Teacher Interview

For my project on classroom management, I did an interview with my friend Jessie VanderZee. She is currently a teacher at Zeeland Early Childhood Center. During my interview with her, the video stopped because my memory was full. Unfortunately I did not get the full 10 minutes of the interview on tape, but I did get the first couple questions. I asked if we could rerecord some of the questions, but she was pressed for time. Instead I will share some of the answers that she shared with me that we were unable to get on tape.

Jessie told me that here philosophy for teaching is that all students can learn. She challenges and holds high expectations for all of your students because she knows that they all can learn. When it comes to managing her classroom, she tries to prevent bad behavior, not react when it happens. She does sometimes use "time outs" as a form of punishments, but it is more of a time to take her students away from what is causing them to misbehave. She truly believes that she can teach her students what is wrong and right by explaining why and in turn preventing issues for later classes. Woolfolk would agree with this. "The aim of classroom management is to maintain a positive, productive learning environment." (473)

Since she has been teaching, her classroom management has changed due to different coworkers, new students. They have taught her new strategies and challenged her in different ways causing her to grow and change. Jessie believes that there are some disadvantages to punishment for specific students. All students are different and with differences comes different ways to handle misbehavior and punishment. Not all students react in the same way to a time out. Also, when  managing her classroom, with her older students she has set up some contracts with how behavior should look in the classroom. In chapter seven, Woolfolk mentions how there can be contracts and toke reinforcement. "The teacher draws up an individual contract with each student, describing exactly what the student must do to earn a particular privilege or reward." (264) Jessie used these types of contracts with students, but she did not use rewards. She used contracts simply because it is what she expects of her students. She said she is hesitant with giving her students things, but she will use stickers. She uses encouraging words and peer modeling.

Lastly, I asked her if she could give an example of how she gets parents involved in reinforcement of positive behaviors. She answered with two examples. One that is a "school to home" and another that is a "home to school" example. First, she shared that there was a boy that had problems with whining and not acting his age. He loved dinosaurs, so she placed small dinosaurs on his desk and would take away a dinosaur when he would misbehave. If he had a certain amount still left after a day, then his mother would reward him at home with ice cream or something else. She had discussed the prizes with the mother before had and could gently remind her student that if he behaves he will be able to have ice cream with mom later. The other example was with a girl who would not listen to mom at home. She would not eat her breakfast or put her shoes on before school. Jessie told her mom to send her to school without to show her that there are consequences for her actions. The girl learned quickly that she cannot participate in class without having eaten her breakfast or putting her shoes on. This caused her to start doing this before school for mom. Jessie was able to work with parents to help children's behaviors at home and at school.

I really appreciated what she had to say about classroom management and how to handle punishment and positive reinforcement. In Jessie's examples of the student and parent behavior plans, we see what the book labels as "presentation punishment" (252). This is showing that if the students does good behavior, they will be rewarded for it, by presenting something to look forward to, like ice cream with mom.

Although I could not get all of the interview on tape, I did get some and had a great time hearing how Jessie handles her classroom and creates the best learning environment for her students.