The five critically important domains or areas listed below make up the broad topic of classroom management. Each domain is briefly touched on here, with more detailed discussions to follow, both in this chapter and in subsequent chapters.

1. Academic Instruction: In this area, you must shine as a teacher because your students need top-notch instruction and because you must keep your job if you want to continue helping kids.

2. Time Management: If you give in to the natural human tendency to be lackadaisical and sloppy, you're finished — and your students will never know how truly great you might've become.

3. Discipline: You can't teach if your students are fighting and screaming in the classroom. Good discipline is a form of tough love, consisting of firm yet compassionate guidance.

4. Relationship Building: To be effective, you must build professional working relationships with students, parents, colleagues, administrators, the school board, and the community.

5. Job Protection: If you're not in the classroom, you can't teach. Don't lose your job and cheat your students because of avoidable mistakes.

Each of these domains is equally important and together they are critical to your success as a teacher. Think of these five domains as functioning collectively, like a well-built staircase carrying you safely upward to teaching excellence.

Your daily teaching performance and the success of your entire teaching career will depend on how well you master the rudiments of each of these domains — academic instruction, time management, discipline, relationship building, and job protection.