Classroom Management Techniques Creating the Right Conditions for Effective Learning in the Language Classroom
Summary
3.1 Being yourself
More experienced colleagues tell me that I should play the role of a confident, knowledgeable teacher. As I walk into my classroom, I feel myself trying to become that teacher, but somehow, I’m never comfortable with it and never quite sure how I should be in the classroom.
Aim
To find an authentic classroom persona.
Introduction
Authenticity means behaving in a way that is appropriately real, appropriately you so that the learners see something of your genuine reactions to things, your moods and natural behaviour, rather than covering everything up in a performance. Carl Rogers, the US educational psychologist, suggested that authenticity was the single most important teacher characteristic:
‘The teacher can be a real person in her relationship with her students. She can be enthusiastic, can be bored, can be interested in students, can be angry, can be sensitive and sympathetic … Thus, she is a person to her students, not a faceless embodiment of a curricular requirement nor a sterile tube through which knowledge is passed from one generation to the next.’
He believed that authenticity created the conditions for good rapport and helped build a real depth of trust and respect, and that this made the difference between a successful classroom and an unsuccessful one.
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- Classroom Management TechniquesCreating the Right Conditions for Effective Learning in the Language Classroom, pp. 73 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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