Summary
The journal article Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students: Promoting Change through Relationships provides a way in which education especially for middle-level schools can be enhanced through the creation of good relationships between the students and the teacher through the incorporation of counseling and psychology techniques into the classroom management. The author of the article accredits this to the sensitivity of the adolescence stage that these students in the middle-level grades are. The strategies that have been suggested to teachers and elaborated in this article include; building a sense of empathy, showing admiration the student’s negative attitudes and behaviors, letting go of ego when dealing with the students, and understanding the different aspects connected to the culture of the students as well as that of every other person. Through showing empathy, a teacher can create a feeling that enables the students to understand him/her. The article declares this a crucial strategy in that the students will feel free to open up to the teacher thus paving way for thorough handling of any misapprehensions, whether student-student or teacher-student misunderstandings. In addition, admiring the negative attitudes and behaviors of the most difficult students and being genuine about it is another very important strategy for building a positive relationship. The strategy, as incorporated in classrooms, comes from the field of counseling and psychology. Leaving egoistic emotions at the door does work in creating positive relationships between teachers and students as well as initiating multicultural connections that help in understanding the cultural aspects that surround the cultures and the associated stereotypes. The teacher should initiate ways in the classroom to try to show a sense of appreciation for the students’ different cultural entities.
Response to the Article
In the article Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students: Promoting Change through Relationships, the authors seem well versed in the subject of classroom management through the way they address the issue. Their arguments are worth concurring. According to their arguments, the best strategies for handling the most difficult students in middle-level schools have nothing to do with formal classroom management techniques. In addition, the suggestion that counseling and psychology strategies need to be well integrated into the classroom is true because by so doing, they will foster the relationships between teachers and the students who are most difficult to handle. However, their proposed strategies such as “…building empathy, admiring negative attitudes and behaviors portrayed by students” (O’Farrell, Ellen, Alan and Fred, 2010, Para. 11) are subject to further clarification because one may fail to grasp their implication as far as classroom management is concerned. In my opinion, building empathy needs to stand out as a sure way of containing the students bearing in mind the psychological changes that they are facing in their age. However, one can ask why this is so. In this way, the strategy ensures that a relationship founded on understanding develops between the teacher and the student. It however calls for a lot of professionalism and kind-heartedness to be able to practice this as a teacher by considering the number of students that a middle-level schoolteacher has to deal with.
Putting up with negative behaviors and attitudes seems inapplicable in the field of academics let alone admiring them as suggested in the article. One needs to have a deeper knowledge of human psychology to be able to create a link between bad behavior as portrayed by a student and a good quality that one can develop by redirecting it. Furthermore, it can be rather hard to pose as being genuine in admiring intentional misconduct by a student. Dealing with personal ego is rather more of an advice to the teachers faced by the challenge of teaching middle-level school students than it is as a strategy. This is because students at this age tend to learn more from the teachers’ behavior and actions than what s/he teach verbally in the class. However, this strategy as it stands out in the article nullifies the possibility that punishment can bear positive results in instilling discipline among unruly students. This is somehow contestable bearing in mind that the impact of punishment has been verified as a way of changing bad behaviors for the better.
As far as I am concerned, creating multicultural connections is one of the strongest strategies that teachers can possibly employ in class management because it is the cultural misunderstandings, which trigger the worst relationship crises in the classroom. Understanding deeply what the requirements are in the different cultures of the students and suggesting ways in which the students can coexist with each other can really save the teacher from problems in the classroom. To sum up, the suggestions given in this article are viable and if followed to the latter they can help greatly in the overall agenda of improving relationships between teachers and students more so those who seem difficult to handle. This is because these strategies, as portrayed in the article have been backed by facts and thoroughly conducted research, and their effects verified in handling students mostly in middle-level school who are majorly in the critical adolescent stage
Reference
O’Farrell, B., Ellen, M. Alan, G., & Fred, H. (2010). Classroom Management Strategies For Difficult Students: Promoting Change through Relationships. Middle School Journal, 41, 4-11.