Purpose

Let’s be clear. This blog is NOT research based. It’s a collection of anecdotes and solutions that have been compiled from the experiences of real-life teachers who have actually managed the behavior of real-life students. There is no empirical evidence. No numbers were crunched for the creation of this blog. There are no standard deviations. There is no assessing whether or not the results are transferable to a different population. There are no cross sections, populations, or variables, whether controlled, uncontrolled, independent, or dependent. There is no APA or MLA format. There are no recommendations that “further research be conducted” to support the current research that’s been conducted. It’s time to shake up the field of education, and if you’re still reading, chances are that you’re ready to be part of the change. ​

If you’re still reading, that’s good. It means that you, like so many others, are a little tired of researchers, testing-software creators, politicians, and textbook companies idealizing the past, qualifying the present, and dictating the future of education when they’ve only ever stepped foot into classrooms for their promotional photo opportunities. It’s high time that real-life teachers, who teach real-life students, had a voice in the realm of not-so-academic literature. I can’t imagine pretending to know enough about energy-efficient windows to tell window companies what they should be doing, even though I’ve replaced and installed windows in various houses and garages. Why is it that everyone seems to know how to fix education because they’ve spent a short time observing classrooms, or raising children, but no one asks the teachers and administrators that are currently working with students what needs to be done to help students learn?

You probably cannot cite this as part of your teacher evaluation’s mandated reading plan; you definitely cannot cite this as part of any academic thesis, except as an example of what higher education thinks writing cannot, and should not be. Scientific method has not been used, and following its directions to the letter will not change anything, because there are too many recommendations offered for too many different types of students for any of them to work for everyone. Students are too diverse to quantify.

Garbage on the floor? Forget about it! We keep a clean classroom.

In short, this blog will provide ideas and stories about classroom management from teachers. We can’t prove that they work. We’re too busy teaching to do enough paperwork to prove that they work in an APA-formatted, research-based world.  Give the recommendations a shot though, and as long as you employ some of the ideas consistently, you might be surprised that the people who actually work around actual kids can offer a wealth of knowledge to each other, and to the world of education.