Thursday, January 31, 2008

•     As a future high school math teacher browsing through articles to review, I was very intrigued by the title of Anthony Palumbo and Joseph Sanacore's article entitled "Classroom Management: Help for the Beginning Secondary School Teacher".  It was the only classroom management article written specifically for an audience of secondary teachers, and it was far from disappointing.  The article begins with a real life example of two teachers.  Teacher X ran a well managed classroom, and Teacher Y ran her class well, but maybe not quite-so-well as X.  The authors take a brief look at these two teachers who are very similar in personality and style but very different in the area of management.  The strengths of both were focused on and expounded upon.  What the authors spent the majority of their discussion on, however, was the importance of what they refer to as "academically engaged time".  They call to attention the necessity of organization and the teacher's attention to detail, both in planning and executing every second of a class period.  Some instructional methods (SQ3R, split-page, etc.) are mentioned as excellent strategies for teachers to employ to contribute to the effectiveness of a lesson.

      In reading this article, there were a couple of things that stood out to me. First, I realized the importance of using every single minute of a period to its maximum capacity.  Things such as collecting homework and taking attendance do not need to take up any of the instruction time.  This is especially important in a school setting where you only have 50 minutes a day to teach students everything they need to know.  The authors point out that in a 40 minute period, if the initial 4 minutes are spent on instruction rather than on "housekeeping" tasks, there is 10% more instruction time throughout the school year.  In a typical Indiana 180 day school year, I (being the math major that I am) calculated that to be an extra 12 hours of instruction time, which many teachers often obliviously misuse.  The second thing that caught my eye was the use of SQ3R, which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.  This is a method that helps students understand and process information that they glean from reading, seeing, or listening.  A lengthy discussion was given regarding its use and benefits.

       There were some things in this article that confused me a bit, and it would be helpful to have some clarification.  If I could, in fact, ask the authors any two questions, I believe the first would be, "what was your main reason for writing this article?"  It's difficult to determine if it's to give strategies to help students study, tips to help teachers manage time effectively, or to compare good vs. bad teachers.  The second thing I would like to ask them is if they have any experience or tips for teaching in an inner city or poverty level school district.  Their points seemed helpful for students who are already motivated.  However, I'm not so sure that they would work in a school where many students are just biding time until they can drop out.

      Throughout our textbook, and heavily in Chapter 2, the use of procedures is discussed.  I feel that this article ties in with our studies in that one of the key components suggested in the article of an effecively used class period is the implementation of procedures.  Also, I feel this article supports INTASC Standard 7, which states that a teacher plans and integrates.  Planning and organization, as mentioned above, are also key elements for a teacher who is striving to most effectively use his/her instructional time.

  Palumbo, Anthony & Sanacore, Joseph. (2007). Classroom Management: Help for the Beginning  Secondary School Teacher. Clearing House, 81. Retrieved 29 January 2008 from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=12&hid=120&sid=810bcbe2-1629-4f8b-b2b0-789dc1068309%40sessionmgr107

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