As teachers eye their empty classrooms the day before school starts where not a creature is stirring and hopefully not a mouse, teachers are filled with anticipation about what they will get for the upcoming school year. Will they get a group of students that will be easy to teach? Will they get the supplies and support they need to be effective? Will they get ideas to do their tasks as teachers better? Of all the questions teachers may ponder, three are crucial to consider for a successful year. Those three questions are as follows.

1. How can I establish positive relationships with my students?

The quicker you learn the names of your students and get a sense of their personalities the better. My favorite activity for building rapport and community in my class is to have students fill out a questionnaire about themselves on the first day of school. The questionnaire is divided into section A and section B. The questions in section A are for record keeping purposes such as the name of the student, the name of the parent or guardian, home telephone number etc. In contrast, the questions in section B are fun, get-acquainted questions such as: If you could be a part of a TV show which show would you select and why? Each student is expected to share an answer to a question from section B aloud to the class. After each student has shared, I collect the questionnaires and file them in my records.

2. How can I maintain good classroom management?

Student behavior is easiest to manage during the first few days of school. To help maintain this ease in management, students need to understand how you expect them to behave in class and the consequences for not acting appropriately. Teachers should create a practical, well thought-out classroom management tool to help them enforce the rules consistently throughout the year. This classroom management tool should achieve the following goals:

a. remind students of the class rules on a regular basis,
b. provide the teacher with a systematic way to acknowledge appropriate behavior and discourage inappropriate behavior through consequences
c. produce a visual or a document that students and/or parents can view that tracks the progress of how students are adhering to class rules

I highly recommend that teachers explain and use their classroom management tool on the first day of school to build a routine of appropriate behavior in their class.

3. What should I teach first?

Most students start the school year eager and ready to learn. But like anyone else, students want to enjoy the learning process and feel connected to what they are learning. Teachers should try to make their first few lessons or unit very engaging. Engaging students does not require that your lessons be over-the-top fun or easy. Instead, engaging lessons are thought-provoking and provide students with opportunities to express their thoughts and ideas. This can be achieved by connecting the content of your lesson to an interesting theme. For example, for my ninth grade English class, I usually start with the novel, The Pearl, by John Steinbeck. One theme that I use to capture the attention of my students is how instant wealth can change the life of a person. If students deem your class to be engaging during the first weeks of school, they will be easier to teach when you do have to conduct a dull lesson every now and then later in the year.

A successful classroom imitates that of a thriving community. As with a thriving community, a successful class is place where a person can feel free to be himself or herself without infringing on the rights of others or hampering its productivity. Teachers who give thoughtful consideration to the above questions will lay the foundation for a successful school year despite what they may get on the first day of school.

Tonia Lee is the author of Romeo & Juliet in Urban Slang and Macbeth in Urban Slang.

For a copy of the student questionnaire or classroom management tool Tonia Lee has used successfully in her class, visit http://shakespeareinslang.com and click on free teaching ideas navigation button.