I feel a little bad saying it was "crowd control" because those are my words, not my brother's (who was the one doing the program). I think he was a good teacher, and he would probably object to that characterization.
He told me that once he left the room for a few minutes because a kid was sick, and heard a huge crash. When he rushed back in, it turned out that a girl had tried to smash the overhead projector on top of the head of another student. Glass was everywhere This was the result of leaving the classroom for 2 minutes.
But when he was in there, I don't actually think it was all crowd control. He had the respect of the students, and he was able to teach.
You made an interesting observation about the "cultish" quality of TFA. He said that he had no illusions about how much of himself he was giving. He said his attitude from the start was "This school has 30 teachers. Two of us are TFA. The other 28 are just doing their job." That attitude helped him out a lot, I think.
There's definitely an element of crowd control in the sense that the students are kids; they naturally like to get into trouble, and don't come pre-installed with self-management skills.
I think that it's important to be cognizant of how to manage crowds, but it's easy to get bogged down in just maintaining the peace. There's gotta be a reason to pay attention, a reason to behave, other than "do what I tell you or else"...this is what I meant by lousy teaching.
Sounds like your brother knows what he's doing and I'd bet his students are lucky to have him. With regards to his story about the overhead projector, it brings back fond memories of pretending to leave the room but really just standing right outside the door to see which students were the first to a) realize I'm gone and b) start trouble. The classroom can be a hilarious laboratory for the study of human nature. (I do certainly hope that the victim was alright and that the perpetrator was held responsible.)
He told me that once he left the room for a few minutes because a kid was sick, and heard a huge crash. When he rushed back in, it turned out that a girl had tried to smash the overhead projector on top of the head of another student. Glass was everywhere This was the result of leaving the classroom for 2 minutes.
But when he was in there, I don't actually think it was all crowd control. He had the respect of the students, and he was able to teach.
You made an interesting observation about the "cultish" quality of TFA. He said that he had no illusions about how much of himself he was giving. He said his attitude from the start was "This school has 30 teachers. Two of us are TFA. The other 28 are just doing their job." That attitude helped him out a lot, I think.