Classroom Management Recipes: My Classroom Economy®

This year I have taken a new approach to my classroom management style. Many times throughout the year, teachers find themselves repeating the same expectations over and over until they get so tired they give up on classroom management all together. Instead of allowing myself to get to that point, I researched various methods and came upon the management style called "My Classroom Economy"®. This is owned and operated by The Vanguard Group, Inc., and all materials, concepts, and methods are owned by this group. I, Miss Geisendorfer, own none of this, but have only used the suggested method of The Vanguard Group.

The beautiful aspect of this technique is that it gives all of the responsibility to the students; meaning they functionally run the classroom through an economy we started together as a class. To better suit my students, adaptions were made and so far we are off to a wonderful start. This is the layout we use in my four different English classes.

Each student applies for a job, goes through an interview process, receives a job, is paid monthly according to the job level, pays monthly bills, and saves money. At the end of each quarter, students with money left in their account may participate in a classroom auction to bid on items to keep.

The great thing for teachers is all major forms and paper materials needed for the implementation of this are listed on the classroom economy website, myclassroomeconomy.org . If a teacher is not organized with this process it will be make it tougher, so I recommend turning a classroom bulletin board into the main hub for your classroom economy.