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Teaching Secrets: Creating Positive Classroom Management

By Marti Schwartz

Classroom management issues are often the biggest impediment to learning for the novice teacher and even seasoned veterans. Any teacher can be suddenly derailed by outrageous behavior, and without a plan in place, all too often we respond as human beings rather than wise educators.

I’ll confess, in fact, that I was well into my own teaching career before I fully admitted to myself how often this had happened to me. I decided to spend a summer thinking about how to better respond to unpredictable behavior problems and—most importantly—how to create a more positive atmosphere of trust and effort in my elementary classroom. Over time, what I came to see was that my own intense focus on problematic behaviors was harming that atmosphere. I knew I needed to shift that attention, but wasn’t sure where to start.

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