Classroom Management Case Study: Rich Thorpe

In this case study, Rich Thorpe is an extremely passionate first-year teacher at West Alton High School. Rich was very grateful to have received this job, and has put a lot of effort into his teaching, despite the pressures of a first year teacher. For the first three quarters of the year, he has had good classroom management skills, and his students respect him as a teacher. He clearly spends time thinking about his students because when he noticed a few of them were struggling toward the end of the year he became concerned and wanted to help them out, especially since their behaviors effected the entire class.
As a first year teacher, Rich lacks the experience and background in order to deal with some of his students. Rich was not familiar …show more content…
Both students were making no effort in trying to learn the material because they assumed that they would fail the class at this point anyway. Another issue was how other teachers suggest that Rich handles his situation with the two students who have given up in his class. The other teachers in the same district encourage rich to let Peter and Andy give up because there is nothing he can do to help them at this point. This is a terrible suggestion, but Rich listens because he respects the more experienced teachers opinions and seems to be out of options. As a new teacher, having to teach to the various levels of students is difficult but that doesn’t mean students initially doing well in his class should just be able to give up without the teacher continuing to care. Rich should have continued to encourage his students to not give up on their work. It is important for teachers to show that they care about a student in and out of the classroom, because as a result, students are more likely to respond to and respect those teachers (Boykin and Noguera 2011). Higher expectations are important for students to have, so they know that their teachers are pushing them and seeing more potential in them, especially when they doubt themselves (Boykin and Noguera 2011). For both Peter and Andy, more consistent encouragement that lasted until the end of the year may have motivated them to work harder to improve their grades and study habits. If teachers understand that there’s not much a student could do to improve his or her grade at the end of the year and shows the student that its acceptable to just give up, they are setting the students up with a bad mentality that they will carry with them to their later years and in the