When teachers think about classroom management, they often think about discipline. You have to take the time to conduct or direct affairs of both the student, the other faculty, your aides, and parents. You have to go about your daily business with the idea that you are the manager and you have to make sure that you get things done the proper way. Most teachers chose the profession because they had watched their former teachers and the way those teachers behaved with the students.
In the last decade, the teacher’s role has changed drastically. The teacher is the manager of not only important issues such as education to students, but also as a collective leader to implement change from the administration and to help support the community.
The catchword “learning manager” is a new term used for a teacher who takes on multiple tasks and demands from all of the people she is directly involved with. If you look at the teacher as a center of operations in a school, you will see that she has students in the class, an aide, and other students that do not come to her class that she must provide discipline and supervision to. She may even have to direct parents, volunteers and other teachers at work within the building. Not only does she have to initiate or manage change among these other people, but she also has to deal with the principal, secretary, nurse, librarian, and counselor.
This revised view of the teacher’s role in the school shows that she has to have a network of support from all sides and at the same time provide support within the network. Standing in front of the classroom and lecturing is not seen as the ideal situation for a teacher anymore. They have to be able to flow with the changes implemented into the school and deliver lessons to the students. Technology is helping teachers out by adding e-mails instead of the daily walk down to the wooden mailbox to collect all the messages and passes for the day. The teachers can also find resources on the computer, where previously the only resource was a library.
The role of a teacher is that of manager, and this cannot be emphasized enough. If you took the public school system and put it into the business world, you would see the teacher acting as middle-management with employees underneath and executive upper management above them.(21)
Don Rainwater