TWO VISIONS ON CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Classroom management certainly is a moot subject, the way we manage our class depends on
various factors, some of them are of crucial importance, that is, the way we as teachers,
behave within the classroom. This does not simply involve the techniques we use but also, the
way we deal the problems and issues students might have, help them achieve the goals we set
for them to achieve and of course it involves our personality, the way we dress, the way we
treat them, etc. Different methodologies and techniques have different learning outcomes, i
have interviewed two English teach from two different institutions and had them answer six
questions about classroom management.

The questions used for this interview are as follows:

1. How close are you to your students?

2. Is voice pattern important while teaching?
3. In which situations do you let your students use their L1?
4. What sitting position do you use?
5. How would you manage a disruptive class?
6. Do you have a clear view of your students?

The interviewees are:

- Jose Jara a secondary teacher at “Maria Auxiliadora” High School

- Andres Redon a private teacher working for an institution called: “Cambridge school of
languages”

Regarding the first question, Jose stated that he prefers to “keep it professional” and does not
like to get to close to students because he thinks their behavior would change negatively,
nevertheless, he does not neglect their needs, lacks and wants. He also stated that he tries his
best to attend his student’s worries and answers their questions in class, he also thinks respect
must prevail among the classroom.

Andres on the other hand, being a private teacher working for a company that cares a lot
about their students´ comforts and needs, states that his relationship with his students is really
close but it does not get too personal either, he says he knows the breaking point between one
thing and another, in that way, he is always careful trying not to reach that breaking point, he
also states that we, as teachers, should strive to establish a good rapport and gain the students
‘confidence personally and interpersonally, he is always glad to tell stories, anecdotes and
share personal experiences with his students, he also states that respect must prevail and that
his methodology does not affect that matter at all, nay, according to him the closeness he
establishes with his students help him boost that respect, as opposed to Jose, who thinks
closeness puts good behavior at risk.

I personally think that, we, as modern teachers should get close to students because in my
opinion that is a good way to achieve our goals and their goals, if students lack confidence in
their teacher, they tend to become less motivated, they will not trust their teacher and one of
the outcomes is that they will not learn properly. Getting close to students does not necessary
mean we might lose our image of respect.

As we can see the two teachers had very different visions about question number one and yet
they share one statement in common: respect.

Regarding the second question, Jose states that rough tuning is a great technique as he is
always in the need of getting his students attention, he works with thirty students so “your
voice need to reach each and every one across the classroom” he says. Sometimes he really
needs to raise his voice in order to control his students and or when teaching difficult to
understand subjects. Andres also states that rough tuning is of extreme importance, but he
does not use it to control but rather for teaching, for example, he always modulates his voice
when he needs to put emphasis on certain aspects of the subject, especially when teaching
grammar as he needs to emphasize grammatical constructions and sentences in different
tenses.

We can see the disparity of visions on this questions, while Jose employs rough tuning for
getting attention, Andres utilize it for teaching with precision and clarity. Although their
methodology varies quite a lot, they both share one thing in common: they both give great
importance to voice patterns in the classroom. In my opinion rough tuning should be used in
all classes, as it is a great tool for teaching, specially when working with kindergartens and low
graders, for they need special voice accentuation in order to understand concepts, we give
emphasis to certain parts of a sentence, for example when we are teaching verbs, we may put
emphasis on them so students will know that we are varying our tune on the subject they
learning.

Regarding the third question, Jose states that he uses L1 whenever possible because many of
his students do not get the concepts in English correctly, so he has to use L1 to ask for
explanations the lesson student learned, he always makes sure students are properly learning
what they are supposed to and in an understandable way, he also stated that the proficiency
level on spoken language does not have the one required for a class that is absent of L1.
Andres on the other hand, states he does not use L1 frequently and that he prefers to teach
totally in English and only at the end of the class he asks students to explain what they have
learnt in English and uses L1 only when he does not get an accurate explanation out from his
students. He does not give great importance to the use L1 because according to him, the use
of it conditions the students and they would get the habit of having to translate everything to
L1 in order to have a clear understanding, moreover, he always encourages them to think in
English by not using L1.

I agree with Jose in part because sometimes students’ proficiency levels are too low to
understand every content in English; however, Andres´ suggestion on the use of English
exclusively to encourage thinking in English, sounds interesting and challenging at the same
time.
Regarding the fourth question, Jose states he uses traditional sitting position: in rows and the
teacher in front because it helps keeping the students´ attention and good behavior. Andres
states that he uses separate tables and groups his students to work in teams, that way
students feel more confident and their motivation is raised, he always makes his classes
dynamic and until now, he had gotten good results so far. He does not plan on switching to
traditional sitting position whatsoever.

We have two different visions here, while Jose uses traditional sitting arrangement, Andres
uses a more modern and cooperative one. Keeping the fact in mind that Jose works in a high
school, teaching thirty students at the same time and has to follow the school’s rules and given
curricula, there’s little he can do to change that. Andres works for a private institution,
whose one of its main characteristics is that they work with fewer students and that
makes it easier to arrange the seats in separate tables. So, we clearly have two different
contexts here, Jose works with too many students and it gets difficult to deal with that
number obviously, separate tables is not an option to him. Andres has fewer students
under his tuition and the institution he works for have much more resources as
opposed to Jose’s.

Regarding the fifth question, Jose states that in order to control a disruptive class he
has to, as he stated earlier, use rough tuning in order to draw the students´ attention.
Andres states that he seldom has to deal with that kind of situation because all of his
students know how to behave and what to do, good discipline is always expected from
them.

Similar case here, we have two different contexts, one more favorable and one less.

Regarding question sixth, Jose states that sometimes his view of the class is not that
good because of the large amount students, whenever possible he walks through the
classroom in order to expand his view. Andres on the other side does not have that
kind of issue, he has a clear view of the whole class and always pays attention at them
whenever they require special focus or tuition.

A clear distinction here that lacks similarities. Each teacher work at different places in
different situations and with different contexts. To my opinion a class with fewer
students is always desirable because we don’t have too much trouble managing
disruptiveness or our view on it.

Managing the classroom could be as challenging as it could be easy depending on our

current situation, Jose for example, being a teacher that works for public high school
with many students under his tuition, have to deal with many major problems and lacks
resources to make his classes better, he can’t make use of many different techniques
because he has to follow certain rules the institution imposes. Andres on the other
hand, have to deal with fewer students and the vast majority don’t have behavior
problems, he has a lot more resources and applies modern techniques that result
attractive to his students and has got a major success overall.

Therefore, I can conclude stating that each of the questions were relevant to each
context, in this case we had two very different backgrounds, yet the importance of this
topic cannot be left aside as it serves as a guide for to handle many situations and
problems within our classroom, having the experience of the two situations help us to
better understand why some teacher are successful and some others are not, it was
made me see more clearly that not only it is our skills that matter but also the fact of
the environment, whenever possible, we should always try to get a good one as it will
help us teachers and student reach our goals successfully.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harmer. Jeremy, (2017). How to teach English. New Edition. England: Pearson Education
Limited.