HOW TO MANAGE CLASSROOM BEHAVIORS?

GENER ERESMAS FELICES

Teacher-III
Ogao Elementary School
SDO-Sorsogon

The School is said to be the second home. This is where

students develop social behavior. experience mingling and playing with
peers, learn and discover new things, develop cognitive, psychomotor,
and affective aspects. Thus, Republic Act 8525 or the Adopt-a-School
program together with the implementation of Brigada Eskwela have
played a very significant role in maintaining the school’s
conduciveness, safeness, and security of students. According to Dodge
et al. (2009), a conducive learning environment and socio-emotional
atmosphere meet students’ developmental needs. It makes all students
feel safe and comfortable where they belong.
The teacher is one of the contributory factors that affect
students’ behavior. A teacher who plans can surmount classroom
difficulties such as problem behaviors. The favorable effect of the
teacher plays an important role in managing the classroom atmosphere.
Aside from managing the classroom as a whole, the ultimate
responsibility of a teacher is changing the behavior of the students
by safeguarding an exciting, enjoyable, and secure environment where
they can create positive relationships, maximize learning and minimize
misbehaviors. An effective teacher creates an environment that is non-
threatening where students can feel secure, respected, and loved. For
this purpose, teachers build cooperation and responsibility among the
pupils. Similarly, according to Kostelnik et al. (2015), structuring a
positive classroom climate is essential in creating a learning context
in which students build a strong sense of being valued, confident and
competent.
The teacher has the fullest accountability in building a strong
relationship between the students and their environment. A teacher
should set classroom norms at the beginning of class. A classroom that
is organized, clean and accessible, has well-defined procedures, and
an established routine could lead to well-managed behaviors of the
students.
Likewise, the teaching of rules and routines is the first
activity to accomplish before instruction. According to Jones and
Jones (2001), students need to be involved in developing rules, it
must be clearly stated, as few as possible, and accepted by everyone.
Additionally, classroom rules should be posted in conspicuous places
and always repeatedly review at the beginning of classes (Rademacher
and Callahan, 1998).
 Employing greetings and clear communication contribute towards
building understanding, trust, and confidence among students. Clear
communication before instructions minimizes the chances of
misunderstanding. This will lead to discipline problems in the
classroom. Hence, teachers must show gentleness and tenderness to deal
with both affirmative and disruptive behaviors.
Similarly, Pakurar et al. (2007), showed that by simply greeting
each student by name at the door, teachers help develop values of
trust and confidence. Greetings show respect, build connection and
enhance emotional needs, strong teacher rapport, and engage on-task
behavior.
Teachers who exhibit respect towards their students,
automatically win favor by having active learners in the classroom.
The egotistical or aggressive teacher lacks affirmative qualities due
to a lack of control over the students. Teachers must understand that
they should also be treated with respect and kindness. Therefore, a
teacher who models good behaviors and values to his students can be
emulated and imitated.
During instructional activities, students are expected to be on-
task and be participative. However, there are some cases that due to
slow pace instruction and not well-planned activities students become
bored and unmotivated which likely causes problem behaviors.
Consequently, the teacher must be creative in making instructional
devices and be energetic and flexible.
Effective instruction involves making creative instructional
material, modeling new behavior, providing guided, positive and
corrective feedback. Also include the use of response card peer
tutoring. Regular use of these strategies and shared effective
instruction may help create highly effective learning environments
which reduce problem behavior.
Teachers may employ non-verbal redirection such as eye to eye
contact in the classroom because it may tend to have an affirmative
outcome such as the improvement of learning interest, motivation,
readiness skills, and modified behavior. From the teaching-learning
process. It has been observed that some teachers ignore this important
aspect of non-verbal communication skills as a result they acquire
very slight reimbursements from the class. Besides, using verbal
redirection for students may encourage them to be involved on-task but
only for a short period. On the other hand, addressing by name and
problem behavior can be embarrassing to them.
The use of non-verbal redirection (eye contact, gentle touching)
instead of verbal may keep the students from being embarrassed but
improve positive discipline while saving self-esteem. In addition,
this strategy keeps students focused on learning and on-task
activities.
An ineffective teacher only attempts to discipline their students
with threats and punishment rather than laying a foundation with
effective procedures for the learning environment. A teacher who has a
significant problem with behavior management and classroom discipline
often reports a high level of stress symptoms of burnout. Thus, a
teacher should uphold positive clear discipline since it creates
conditions where pupils are free from pressure and aggression but an
exercise of fostering attitudes of respect and affection. In the same
way, establishing discipline is building the responsibility of the
pupils towards self-control. If classroom discipline is consistently
followed it leads to a well-managed classroom.
The teachers should concentrate on utilizing reinforcement such
as praising and positive interaction. Mayer (2000) said that praise
serves an important instructional function because it exchanges
regularly remind the student of the classroom behavioral and academic
expectations and gives student clear evidence of what he/she is
capable of achieving expectation. Positive interaction can be used to
be focused on specific praise, non-verbal exchanges, smiles, and
thumbs-up.
A student who shows misbehavior in the class should not embarrass
in front of the class but instead through private talk or comment.
Through this act, he may have a sense of responsibility and is
unlikely to avoid doing misbehavior.
Incorporate play and routine song. According to Grace (2014)
students in the primary level, they cannot rest for long because of a
very short attention span which is why they are fond of moving and
mingling with their classmates. Hence, teachers must be creative in
dealing with such natural behavior. Play and routing songs may
incorporate during the teaching-learning process. On the other hand,
students may divert their attention from being off-task to being
participative. When students play, they engage with their environment
in a safe context in which ideas and behaviors can be combined and
practiced, they enhance their problem solving and flexible thinking,
learn how to process, display emotion, and manage fear and interact
with others.
Classroom behaviors are unavoidable, But having the knowledge and
effective strategies, all circumstances can be easily dealt with and
solved.