Classroom Management

Let’s be honest for a minute. Teachers struggle with classroom management – not because they don’t have good ideas, or because they don’t care, or because they don’t work really hard at it. No, teachers struggle with classroom management because it is unbelievable difficult.

The purpose of this website is to lighten the load on teachers just a little bit. Hopefully, by searching through the many and varied tools in this Toolbox, teachers will uncover just the right idea to meet the needs of their students.

Management Toolbox

If you are a teacher looking for help with classroom management, here are a couple things you should know about this Toolbox. First, as you well know, there is no strategy or even program that will “fix” your room. Instead, these tools can help you and your students as you work together to make your classroom a wonderful place to learn and be together. In order for these tools to even be helpful though, you need to consider what you personally believe about yourself and your students.

Knowing which Theory of Influence you espouse will help you find tools that match what you believe. Trying to apply a strategy in your classroom that you don’t believe in – even if it works great for others – can be a miserable experience for both you and your students. Therefore, it is a great idea to use our theoretical tags to sort the tools in the toolbox: Student Directed, Student Directed & Collaborative, Collaborative, Collaborative & Teacher Directed, and Teacher Directed.

A second way to improve the success of your search is to use the categories based on the Three Phases of Management: Preventative, Supportive, & Corrective. While most tools have application to more than one phase, they have all been organized according to the phase they fit best.

While the primary collaborators on this toolbox are elementary education students at EWU, we invite all teachers to participate. After using one of the tools in your classroom for a while, we’d love for you to come back and leave a comment on that tool’s page. Another way to contribute is to add an idea to our Toolbox. If you would like to do that, please complete the New Tool Form. (Note: your idea will post exactly as you enter it so please treat it like a final draft.)