Classroom Leadership Styles

Leadership is a relationship between people, where leaders influence other people toward mutual relation to get something the leader wants. Leadership greatly determines success over management, and also determines the success of the administration. This means that the leader will determine whether or not the goal is achieved.

In school as organizations, classroom leadership style is important. This is because many teaching and learning activities are held in the classroom. In class, the teacher acts as the leader. Therefore, the teacher is obliged to supervise student learning activities, make teaching plans for his class, conduct management learning as well as possible, conduct classroom management, regulate class discipline.

Ideally in the teaching and learning process that becomes the center of learning is students. Because students as parties who want to achieve goals and have their own goals. Conversely, the teacher becomes a determining factor to be able to influence everything needed to achieve both short and long term goals.

The teacher also has the role of providing facilities for achieving goals through adequate learning experiences and fostering personal aspects such as values, attitudes, and adjustments for students. This is what makes classroom leadership style important.

The purpose of classroom leadership includes:
• Realizing class situations and conditions, as a learning environment and as a learning group, which allows students to develop abilities as much as possible.
• Eliminating various obstacles that can hinder the realization of learning interactions.
• Providing and managing learning facilities and furniture that support and enable students to learn in accordance with the social, emotional and intellectual environment of students in the classroom.
• Fostering and guiding students according to their social, economic, cultural and individual characteristics.

In general, the factors that influence classroom management are divided into two groups, namely, internal factors and external factors of students. Student internal factors related to emotional problems, thoughts, and behavior. Students' personalities with their respective characteristics cause students to be different from other students as individuals.

This individual difference is seen in terms of aspects, namely biological, intellectual, and psychological differences. External factors of students are related to the problem of the atmosphere of the learning environment, student placement, student grouping, number of students, and so on.

The problem of the number of students in the class will color the class dynamics. The more the number of students in the class, for example twenty people and above will tend to be easier for conflict to occur. Conversely the fewer the number of students in the class tend to be smaller conflicts occur.

Read also: Compassion and Leadership

Because of this dynamic, a teacher as a class leader must be able to have the right classroom leadership style. In order to minimize interference problems in classroom management, classroom leadership principles can be used, which include:

a) Warm and enthusiastic --- Warm and enthusiastic needed in the teaching and learning process. Teachers who are warm and familiar with students always show enthusiasm for their assignments or in their activities will succeed in implementing classroom management.

b) Challenges --- The use of words, actions, ways of working, or challenging materials will increase students' enthusiasm for learning thereby reducing the likelihood of deviant behavior.

c) Varied --- The use of tools or media, teacher teaching styles, patterns of interaction between teachers and students will reduce the appearance of interference, increase students' attention. This variation is the key to achieving effective classroom management and avoiding saturation.

d) Flexibility --- The flexibility of teacher behavior to change his teaching strategy can prevent the possibility of student interference and create an effective teaching and learning climate. The flexibility of teaching can prevent the appearance of disturbances such as student commotion, no attention, no assignments and so on.

e) Emphasis on Positive Things --- Basically in teaching and educating, the teacher must emphasize positive things and avoid focusing on negative things. Emphasis on positive things is the emphasis that the teacher puts on positive student behavior rather than nagging negative behavior.

f) Cultivation of Self-Discipline --- The ultimate goal of class management is that students can develop their own discipline and the teacher himself should be an example of self-control and implementation of responsibility. So, the teacher must be disciplined in everything if he wants his students to be disciplined in everything.

In addition, here is an example of an ideal teacher classroom leadership style.
• Be fair and not favoritism towards students
• empathizing and being kind to the school community and society
• Responsible and helpful to other individuals
• Calm and stable emotions
• Familiar, unpretentious, and have a sense of humor
• Dynamic personality, which is interesting, agile, and fun
• Have high intelligence
• Have high imagination
• Speak straight and behave civilized
• Have patience when guiding students, including naughty students
• Be open, honest and sincere to their students and colleagues
• Be assertive in upholding school discipline and task learning
• Prioritizing the accuracy and accuracy of services to dedicated and diligent students in carrying out the main and supporting tasks