Written by It’s kind of like a hockey arena: you have the boards set up so they can skate around the rink and they can’t go beyond. Today I talk to master teacher, Chris Russell, on some of his best Classroom Management strategies.
I met Chris Russell in my first year of teaching. I had the best first job ever as a teacher: essentially a paid internship where I could continue practice teaching and learn from 4 veteran teachers. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to get to watch and observe Chris in action: he embodied all the best classroom management strategies that I had heard about in teacher’s college, but even better than I could ever imagine because he just did it authentically like an extension from himself. Students who were distracted and difficult with other teachers, were the academic equivalent of focused samurai warriors in his care.
Many of my best classroom management strategies I adopted from watching Chris teach. The best possible way to get what he does is to watch him in action. The next best thing is to listen to him describing some of his norms and routines in this conversation. In this episode we talk about simple, low intervention strategies that you can literally start experimenting with tomorrow in your classroom.
I’m going to hand it off to Chris, as he is an amazing teacher that you don’t want to miss out on learning from.
I am so grateful to Chris for bringing me into his classroom to talk about what he does so well as an educator. Below are some videos of a quick walk through Chris’s teaching space to get a visual reference for some of the things he mentioned in this episode.
That’s all the time we have for today folks, go build your hockey rink, and remember we are teaching tomorrow.
Show Notes:
- A quick tour of Chris’s classroom
- The Best School Year Ever