🚀 go-pugleaf

efk@ddsdx2.jhuapl.edu (Eileen Baust) writes:
>I am finishing up the certification program 
>by student teaching. [...] Is there any advice one could
>give to me as to classroom management?

Everyone else will probably disagree with me about this, but I think
you should banish the idea of "classroom management" from your mind.
If you are thinking in those terms, then in effect you are starting
out with the presupposition that what goes on in the classroom is a
sort of competition between you and the kids, in which their goal is
to be disruptive and yours is to maintain order.  If you walk in with
that presupposition, the kids will notice -- it's self-fulfilling.

Instead, remind yourself that the reason (I presume) that you've
decided to switch careers from engineering to teaching is that you
like kids.  If so, that means you like them as they are, not all
lined up in disciplined rows.  If you can communicate *that*
presupposition to them, the kids will be orderly enough when it matters.

(If your school is full of kids who are already so beaten down by
schooling that they can't meet you halfway, then they're probably
right -- your algebra class probably isn't going to change their
lives.  Find a different school.  That kind of class is too heavy
a burden to place on a student teacher.)

P.S.  You also asked about calculus books.  I recommend Tom M. Apostol,
_Calculus_ vol. 1 (Blaisdell).  It's the best book for keeping the ideas
in the foreground, rather than the manipulations, so it'll remind you
of what's important in calculus.