Do Not Let the Job of a Homeroom Teacher Become a Lonely Battle

There is a homeroom teacher at my school right now who is struggling with classroom management.

Unlike in elementary school, a junior high school homeroom teacher does not spend much time with the children they are responsible for during the day. It is limited to morning homeroom, lunch, afternoon homeroom, and the classes they teach themselves.

The rest of the time is left to the individual subject teachers; it is almost like sending your own children off on a journey.

Junior high students are sensitive enough as it is. There are also the insular interpersonal relationships within the class unique to a local area, and whether or not they get along with their teachers is a matter of compatibility.

As a result, it is rare for everyone to concentrate on class and study seriously, and there are many times when they cause trouble for the subject teachers.

Sometimes complaints reach the homeroom teacher, such as, 'Your class was like this today. I warned them, but you should talk to them, too.'

At first, the teacher might honestly accept it, saying 'Okay,' and provide guidance to the students or the class in question, but as this happens repeatedly, they may gradually start to feel annoyed and begin to brush it off.

Even so, it is always on their mind, and they start to worry about trivial things in their own classes that they didn't care about before. They might suddenly become nagging, or end up in a state where they are just spinning their wheels alone...

Once it reaches this point, they are standing at the entrance to a negative cycle, which is not a good situation for either the children or the adults.

If you look at this situation from a bird's-eye view, the subject teacher who had trouble in class has passed the baton of guidance to the homeroom teacher, wanting them to do something about it.

Since it is about their own class, the homeroom teacher will likely feel sorry and guilty. They might also feel that they have to do something. They end up burdened with the baton they were handed.

The sprouting of these feelings is what brings them closer to the entrance of the negative cycle mentioned earlier.

So, what should be done? The problem should not be left for the homeroom teacher to shoulder alone. It is a problem that the subject teachers, the grade-level team, the administration, and the entire school should think about together.

After school today, we held a strategy meeting with the team of teachers who teach the class that the homeroom teacher is in charge of.

We discussed how each subject teacher views the class. We shared our thoughts frankly and divergently, including both the good things and the things we want them to work harder on. We visualized each opinion on a whiteboard.

From the opinions that emerged, we converged on the good points and the problems of the class and exchanged views.

Finally, we exchanged opinions on what the team of teachers should start working on and what we could do regarding the problems.

I think we have taken the first step toward escaping the negative cycle.

What is important is to keep running together. The main characters are, of course, the children. The teacher team is there to run alongside the children. That is the image.

Of course, I will keep running too. Together.

End

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