Guest Speaker Ben Nakamura on Classroom Management

Guest Speaker: Ben Nakamura on Classroom Management

Ben Nakamura Principal of North Network Juvenile Court and Community Schools visited our single subject credential program class to teach us about classroom management. I was extremely impressed by his presentation and the classroom management techniques he introduced to us.

He started his presentation by telling a story about a boy raised by a mom with mental problems addicted to heroin and an ex-gangster father. His mother died of overdose and was found alone dead in a ditch one day. He was sent to live with his father the ex-gangster who regularly beat and abused him. At the end of the story Mr.Nakamura revealed that this was his story. We were all hooked and dialed in to his every word after that.

One of his presentation slides featured a very interesting and thought provoking quote:

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
― Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers

The part of this quote that speaks to me the most was the phrase “it is my response,” because that is the ultimate truth. It is up to me, the teacher, to create the safe, inviting, and fun learning environment I want. It is up to me to build lasting relationships of trust and understanding with my students. It is up to me to determine how best to help my students participate and learn. Mr. Nakamura speaks on this topic as well explaining that classroom management is up to us. It doesn't matter what kind of class we have or who the students are ultimately it is up to us to create the classroom atmosphere we are looking for.
Mr. Nakamura taught us the ABC’s of student’s needs based seemingly on Bloom’s taxonomy of needs:

Autonomy,

Belonging,

Competence.

He also taught us the 2 X 10 method which is taking two minutes out of every day for ten consecutive days to talk with a problem student in an informal and conversational manner appealing to their interests. Mr.Nakamura explains that this strategy will help build a relationship between you and the student that will hopefully prevent any major behavioral problems from arising in class in the future. I like this strategy because it allows me to get to know more about my students while at the same time preventing issues from occurring. My personal classroom management plans revolve around the idea of prevention over discipline.

Mr. Nakamura also gave us some great advice about interviewing for teaching positions. He said that his interviewing process involves giving teachers varied scenarios and asking them how they would handle the situations presented in the scenarios. Then if the teachers make it past that round of interviewing he gives them thirty minutes to prepare a lesson in the subject they are interviewing for. 

To help prepare us for this type of interview process while at the same time teaching us more about classroom management Mr. Nakamura passed out sample scenarios and asked us what we would do if this should happen to us. My groups scenario was about a boy named Cameron who refused to do the five minute warm-up exercise each day. Instead he would play around with other things in the class. When approached by the teacher he would respond rudely with, “Why won’t you just leave me alone you jerk!” When called upon to share my response I said that I would try the 2X10 strategy in order to try and build a stronger more positive relationship with the student and that I would also take a close look at my warm up exercise and see if I can design a more engaging and interesting exercise that might catch more of Cameron’s interest. I felt pretty good about my response and Mr. Nakamura said that I had a great response and that he had nothing to add. His response pleased me and told me that I was on the right track to having strong positive classroom management strategies.