3.3.5 Conclusion

My job is to make you into powerful teachers, to help you understand the available tools, strategies, and ideas so that you can use them to yours and your students' benefit. Some of these strategies are more important for first year teachers simply because they have more trouble controlling a class. As a first-year teacher, you will probably have a hard time using these tools initially because you'll be so busy getting your lessons planned that the last thing you'll be thinking about is what kind of tone to use while giving reinforcement. You should do as much as you can ahead of time to get comfortable using these strategies. Practice on your friends, on your family, and/or on your pets. This will help you get ready for your students.

As a teacher, you must learn to understand the teacher/pupil relationship and the power you have as a teacher to manipulate it. You must also learn to use that power with honesty and integrity. Often the reinforcement system gets skewed by the teacher's favoritism, and pet students get rewarded for things that have nothing to do with learning. The strategies we've discussed are just tools, and they can be used for better or for worse depending on you. If you chose the setting of the reinforcement in such a way as to publicly humiliate a student, it may be effective, but it is absolutely immoral. These are tools and like any tools they can be used for better or for worse.

As a first year teacher, someone may have a difficult time getting these tools of
reinforcement to work. What should a teacher do in addition to preparing lessons?

Mrs. Holmes is a first year high school teacher that lets her students walk all over
her. What should she do in order to regain control of her classroom before the behavior
of the students becomes unbearable for the remainder of the school term?