Another day, another chalkface

My second school (B) orientation experience was interesting in a number of respects - first - the contrast with the school (A) the previous day - the school, management, staff and classroom cultures were noticeably quite different as were relative size of the schools, their decile ratings and dominant ethnic groups.

What WAS similar was many of the teachers were using the same or similar teaching styles and classroom management techniques. Even if their personalities were quite different, I noticed that those teachers who kept a firm rein on proceedings the whole 50 mins, and were a little 'distant', maintained an orderly learning environment for all the students as opposed to those three classrooms whose teachers were trying to be 'nice', and yet the tone in the class deteriorated and many students became quite distracted so that the teacher spent much of the last 30 mins remonstrating with the students over their behaviour rather than teaching and facilitating their learning.