Almost every student and teacher has heard the phrase about teachers having “eyes in the back of their head.” Skilled teachers always seem to know when there are problems happening in their classroom, and some can even anticipate such problems. I believe that one of the key reasons why these teachers are so good at this is because they use the classroom practice of active supervision.
What is it?
Active supervision is not walking aimlessly around the room without a purpose and only addressing misbehaviors. It is the constant monitoring of both student behavior with regards to expectations and student learning. Active supervision is the teacher constantly moving around and interacting with the students in a positive manner. Teachers should be moving around supervising work and activities to make sure students are on task and are not struggling the with assignment or activity. Teachers should also be scanning the room in an intentional way by frequently looking at all students. Active supervision is a constant practice that should be taking place at all times within a classroom.
My Experiences with Active Supervision
My time as a substitute over the past two years has given me a lot of time to practice active supervision. Looking back on my experiences, I have realized that I have used active supervision in some form since my first day substituting, but I have also improved my skills over the years. At first, I would just use scanning while I stayed at the front of the classroom because I felt that this was the best way to monitor the class. After a few times substituting with a livelier group of middle school boys though, I learned that I needed to move around the room. This lead me to the realization that proximity is key to active supervision. Whenever I saw a student beginning to display a non-expectation for the classroom, I would simply walk over by them and they would usually begin to fix the problem. I could do this without disrupting the entire class or stopping the flow of instruction, and it kept the problem from escalating. Interacting was the last component of active supervision that I consciously implemented. Previously, I would solely interact with the students to see if they were having problems with what they were working on, but I did not always use positive reinforcement. It took about a year of subbing before I began using positive reinforcement with my speech to reinforce positive behavior and decrease unwanted behaviors. Instead of asking students to be quiet or addressing individual students to ask them to stop talking, I would point out tables that I appreciated for following the expectation of working quietly. I immediately began to see an improvement in student behavior and it created a more positive environment in the classrooms that I was substitute teaching in.
Future Goals
Active supervision is a classroom practice that I feel very strongly about because I have seen its positive effects in a classroom firsthand. Changing a few simple words I used and adjusting how I walked around the classroom monitoring students created a more positive and productive classroom environment. For my future classroom, I would really like to practice my interactions with students. Using more positive reinforcement and becoming even more intentional with how I move around the classroom will help to make my active supervision stronger and more fluent.
Miss Wieberg 