What is Classroom "Management"?

Classroom Management refers to the skills, tools, strategies, and techniques that teachers use to create and maintain a space for students to learn and grown in a climate of clear expectations, trust and safety, focus, and organization. Good classroom management creates an environment that fosters student achievement, as well as social and emotional safety and growth. A teacher can create engaging, content-rich lessons, but if the classroom is poorly managed, students will not learn.

When I walk into a classroom, it is quickly clear whether or not that classroom is well-managed.
First, let's look at common misconceptions of what a well-managed classroom might look like:

Students are seated in rows
The teacher is standing at the front of the room (at the board), giving instruction
Students are silent
Students are copying down notes
A hyper-vigilant teacher who comments on or confronts every minor behavior infraction.
Teacher is following the same classroom routine daily

Click below for a great article on Classroom management mistakes:

Some Look-Fors in a well-managed Classroom might include:

Students understand and perform clear routines and procedures (re-organizing groups, turning in work, getting and returning supplies, bathroom procedures, returning attention to the teacher, moving around the room...)
Students are working together at times during the class
Students are engaged in productive and appropriate conversations
Students and teacher are laughing!
Teacher is moving around the room, checking understanding, gauging on-task behavior, using proximity to manage off-task behaviors
Teacher is attentive to and appropriately addresses behaviors that could become problems
Teacher is immediately attending to serious behavior problems, calmly and privately when possible

"Withitness"

In an early, highly-regarded study on classroom management, Jacob Kounin (1970) identified several key facets of effective classroom management. The first of these was “withitness,” “Withitness” involves teachers being keenly aware of students' actions and behaviors. When teachers identify a disruptive behavior (or a potentially disruptive behavior), withitness enables them to intervene before that behavior becomes a major problem.

When teachers are "with-it," they are attending to the verbal and non-verbal clues of their students, paying attention to what they are doing, how they are feeling, and identifying potential problems. With-it teachers can intervene and redirect student focus and attention.

I have observed thousands of classrooms and have witnessed some teachers with "eyes in the back of their heads" who can use proximity and redirection when they they identify potential problems and behaviors. I have also observed teachers who are so caught up in their own teaching and lesson that they are oblivious to what is happening in the classroom around them.

It may seem impossible to keep an eye on every students all of the time, but if teachers is "with-it," they will be aware of what is happening all around them in the classroom. They will move around the room rather than standing at the board, they will do frequent checks for understanding throughout their lessons (focusing attention back on the students), they will, perhaps, be working with one student or one group while remembering to look up and look around frequently, attending to the actions of the rest of the class. They will be aware of and attend to any potential disruptions or problems quickly and calmly.

Are You With-it?

I remember one observation of a student teacher in a middle school classroom. "Jorge" was standing at the board, enthusiastically "teaching" the math content. At the same time, a young man was in front of me, next to his desk, and trying to balance on a basketball. While Jorge continued teaching, the boy slipped off the ball, fell down hard, and the ball flew across the room, knocking over a classmate's water bottle! ... And Jorge continued "teaching"!