Classroom policy is an essential factor in the success of a course or even the success of the teacher in his teaching career. There is a great resemblance between the teacher and the politician. The teacher should think of himself as a politician and the students as the potential voters. It is crucial that the teacher wins the students\’ votes in order for the course to be successful and for the teacher to succeed in his career.

A lot of teachers concentrate most of the time on explaining concepts and doing lots of examples and are poor in other respects as classroom policies. The consequences are that the students do not pay much attention to the teaching because they find the teacher not convincing. In other words they would not vote for him. The prime reason why students find teachers not convincing is because of their classroom policies.

Classroom policies can be divided into two main categories. First are the policies and rules that the teacher declares to the students and expects them to follow and respect. Second is the unwritten rules which are his strategies in managing and handling the course. Although the second type of policies are not stated to the students they have a strong impact on how the class works out and thus influence the students\’ impression about the teacher.

It is very important to have clear and transparent classroom policies, particularly for mathematics courses. This is because one of the main reasons why students dislike mathematics is because they dislike the mathematics teacher and this is sometimes because his classroom policies do not work well for them.

The students should receive a document at the beginning of each course that clearly state all the classroom policies and regulations. It should have an index of content so the student can jump to the point of his interest. It should have clear bold face headings so that the main points do not get missed.

The document should contain a syllabus outline that clearly states the objectives of the course. It should contain the attendance rules and points. It should contain the homework rules and points. It should contain the dates for handing out assignments and when they should be submitted. It should also contain a suggested reference textbook and should state the titles of the handouts that the students should expect to get during the course. There should be reference to how late assignments and missing assignments going to be handled. Also it should be stated what type of exceptional circumstances that will be accepted for late and missing assignment and missing exams.

The students should be given a questionnaire about what they think of the classroom policies and how they can be improved. This questionnaire should be other than the teacher evaluation questionnaire at the end of the course. However; this questionnaire should be handed out by the middle of the term and the teacher evaluation questionnaire should be handed out by the end of the term.

The policies document should also contain information on how this class will increase the student involvement in education. It should clearly state that the student involvement will be rated and will contribute to the marks and that the student involvement will be through laboratory experiments using calculators. The dates and topics of laboratory sessions and how the students are expected to contribute to these sessions should be stated. There should be a reference to all the software calculators that will be used in the laboratory and dates of the laboratory handouts that use these calculators.

One of the most important unwritten policies is the teacher personality in class. The teacher should establish his authority early in the school year. The teacher should develop healthy boundaries between him and his students. This is because if he became the student best friend he could not establish authority in class.

The teacher should have good communication skills with the students as well as their parents. The teacher should keep encouraging students to do better and tell the parents where their sons went wrong and how to improve them.

The last point is that the teacher should have good management skills. He should manage the timing of the class and he should know that the students of the same class have different capabilities and pace in learning. This means that he has to manage each category of students with a different approach. The same approach will not work with all students.

Check out this algebra calculator Check out this kinematics calculator Check out this differential equations calculator

Check these calculators at http://www.software-hitech.com

Author Bio: Check out this algebra calculator Check out this kinematics calculator Check out this differential equations calculator

Category: Education
Keywords: calculator,algebra calculator, mathematics education