“The quality of teacher-student relationships is the keystone for all other aspects of classroom management” (Marzano & Marzano, 2003).  Teachers hear this all the time! Invest the time and develop and maintain a relationship with your students.  This is critical in the classroom.

 Marzano & Marzano (2003) state that research has shown that teachers have a huge impact on their student’s achievement. Teachers make more than TWICE the impact on students over anything else dealing with school.  Classroom management has the largest effect on student achievement.  Marzano & Marzano (2003) reminds us that research shows that the importance of the teachers ability to balance actions that provide students with clear consequences for undesirable behavior and actions for rewarding acceptable behavior all while teaching and engaging students in a lesson.  Steps to beginning this balance include:

•       Appropriate Levels of Dominance

o       Establish clear expectations and consequences

o       Establish clear learning goals

o       Establish assertive behavior

•       Appropriate Levels of Cooperation

o       Provide flexible learning goals

o       Take personal interest in students

o       Use equitable and positive classroom behaviors

•       Awareness of High-Needs Students

o       Passive students

o       Aggressive students

o       Attention problem students

o       Perfectionist students

o       Socially inept students

•       Don’t Leave Relationships to Chance

o       Student and teacher relationships are an essential foundation for effective classroom management (Marzano & Marzano, 2003).

This all seems very straight forward and something that every teacher certainly strives for in their classroom.  However, keeping all of these points moving forward, teaching the lesson and providing access to technology all simultaneously is quite a huge task for any teacher.  This is a bit more difficult for a specials teacher to accomplish in the time constraints that we are limited too. 

I have been very lucky to have been in the same building for 17 years so far…heading into the 18^th!  Being the only art teacher in the building, having all of the students, and many of the students I have had in class since they were in Pre-K so there is that ability to develop relationships through the years.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case…especially in larger districts where teachers have to be moved around to cover changing numbers in population throughout the district.  We do the best we can do and make art class the best we can make it!

Marzano, R. J., & Marzano, J. S. (2003). The key to classroom management. Educational Leadership, Retrieved from http://portfolio.project.tcnj.edu/summer2008/Kinney/Articles/gordonk-The_Key_to_Classroom_Management-3551108108.pdf