Home > Teacher Supplies Info Center > Successful leadership in the classroom

Successful leadership in the classroom

Click here to see our selection of teaching supplies.

 

Connecting with your students as well as relating to them is very important, of course. However, you must also remain the authority in the classroom in order for the class to function as it should and reach the educational goals you have set. In other words, you want your students to like you, but you also need them to respect and listen to you. You can have a little of both if you try hard enough. However, successful leadership in the classroom is the most important factor.

When you feel as if you are having a hard time reaching your students and there seems to be a real lack of successful leadership in the classroom, perhaps the three following aspects of relating to your class will help you develop successful leadership of the students:

Respect:

When the children respect you as both a teacher and a friend it is a very rewarding feeling. However, you must decide on how “friendly” you become with your students because if they get to chummy with you, they will not have respect for you as a leader.

When you get to know your students on a somewhat personal level, you actually do become friends with them. And this is not a bad thing. However, when you allow your class too much free time to talk to you individually, to play and to socialize—they will be more likely to talk, play, pass notes, and become distracted during their lessons.

If your students do not respect you as the grown-up in charge, you will never have successful leadership in the classroom.

Caring

Believe it or not, one of the most important things to develop with your students as soon as you possibly can is a sense of a certain kind of friendship between you and your class.

Now, this is not the kind of friendship that the children will have with their classmates, it is more like the friendship or bond that a child forms with his or her mother, father or legal guardian.

When the children know that you really care about them, they will actually pay closer attention to you, they will want to please you, and they will therefore do as you say. When you show that you care, the feeling between you and your students can quickly become one based on respect.


Control:

It is nice to have successful leadership in the classroom, and a big factor in achieving this goal is the aspect of control. Nonetheless, you cannot be like one of those strict and angry teachers you remember from your educational experiences. If you remember, those teachers are less likely to help develop the children’s interest in the subject matter.

In addition, when your students think you are mean and heartless, you are more likely to fail than to gain successful leadership in the classroom. Of course, there must be rules and limits and restrictions in every classroom, but there should also be rewards, encouragement and real signs that you are taking interest in your in your students as individuals.

The combination of respect, care and control are the three most important keys to successful leadership in the classroom. As a teacher, you will find that every class different at least a little bit. So it is up to you to decide how much you will become involved with your students on a friendship level, how much freedom you will allow them to have, what rules must be set and establishing yourself as the adult and authority of the classroom in order to earn the respect of the children you teach.

Only you can create the perfect balance between care and respect for your particular group of students in order to develop the right level of control which will be somewhere between the “strict” or “mean” teacher, and the teacher who is so nice she looses all control of her class, making proper education of the students absolutely out of reach.
Respect is important, care is important, and the class is virtually impossible to teach without control.

In other words, you want to be neither too hard nor do you want to be too soft. Like in the fairytale of Goldilocks, you need to be just right.

As teachers, our challenge is to find the perfect combination of all of these and make ourselves the very best teachers we can possibly be. And when you do it right, and see how successful leadership in the classroom is working for you and your students, you will be proud of them, encouraging to them, motivating to them, and the experience will be more rewarding than any other.

This weeks top selling teacher supplies

Click here to see more school supplies

 

Homeroom Teacher has the best selection of Successful leadership in the classroom at the lowest prices!

Related information:

Plagiarism
On the very first day of class (usually on the syllabus) plagiarism is mentioned as illegal, against the rules, and highly forbidden, punishable usually by giving the student a 0% on the paper or essay in question.

Selective mutism
Dealing with selective mutism in the classroom can be very difficult and frustrating for teachers.

Shy students
Shy students exist in practically every classroom, so you might as well learn how to deal with them now!

Copyright © 1998 - 2012   Homeroom Teacher