What are Clutter and Classroom Management
From a learners’ view (ALV), classroom management problems result from one or more weaknesses (clutter) in lessons.
Vignette
A teacher walked into a loud, “chaotic” high school science classroom with 50 some new freshmen about 10 minutes after clock time to start teaching. Another teacher walking past the open door into the hall stepped into the front of the room, watched and listened for a few monents, then said softly to the class, “If you hear my voice, clap once.” Five or so of the students clapped once. The noise dimmed slightly and about one third of the students looked around the room as if to see what was going on.
The second teacher smiled and said, “If you hear my voice, clap twice.” About one third of the students clapped twice. Noise dipped substantially as more students looked around.
The second teacher, still smiling, said, “If you can hear my voice, clap three times.” In unison, the class looked at this teacher and clapped three times.
This teacher then said, “If we lived in Japan, 300 students in the classroom would have all clapped in unison at my first request.”
That ended his first lesson. It lasted 20 seconds.
From a learners’ view, this teacher gained the attention of students; step one of learning. Attention brought them into a behavior pattern of learning.
Then, the teacher told them what to do; step two of learning.
They did it; step three of learning, meeting the behavior pattern that the teacher planned as criterion for learning this lesson. Criterion was set at the first (the easiest, consistent with the principle of learning that learners go from easy to hard behavior patterns).
The first teacher then began instructing the lesson for the day.
In similar ways teachers manage late arrivals to class, and other patterns that disrupt moving from student to learner.
And from a learners’ view administrators can manage unprofessional behavior of teachers, such as showing up late to professional development sessions or correcting papers, texting, etc. during them, and not demonstrating use of the content in these sessions in classrooms. [Glossary of Terms]
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