Felicia Terry
EDU 450
May 21, 2013
Professor Burk

Influences in the Teaching Environment There are a lot of different types of conditions and behavior issues that can impact a positive or negative effect in the classroom. These behaviors and/or conditions can have a great effect on the process of learning, if the classroom is not managed properly. This paper is going to cover ten of the many negative classroom conditions or behaviors. It is important to know these conditions and behaviors to recognize and correct the problems to organize and manage the classroom. The first thing that will be discussed is overcrowding of the schools. With communities constantly being built and people moving into these small towns the schools but the schools aren’t getting bigger or more teachers it is causing schools to become overcrowded. “The school's student: teacher ratio of 16:1 is higher than the GA state average of 15:1.” (2011, GA Dept. of Educ). This causes distractions to children because when there is that many students in the classroom they tend to try to play and cut up while the teacher is trying to get their things together for the next lesson. To help manage the classroom with this problem you could use letting the students that talk have a job to do but tell them that it is only if they can do it quietly and calmly then swap the jobs out with the classmates throughout the school year. This could help to manage the class. Between doing this and setting the ground rules with the entire class in the first week of school you can still have a good class. School funding is also another issue especially with the smaller town schools. When the funding is being cut more and more every year the schools cannot keep up with the technology and can’t hire more teachers to make smaller classes, which causes the overcrowding classes. Not being able to have the funding needed causes the schools to not be able to give the students what they need to learn. With this happening it is putting more and more on teachers to do work that they should not have to do. “Board member Gary Bauer said he is afraid that employees will begin leaving the school system because of the increased workload put upon them due to staffing cuts.”(By Blair Ames, May 23, 2013). This is within the larger cities as well however it happens more often in the small communities. The No Child Left Behind Act is one of the laws now that could be a really great thing if you could get all the schools on track with it but it is nearly impossible. The system is almost set up to make the schools fail. If you are at a school that is making a 100% then the next year you are required to do 105%. Every year you have to improve by 5% or else you get put on the needs improvement list. Also to comply completely you have to get all schools to get on the same page nationwide and it is impossible to do there is not enough funding for it. Multicultural classrooms could also be a distraction to students due the fact that a lot of children from another culture speak their own language and need to be taught English which makes it harder for other students to understand what they are trying to tell them. Sometimes the family members do not understand English either and it makes it hard for the teacher to communicate with them about the student’s progress. Mainstreaming Special Education students also causes behavioral issues. When special education students are put back into the class they can’t get the grades they need because they can’t learn at the same pace as the other students. Because of so many cuts in funding special education assistants are not able to give the child the one on one attention that they actually need. Because of this the special education teachers/assistants have to be spread throughout the school and it makes it so that some students do not get the attention the need and deserve. Latch key kids also turn into behavioral problems as