Educational Leadership: Leading and Teaching in the Classroom

When you are the teacher in a classroom, you can NOT be a friend to those students. They have a whole school full of friends they don't need more friends, they need a leader. I've been a substitute teacher for 2 years now and I'm a litter over a third of my way through my Student Teaching and while there are teachers with infinitely more experience than myself, there are patterns in leading a class that I have observed. It is not in my nature to be able to innately and naturally conduct myself in the following manner. There are those to whom such a commanding presence is ingrained, and of them I am admittedly envious. I myself am much too friendly, too overconfident of everyone elses' abilities on a regular basis and as such I must be AWARE of the following. I must teach myself how to be a teacher.

 These rules of thumb, these observations of mine:

1. Successfully command and lead the men in the room, and the women will follow suit. They are the focus. Males create hierarchies, women do not. In order to lead you need to be a leader, in order to be a leader you need to create and be aware of a hierarchy and you need to be on top of that hierarchy.

2. Focus. Be decisive and have goals in every action, with every word. Even if you are unsure of what comes next, you must never appear not to know. Indecision and cowardice cannot a people lead.

3. Do not engage a challenger on their terms. When you teach you will find yourself tested at every turn by your students. They are unaware of it, but they are looking for signs of weakness. DO NOT ENGAGE A CHALLENGER, write them off. Engage them later on your terms, and cut them down so as to leave no question who 'won'.

             3a. Don't make it personal. After you hit them, it's over. Make sure they know that you know.

4. The only thing that matters when those students enter the room is History. Nothing else matters. Not their problems, not yours. They WILL get it. They WILL learn today, tomorrow, and every day you have them because you will make them.

              4a. Don't waste their time, and in turn leave no doubt in their minds that you will NOT have your time wasted.

5. Listen. At all times be listening. These are human beings, all the rest of the rules are moot if you forget this one simple rule. You are leading living breathing creatures, not machines. If you are not constantly watching, ever vigilant of every mood in your classroom, you cannot possibly conduct yourself successfully as a leader.

Simply some characteristics I've noted that seem lacking in the modern American classroom, which work. Many teacher have one of these, or even a few in varying measure, but they are all techniques I have observed that work. 

Today in the cowardly and feminized excuse for American culture that we find ourselves mired in, leadership, true leadership and direction for students is invaluable. You will not always be successful. The cards are stacked insurmountably against you: indifferent parents, a zeitgeist of irresponsibility for your own actions, a system more concerned with political correctness and indoctrination than actual education, and those pieces of refuse who are ushered into your classroom when they should be left to their own self-destructive devices (Yeah I said it. Some people don't belong in the classroom. They're a significant minority, but rest assured they're there.).

It's an uphill battle, but that just makes it all the more worth the fighting. Nothing worth doing was ever easy.