EDE 4301 Classroom Management

EDE 4301: Classroom Management (Fall 2012)

This course was designed for residents in the Urban Teacher Residency Partnership Program (UTRPP). Residents take this course as juniors during their first year in UTRPP. The course examined the legal issues affecting classroom/school management, school safety, professional ethics and elementary school methods. It also explored the current knowledge of best practices of a variety of teaching and management strategies and methods deemed appropriate for a diverse elementary classroom setting including ESOL students and other exceptionalities.

The course was taught onsite at Pizzo Elementary, a partnership school of UTRPP. Because residents are immersed in classrooms, there is particular attention focused on integrating clinical practice in the course. For instance, students are assigned management tasks that they carry out during their simultaneous field experience, videotape, and bring the videotape back to class to discuss their performance with their peers. Teaching in UTRPP affords me as the instructor the opportunity to combine coursework with classroom experiences to create meaningful, robust theory to practice and practice to theory connections.

I have attached a syllabus as well as two student work samples. Although I have permission to use their work as samples, I still have removed their names.

1. The CLE Plan is the culminating project for the semester where students must draw upon course readings and concepts as well as their experience in the field to create a classroom learning environment plan. While this sample is an exemplar, much of the work produced by the students in the class produced this kind of high quality work. This assignment is done individually.
2. The second example is a group paper where students had to work collaboratively to understand how community was built. They were required to draw upon course concepts and readings as well as their field experiences to understand the big ideas of building relationships and community in the classroom.

Each of my students was also asked to create a web space where they would develop their platform of beliefs throughout the two years that they worked with me. You can see in this example how this student integrated course concepts into her beliefs. What I particularly love about this student is that because of the course concepts and her desire to try to integrate this kind of caring classroom environment, her collaborating teacher and she engaged in a collaborative book study using Alfie Kohn's work and engaged in a collaborative inquiry. Now, this student is not only teaching in one of our UTRPP schools, but she is also creating the kind of environment she envisioned as a preservice teacher. In fact, she exhibits traits of teacher leadership as she serves as an exemplar of how one can work towards aligning beliefs and practice.