“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
-Peter Drucker
Many teachers focus a great deal of time and energy on lesson plans, classroom management, and other pieces of everyday minutiae. We see clip charts, points systems, and other management strategies in order to keep students on task in the classroom. I have had some of these systems in place in my own classroom as a teacher.
However, what many teachers fail to realize is that classroom management and strategies must be implemented as a small portion of an overall classroom culture. Every classroom has a culture. Some educators spend time deciding what they want the culture to be, and others completely ignore the culture. In both cases, the culture probably dominates the classroom, one positive, and the other negative because of the lack of a culture.
The best laid management systems might keep students on task for a short time. However, what we should be focusing on instead, is the culture of the classroom.
Rich
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