Teachers don’t just teach. They care for students, provide guidance, liaise with parents and maintain order in a classroom filled with curious, energetic children. In fact, classroom management is one of the most popular reasons that teachers give to leave the profession. Teachers who are unsuccessful in maintaining order in the classroom feel burnt out and eventually quit.
On the other hand, appropriately employing positive and proactive classroom management strategies allows teachers to help students become better learners. This is obviously the case because as the rate of disruptive behavior drops, the engagement in learning increases, for all students. Positive classroom management strategies are founded upon principles that advocate healthy interpersonal connections between teacher and students, use of preventive measures (rather than reactive or quick-fix approaches) and doing away with demeaning, offensive, traditional discipline techniques.
Hence, to further strengthen and provide teachers with practical repertoire of classroom management tools, Wells International School hosted the Conscious Classroom Management: Unlocking the Secrets of Great Teaching full-day workshop on Jan 16, 2010. Seventy-seven participants, consisting of teachers and administrators from Wells, and various other international schools in Bangkok, Rayong, and Shanghai gathered to learn about proactive strategies to reduce disruption and enhance positive interpersonal connections for better teaching and learning.
The speaker, Rick Smith, who hails from California, is a national bestselling author and international teacher-trainer. The workshop was engaging and inspiring from the start till the end. Participants felt that they learned a lot of useful tools that would be used in their own classrooms to make learning meaningful and fun.
