Statement of Behavior Management

Without a strong foundation, a classroom community is at high risk of crumbling into

ruins. Behavior management strategies are the tools needed to ensure that such an event does not
take place within your own classroom. By implementing a purposeful, consistent management
plan at the beginning of the year and maintaining it until the very end, you lower the risk of
teaching in a classroom where learning takes a back seat to putting out fires. Effective behavior
management consists of a thorough understanding of the individual adolescents in your
classroom combined with high expectations and patience.
Successful behavior management is contingent upon both the students and the teacher. In
order to create a sound foundation for your classroom, you must start on day one by setting up
high expectations and guidelines for classroom procedures and routines that are rooted in a
thorough understanding of the adolescent mind. To smoothly implement these expectations and
guidelines, it is crucial that my students agree to uphold these expectations and guidelines
throughout the rest of the year. Without an understanding of and commit to these expectations
and guidelines, the students will be less likely to learn efficiently. Therefore, teachers can set up
the foundation of a positive classroom climate by co-constructing expectations as well as
guidelines for each individual class and ensuring student accountability with regard to these
expectations and guidelines throughout the year.
Prevention is key to behavior management. Therefore, once guidelines and expectations
have been set, teachers must implement a curriculum that is both relevant and engaging to the
students in order to encourage diligent work and improvement for both the educator and the
students. A classroom should be a positive and safe learning environment, not a dictatorship
where an adult lectures and an adolescent student complies. The ultimate goal of an education in
the United States should be to guide adolescents until they become free and critical thinkers;
therefore, the behavior management approach chosen needs to reflect this goal.
Students need autonomy over their learning, but in order to facilitate this learning, order
must be in effect. Students learn best in a positive environment that encourages risks and teaches
growth from failure. Students need to feel responsible for and excited about their own learning
rather than feeling as if they are being subjected to a mandatory curriculum they are uninterested
in. In order to create such a classroom environment, a successful behavior management plan
needs to be tailored to the individual students and reflect their unique needs, learning
preferences, and interests, all the while upholding high expectations for their intellectual and
emotional growth.