicated. It isn’t burdensome or overbearing. It’s neither stressful nor manipulative. It doesn’t entail stickers or stamps, tokens or prize boxes.
It doesn’t require lectures and talking-tos, admonishments and reprimands, behavior contracts and counseling sessions.
It’s neither countdowns and threats and narrating students through every this and that. Nor is it a haphazard mix of “catching students doing good,” do-this-and-get-that economics, and other bribes, tricks, and manipulation.
No, Smart Classroom Management is simple.
It’s honest and direct. It’s purposeful and peaceful. It’s silent and unnoticeable, working behind the scenes like a lonely sub protecting the coastline.
It treats students like living and breathing people, respecting their intelligence and believing in their unlimited growth and capacity to overcome obstacles.
It’s intrinsic and joyful. It’s lessons-learned and fair to all—a safe-haven world that makes sense within one that doesn’t.
It also builds and fulfills. It empowers agency and fierce independence while softening the heart for others.
It is these things, but what is its purpose?
What is the point of classroom management generally? Is it to force, subdue, and squeeze into a box? Is it to appease or flatter into compliance? Is it to build community or simply get the teacher through the day?
No, its true purpose is to protect learning.
It’s to free the teacher to focus on great instruction and free the students to focus on their assignments and schoolwork responsibilities. In other words, the goal of classroom management is to allow for maximum time spent on academics.
That’s it.
Walk into an SCM classroom and you won’t see obvious signs of classroom management. You’ll only notice the teacher, an expert in their content area, deep in the river of exacting and exuberant instruction.
Or they’ll be off to the side, invisible and observant, as students study or perform, present and intentional, lost in the moment.
Striving for higher and higher.
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Great weekly tuneup for the experienced and inexperienced.
SCM keep up the the weekly refreshing insightful common sense approach to class room management. By the the way this common sense easy to understand approach can also be used on the SCHOOL BUS just stick to the rules, it is that easy.
Thank You
SCM
PJC
Boston, Ma
Michael- have you thought about creating a plan/book for bus drivers?
When no other teacher on the hall uses any SCM methods, you begin to question if you are doing something wrong or being too rigid. Then you hear teachers yelling, repeating themselves, complaining to other teachers about behavior, etc. That’s when you realize you made the right choice.
What does smart classroom think about blended learning? I have been using this approach after being out of the classroom and really like it. I use a combination of presenting a lesson Q&A then children complete the lesson at their pace during the class on their Chromebooks.
The best part is, it works so well! I use your techniques as a supply teacher and they are key to having a great day with my classes. On another note, I learned of the Michaela school in Britain and immediately thought of you. I’d be interested to know your thoughts as I think the head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh has a similar philosophy to yours. Thanks for all you do!
I am a middle school substitute teacher, and I believe in answering the ‘why” question. Why does this class have a substitute in the classroom? I tell students that “I am here to keep all students safe, to teach the lesson plan and help them complete their work”; while I do believe in my response, I love the response to”protect learning” because that is my true passion. I read about your strategies for classroom management and apply them with much success and praise. I can see students immediately calm down when they walk into my classes because they know and see the behavior expectations on the board and know they are always the same. Thank you!!