Incidentally, something I think is really cool about teaching is that great content dissipates a lot of management issues. That is, when my coursework has been challenging, fun, and my students have felt actualized, management hasn’t been much of an issue.

I really like your series of videos… they are topical and hit the point! Great Job! I decided to post a comment on this one because I am a huge fan of the Wire and thought the way you followed the progression of Carver was perfect. I even embedded the video into my blog….

I have been a classroom teacher for 20 years, just embarking on my first administrative assignment at a school not too far from you, I really applaud the depth you have in your message. Having spent basically a career as a teacher there are a few things that I want to share that you get to, but in 6 minutes can’t really get deep enough.

First year teaching is like waging a two front war. Hitler tried it and lost… Kaiser Wilhelm tried it and lost… Napoleon tried it and lost… What do I mean two front war? You fight a two front war between Content and Management. Spend too much time on management, you never get to content and spend too much time in content you can’t get the kids focused enough for you to get to the content. Most every teacher will tell you that when they get their first teaching assignment that they were not 100% prepared from a content standpoint to fly solo. The ones who make it are the one’s that have the ability to teach themselves or have a great mentor to guide their journey. Those teachers who try to manage using power, more often than not burn out or are the one’s who send a steady stream of students to the administration to handle minor discipline issues. Who succeeds?

Some of the comments above talk about classroom management like being a dictator of a third world country. I would challenge Baby Doc or Fidel to handle a class of 35 – 9th Graders on a Friday during 7th period on a day where the temperature is above 80*. Classroom management comes down to a choice between Power and Influence. Power is hard…. you expend so much energy being the most powerful person in the room 5 hours a day that by the time it is over, you crawl to your car and hope to get enough rest to do it again the next day. Using influence, you use the students in your class to create the norm and will help you manage those who are outside of that norm. Caring about what is going on in their lives and asking questions are great ways to build rapport and create influence in your classroom.

Carver tried power… it didn’t work…. he switched to influence, he wasn’t 100% successful, but he knew there would be instances where he could change the life of one kid… even if it was just one kid! This is why he broke down taking Randy to the group home… Bunny Colvin changed the life of ONE KID! Remember the last episode…. Namon is giving a speech in front of an academic group and DuQuan, who showed promise working on a computer with Mr. P., was shooting up heroin in the alley.