Teaching with Love and Logic

My student teaching placement for the Spring of 2017 was at a local Primary School in a first grade classroom. This was my first experience with such a young primary grade, beyond kindergarten PE. I learned a lot during my time as a student teacher. First grade is a challenging year for students in which much growth is required so I got valuable experience with teaching reading fundamentals as well as foundational mathematical concepts to my class.

The biggest challenge that I faced this semester was practicing classroom management throughout my 10 consecutive days of teaching. As students do with substitutes, many of my first grade students were testing to see how far I’d let them go, how loud I’d let them be, and what they could get away with with this “new” teacher who wasn’t Mrs. XXX. However, this is of no fault to the students. At first it was overwhelming to try and “control” the classroom and cover academic material. From this experience I learned that teachers must set clear and firm boundaries and expectations with students and follow through with them in our to create a positive classroom environment. Setting up those expectations was challenging for me.

By the end of my 10 consecutive days I had experienced classroom management successes as well. Because I quickly recognized this as an area of challenge I began to research methods to help. I read the book Teaching with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and David Funk.

This book focuses on the idea of disciplining students based out of respect, empathy, and compassion. In addition it emphasizes giving students the opportunity to problem-solve and focusing energy on problem prevention. Using the techniques in this book I was able to implement opportunities for my students to problem solve when trouble arose.

The video below touches on a few of the biggest concepts that teachers should focus on when designing their classroom management. See if you can catch what the big two are.

Did you catch them? If not here they are:

Relationships
Enforceable Statements

Simple enough right? There is a little more to it than that, but this is a great jumping off point to help you turn your classroom management around. Love and Logic Institute has even developed this graphic to show you how easy it is to transform the things we say daily to create a better management atmosphere:

Does it actually work?

Well sure! Here is an example from my own personal experience:

When a student in my internship class (first grade) was upset because his clip had been moved due to constant talking during instruction, I gave him time to settle down then we had a conversation that allowed him to recognize the problem and I asked him to provide ways he could fix this problem the next day. This conversation immediately put the student in control of him own behavior and helped calm him down. Interactions like these, both whole class and individual, helped me maintain a classroom environment that met the individual needs of my students.

Resources

The Love and Logic website has a variety of different resources (pdfs, youtube videos, podcasts, etc.) you can use to learn how to better implement this style of management into your classroom. I am still earning myself and looking through these resources has helped me a lot so far! Click on the Love and Logic logo below to learn more.