In the end, I guess my ideal classroom management style would be centered around positive reinforcement. The concept of ignoring attention starving behaviors and feeding the good ones with praise just seems like the right one for me. Of course, when problems arise it does not mean that I will ignore them. But I think that a big part of classroom management is to pick your battles wisely. I have seen teachers argue with students to the point that both are flustered, this is useless. In order to teach I must stay connected with my students, and in doing so I must maintain fairness in which battles I do choose.
So much of what I read in regards to my paper placed emphasis on the first day of school as a key determiner in the rest of the semester, this is something that I had never really though about before. The first day was always more social than anything else, and when I got to college it was awesome because it usually meant getting out early. But now I find myself thinking about what questions I want my students to answer, do I want to play a name game? Do I want to play any games? Should I ask if they like games? The one thing I do know though, is regardless of what method I use, I want to get to my students interests right off the bat so that I can plan my lessons accordingly so that I can include more relevance in the curriculum requirements.
In the end, I can really only hope that someday I practice what I preach. I hope that the first day I get to know about all my students and that we get along great and when I plan a lesson to entertain them they dont look at me and say, “What is this?” But until then, I just keep thinking about situations and how I will handle them.