If Mrs. Allgood is harsh or punitive to Mark for breaking the rule, he says to himself, “This class isn’t safe; she isn’t honoring the contract.” However, if Mrs. Allgood ignores Mark and the gets away with breaking the rule or if she enforces it inconsistently, Mark says to himself, “This class isn’t structured; she isn’t honoring the contract.” (p. 17, Smith & Lambert, 2008)

I strongly agree on creating a safe, structured classroom. I am especially interested in the strategies presented in this article, and I am eager to have a try in my first student teaching classroom next semester. I always believe that with good classroom management, the content will naturally flow in the classroom. However, classroom management is the toughest problem for first year teachers and even for teachers with many years teaching experience based on my in-class observation so far. Compared with creating a structured classroom, I find it way harder to create a safe environment.

This semester my observation placement is in a high school in lower east Manhattan. My CT is a teacher with over twenty years teaching experience. I have to say she has good classroom management. If you enter her classroom, you will find all the students are writing sentences in Chinese in their notebooks. No one is chatting or talking. Among the 24 students, most of them are African Americans and Hispanic; only two of them are Chinese Americans, which means most of them know little about Chinese before. It seems students are committed to learning Chinese. According to the principal’s observation report, her classroom management is Highly Effective. However, even though I learned many strategies from her to create a structured classroom, I will not have my future classroom be like this. In other words, this is not a safe environment for students. Students are not allowed to speak in her class except for during the time to ask questions after she gives instruction. If students speak, they will be deducted 60 points in class participation, which is a rule set at the very beginning. Students do not have collaborative work, and students cannot ask others for information or clarification, because “the only persons you can talk to are me and Ms. Melody.” Students are writing sentences without knowing the pronunciation. They do so because if they finish they can earn points.

I think why this classroom fails to be a safe, structured one is because the teacher is not assuming the best. Many strategies are implemented to prevent students talking and not doing their work.