Certainty of Consequences makes them effective

One of the things many Teachers-Teaching-On-Call struggle with is classroom management. There are thousands of books, workshops, websites that deal with approaches and ideas and strategies, however, most focus on full time classroom teacher techniques and how to develop these over time. As a TTOC, you have limited time. Everyday you walk in fresh and need to establish routines and classroom management in an instant. 

I helped develop a workshop on Classroom Management for TTOCs which is put on by the BCTF. I love presenting the workshop, because I learn new ideas everytime.[If you want to book it is free for B.C. locals, contact the BCTF] But, as an educator, I am always seeking new ideas and strategies to implement or experiment with in my teaching. 

I loved this quote:

"It's the certainty of the consequence and not the severity that makes the consequence effective."

This is so true! Like with parenting, or puppy training (strange connection, but we recently got a new puppy and so I see the similarities) consistency, clarity and certainty of a consequence makes it more effective than the severity. If my daughter misbehaves, she knows the consequences. They aren't severe (lose computer time, lose play dates, etc) but she knows they will happen because we are consistent and have shown her with certainty that misbehaviour has consequences.

A teacher/blogger recently took a classroom management workshop and said:

I need to have a wealth of consequence ideas of varying degrees of severity, ranging from the "teacher look" to office referral. Students need to know you will enforce those classroom and school rules at all times.

This is exactly true for Teachers Teaching on Call especially. Have your bag of tricks, your strategies to use, and make them clear from the start if you are there for a day, a week, or a school year...  This idea is addressed in the workshop for TTOCs on Classroom Management.

Another quote I like is:

"Fair isn't everybody getting the same the thing. 

Fair is everybody getting what they need to be successful."

This is another important point. Recognizing that different students have different needs and ways to respond, especially to a new teacher in the room. Although the consequence is certain and laid out clearly from the start, sometimes they are different for different students based on what they need to be successful.

Classroom Management is one of those things that changes a bit each school year for full time teachers and each day for TTOCs. You must consider what works for you, what works for the class you are in and how to make it all come together. Remember the certainty over severity quote when setting up how you run things and always try to be fair.

Good Luck and please share any ideas or comments below...

[Source: SubHub] 

What Bill 22 does to Class Size & Composition

Staff Room Confidential broke down the numbers and the possible risks:

The formula for additional compensation basically calculates a "cost per student" by taking the average teacher salary and dividing by thirty. So, if the average teacher salary is $60,000, then the cost per student is $2000. Thus, a teacher who has 32 students enrolled in a class all year full time would be paid an additional $2000 per student, which in this example would be $4000. The formula also only pays nine of the ten months of the school year (so the actual amount paid would be $1800), and does not take into account additional costs such as benefits and overhead costs.


What does this mean?


It means that for any given grade or subject area, it is cheaper for a District to overload classes than to hire additional teachers. If an extra 29 students can be spread around into oversize classes, that will be $2000 less than the salary of an additional teacher. Not until a whole additional class of 30 is reached does it become economically equivalent to hire another teacher. Anything less, and the cheaper option is to overload.


Consider, for example, a school with 105 Grade 6 students. The cost of having three classes of 35 would be $210,000 (based on the $60,000 average salary). The cost of having four classes - three of 26 and one of 27 - would be $240,000.


Not only is Bill 22 likely to lead to increased class size, up to as much as in the 50's potentially, but it will also lead to fewer teachers. Consider the example above where the school creates 3 classes of 35 instead of the 4 smaller classes. This also means for the existing 4 teachers, now only 3 are needed. If you spread this across the District, a worst case scenario would see up to 25% of teachers lose their jobs. Now this is not likely to happen immediately, but remember that in the first year after Bill 28 came into effect, approximately 2500 teachers province wide lost their jobs - close to 10% of the contract teachers currently employed. Given that the budget for school Districts next year does not include an increase to even cover inflation, it is reasonable to expect at least 3-5% job losses, if not more.

This frustrates me, not only because my daughter is in Grade 3 and has over crowded classes to look forward to, but because as a "new teacher" (wrapping up my 6th year as a TTOC now) I fear even longer waits to get my own classroom.

My daughter required extra help last year with her reading. This year she didn't get that help because there was only enough room for 3 students from her class and she wasn't "the most needy"

What will happen when her class size increases? What if you child needs extra help... how will they get it when they have to "compete" for attention?

I hate Bill 22. I don't get how anyone can see any value in this Bill?

I have heard some say "well there is some money coming back into public education" but that "money" is not even CLOSE to what has been taken away....

It is so upsetting that THIS is the future for my children and for my colleagues and for my career!