Classroom Management for the Elementary Classroom (Fall 2019-Spring 2021)

"Classroom management is NOT about controlling students--it is about curating meaningful educational encounters." - Maria Wallace

This course critically examines conventional practices of classroom management and introduces pre-service elementary teachers to equity-driven approaches for restorative education in elementary schools. By exploring enduring questions of classroom management (e.g., "what does it mean to be good, bad, or effective? and for whom?"), teacher candidates are invited to engage in critical self- reflection about their own experiences with schooling as mechanism to reimagine possibilities for their future students.

​One service-learning assignment encourages teacher candidates to do at least one of the following activities during this courses and their future classrooms upon graduation:

• partner with students’ families to inform students’ school experiences;
• solicit expertise from community experts to shape innovative curricular experiences,
• gather information about the social and cultural challenges confronting the local communities in which their students are implicated;
• reflect on the tensions and possibilities resulting from the enduring relationship between school and society; and
• develop restorative interventions to heal and/or enhance students’ short and long-term relationship with the educational experience.

The two primary texts we use to explore these topics include:

• Milner, R. H., Cunningham, H. B., Delale-O’Connor, L., & Gold Kestenberg, E. (2019). “These kids are out of control”: Why we must reimagine “classroom management” for equity. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
• Shalaby, C. (2017). Troublemakers: Lessons in freedom from young children at school. New York: The New Press.