Establishing rules and guidelines in your classroom is imperative to having a positive classroom experience. Just like with parenting you set out to have certain expectations and rules with your children, however, those expectations and rules can change when as your child grows into their own persons. As a teacher I would love for my students to come to class on time, prepared, and with their work either completed or ready to be completed. However, we know that can’t and won’t always be the case. So, my question is, how do I help my students respect my expectations while I also adjust to the realities of things happen sometimes? In the book Classroom Management That Works, the authors state that “Human beings do best in an environment of feedback-“, meaning we need to help students distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors (Marzano et al., 2003, 28). It is important to me that my students feel heard and seen, and that I’m not there to be a dictator of information and rules. I will write my expectations in the syllabus for students to read over and familiarize themselves with on the first day of class. From there I plan on having my students put their input on what those expectations and rules look like to them. What looks one way to me may look another way to someone else. I think it is important that everyone in the classroom including the teacher has full understanding of what the words mean when it comes to expectations. As far as consequences go, I also think it is important to include the students in that decision making when possible. I think including students in the decision-making process when deciding on consequences can help them understand the correlation between not following a rule, and the consequence that comes with that. However, I do want to keep this as a quick conversation. Most students will understand and know universal classroom expectations. If you ask a student what they should be doing, they will know. 

         When I see students getting off-task I have two routines I will use. It is important to me to try to not have to single students out in these types of situations. If students are doing independent or group work, it is easy for a student to get off task. My first option is to re-direct the whole classroom. By doing this, I will pause the work and give out direct instruction again to reiterate the expectation of that assignment. I also think one thing I will not stray away from is where to turn in work or late work. I think have the same designated space for that will keep students from interrupting class time to figure out how and where to turn in work. Taking the guess work out of where to turn work will keep students using the excuse of not knowing where to turn work in as a reason for not turning something in. 

         As for documenting any violations, I will use a form that a has students understand what the violation is, their responsibility, and consequences of the violation. I’m not sure how many violations will equal a parent or administrator conference though. I think it will depend on the severity of the violation. I think starting out with the typical 3 violations and then contact will be made will be good to start off with until I can understand my role and my students more. 

Reading: Read through _______ to find the rule or guideline that you did not follow. Please write the rule down and where you found it.
Understanding: 1.Have you broken this rule before? What happened?2. Explain why this rule exists.
Responsibility: Did your actions hurt or inconvenience anyone? What should you do to remedy the situation?What will you do to make sure this rule is not broken again?
Consequences: What will the consequence be if this happens again?

Student Signature: __________________________________

Teacher Signature: __________________________________

Parent Signature: __________________________________

Teacher Action: 

• Discussed with student
• Called Home
• Parent Conference Requested
• Detention
• Referred to Counselor
• Referred to Administrator
• Other

Notes: 

       For a Student and Family communication plan, I plan on using either Seesaw Family, Class Dojo, and Google Classroom. I currently use Seesaw when communicating with my son’s teacher and I think it works really well. Any question I have is sent through the messenger portion on seesaw. The teacher is also able to upload work from google as well, so I can keep up to date with what they are working on in the class. I think it will also depend on the school system and what means they use to communicate with families. I do know that I will use google classroom. There are many tools out there currently, and more being invented. I think as long as it is simple, and easy for both parents and teachers to access it will be useful in communicating with parents.