Classroom Management: Suspension Prevention

Mentor teacher Sherilyn Waters, right, talks with her mentee, Sasha Inouye, in a kindergarten classroom at Kalihi Elementary School in Honolulu. Ms. Waters says classroom management is a topic that comes up frequently in her discussions with new teachers.

—Matt Mallams for Education Week

Good management strategies can pre-empt suspensions, teachers say

When students file into Shira Fishman's geometry and Algebra 2 classes at McKinley Technology High in the District of Columbia, there's already a question written on the board, inviting students to get settled and get to work right away.

Whatever topics students may have been bantering about in the hallways must be traded for a discussion of the math problem, said Ms. Fishman, who is in her ninth year of teaching. "It can't be silent in the room, but they're not allowed to be gossiping and talking about parties."

The technique is simple but deliberate: By engaging students in an activity the minute they arrive, Ms. Fishman reasons, they will instead have an energizing experience that lasts for the rest of class and keeps them too occupied to trigger a bout of defiance or disruption that could result in a visit to the principal's office, or worse, suspension from school.

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