Running a Classroom

      I was catching up on tweets this morning when I came across a post from a someone who I just met and added last weekend and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite people to follow, he is Jerrid Kruse.  Mr. Kruse posted an article titled "What Runs Your Classroom".  This article talked about a student who is working on an undergrad and doing clinical work in different classrooms.  This person explains his/her experience with classroom management as being an eye opening experience and how his/her view of classroom management has changed because of this experience. 
     As an inspiring administrator I find it refreshing that a young inspiring teacher is understanding that the traditional ways of classroom management are not always the best.  If a teach react to an out of hand classroom by forcing them to write or watch a video, I would agree with the article the teacher is setting students up for failure. 
      There are much more effective strategies for a teacher to use that will help keep the struggling students attention.  This is where an administrator can step in and help teachers learn some of these strategies or if a teacher does not realize they are doing using strategies that are ineffective bring it to their attention.  An administrator will be able to see some of these methods in action by doing random drop ins to classrooms, this will give the administrator and quick picture of what takes place when their presence is unannounced. 

Weekend 1

Sunday's guest speakers were fantastic.  Jerrid Kruse and Deronn Durflinger did an outstanding job of presenting information that was a valuable to all of us.  I appreciated their willingness to share their knowledge and also share opinions on that information.  Being able to share an opinion with a group of people who are complete strangers and understanding that not everyone will agree with that opinion shows a strong form of confidence. 
As inspiring administrators this is a lesson that can be learned from both of these individuals.  The material they presented about technology was good and it can be used as an administrator on as need or daily basis.  The part my discussion group was struggling with was the reference Mr. Durflinger made about keeping connected with his large group of colleges and coworkers.  We discussed how it was hard for us to understand what this is like because our group of colleges and coworkers is not large enough yet to have an everyday use, yet.  On the flip side of that everyone in our group understood how we could use these programs to stay in contact and ask questions when they come up.  Thanks to everyone for a great weekend and great discussion.