Reflect on your school’s or mentor teacher’s classroom management system.

My host teacher's classroom management style is really student oriented which is awesome because that's not been one of my strong points. He encourages students who are behind or do not usually do work to complete assignments and is very patient with all of the students regarding missed or late assignments. He said something the other day that I think really accurately describes how he teaches, "I've never seen a kid that doesn't want to pass." Sometimes it takes a little bit of encouragement but it is amazing that the kids who are problems for everyone else work so well for us. One of the students actually got suspended for cursing out one of the other interns but he is a great student in history, and I accredit that to Mr. Morgan's classroom management style. One of the things that he does that is really effective is always has paper and pencils for everyone and it's incredibly intuitive. At first students abuse the privilege. In the first two weeks we must've burned through 50 pencils. We'd always ask for them back but would seldom be returned. After a few weeks though kids actually started returning pencils the next day and would remind their friends they had borrowed them. It was actually kind of rewarding to see the kids start to, for lack of a better term, care about borrowing our supplies and returning them. (I should mention that he hasn't bought any pencils to my knowledge, we acquire them throughout the day and he has kids bring in packs of pencils for extra credit every 9 weeks) And I think all of this is because the students realize he cares and are caring back. Now whether or not this is done consciously or subconsciously I don't know, but regardless it is inspiring to see from my point of view.