Some thoughts about classroom management

It's one of the first things you hear in teacher training--no discipline, no learning. It's also one of the hardest things to learn how to actually "do" if it's not something you're innately good at. It's not a skill you can really "practice" before you hit the real world, yet until you have a handle on classroom discipline, you can't expect to accomplish much in the classroom. It's one of the first lessons you learn as a new teacher, and often, you learn it the "hard way".

How a teacher goes about classroom management and discipline in practice depends largely on their own personal beliefs, and the reality of their school situation. I ran into the article "School discipline: A very quick and totally inadequate teacher primer" on the internet, and thought I'd add my two cents--as the original is written from an administrator's perspective. Am I an expert on the topic? Definitely not, but I happen to agree that regardless of how experienced with or how good you are at classroom discipline, certain moves will always improve your outcomes, and I'm more than willing to share some examples of how these principles have worked for me in various teaching scenarios.

Square One: The first thing to be established at the beginning of the school year is one-on-one relationships between teachers and the students. Young people do not walk into the building on day one intent on mayhem. They have high expectations too. Learn their names, get to know them; just remember you are not their friend, you are the teacher.

I have to fully agree with this. September (or August) is what I call the "honeymoon period". Unless you have a student with serious issues, the usual pattern is that they are not going to pull out their "best moves" in the first couple of weeks. This is a bonus because this is a good time to focus on relationship and community building efforts before the novelty of being back in school wears off and the kids start getting restless.

Square Two: The second thing is to fill up the teaching hour, the school day, and the campus atmosphere with academics. Teach the full period starting on the first day; leave no time for hi-jinks and drama. If you give 25 Harvard professors enough free time, they’ll get into trouble.

Like I always say, "Idle Hands...keep 'em busy." This is what Ken Peterson always said too (in his own way). Make sure you have an interesting, engaging curriculum place, and worthy academic pursuits to fill up your time together. The less downtime you have, the fewer discipline problems you have. (And if the rest of the class is busy, you'll have plenty of time to spot and deal with the kids who for some reason are using their class time for other things.) The purpose of school is learning.

Square Three: If positive relationships cannot be established, and students disrupt learning, make the parent call and give the family the chance to make things right. Do not wait until the fifth student felony to do it. Call early, call often; if a student improves, the parent would love to know that too.

I highly second that statement. One of my favorite moves is calling parents. I've written numerous times about the benefits of doing just that. It takes surprisingly little time to do, really (often less than 3-5 minutes per kid). You just pick 5 kids to call that day, and systematically work your way down the list, rinse and repeat. "Tough cases" usually merit more parental contact (unless for some reason that's proving to be counterproductive), but even the good ones can stand some positive calls home...if nothing else you can always say, "Your kid is so awesome, he/she is an absolute pleasure to have in my class." I tell the kids, "Since I'll be calling anyway, you should ensure that I only have good things to say." This can be tricky with the parents of ELLs, but there are ways to make the contact, even if you have to do it primarily in writing or via third parties...

Square Four: If the menace continues, lower the boom and smack ‘em with the discipline code. But application has to be unemotional, rational, and above all else, fair. The first level of discipline is the classroom teacher, not the principal’s office.

I don't think I've ever sent a kid to a principal's office for disciplinary reasons (although I have been tempted to once or twice, and have had to call security a few times...or threaten to...usually announcing that you will be calling for security and just reaching for the phone has the desired effect). Generally, most things can be dealt with at the classroom level.

For me, discipline is more of an act of prevention, and I try to set kids up to succeed. If a kid requires more than my usual set of moves, there's usually a BIG problem, the sort that probably will require a full-blown intervention team effort to bring junior back into the fold. I rarely encounter anything that doesn't respond to a little light detention or parental contact. The few kids that didn't respond to those interventions were the types who needed behavior contracts, team intervention efforts, psychological evaluations and other heavy duty measures. I've noticed that even kids with rather serious and challenging behavioral issues on their IEPs will respond to some pretty basic moves (facial expressions and mild re-directions) as long as you have the relationship piece in place first.

Re-read square one: You cannot punish, admonish, correct, or chastise someone you don’t know unless you have police authority.

Ha!!! This is the very reason why classroom management when you're subbing is so difficult and trying sometimes! You don't know the kids...the kids don't know you...you pretty much have to rely on a bizarre combination of sheer luck, school sanctioned authority, sheer force of will, and a dynamic stage presence... Classroom management as a sub is really a lot more like playing poker than an exact science. As a sub, you do a lot of bluffing, and hoping no one calls your hand too early in the game. I for one, am not a cop, and I don't play one in the classroom either. This means that usual game plan as a sub is to quickly convince the class that I don't bite...but I don't play either.

The reason parents get away with the many mistakes they make in child rearing is because their children know that mom and dad love them.

And it's when the kids can't rely on that basic entitlement that life in the classroom can get really "colorful". It's certainly true that kids from difficult or dysfunctional home settings can be terrors in school settings, but due to the profoundly different nature of your relationship (you're not the parent), you can often achieve reasonably good results if you're willing to put in the effort.

Kids are smart, and for the most part, reasonable. New students give teachers an adequate length of rope to see what they will do with it. Don’t hang yourself.

I think this is one of my greatest strengths in working with kids...I'm pretty good at figuring most kids out, and patient enough to attempt it even with the tougher, more resistant ones. I can usually infer when to push, and when to wait and try again later. The key is to look at the big picture, and never waste valuable energy fighting any battles that don't need to be fought. Nobody's perfect, and some days I'll show up a bit sleep deprived, or nursing a cold, so I'll be in a crabby mood. When I feel awful myself, I tend to be snappy or irritable. If I mess up somewhere along the way, I try to fix it (what Ken Peterson calls "repair moves").

Re-read square two: Just before the Christmas break (excuse me, Winter hiatus) I asked a first year teacher of freshman English at an urban high school that was 90% black and Latino why it was she had never sent me a discipline referral. The petite, female, Caucasian, University of Wyoming graduate looked at me and said: ‘We don’t have time for trouble, we’re too busy.’ Bingo! This lass taught well-prepared, engaging lessons from the second the bell rung to start class until the bell rung to end it. She was teaching, the kids were learning, and they loved her for it. Kids can spot a phony.

She obviously is a much better person than me (9th graders!!!), but the lesson remains the same...no downtime, no problems. She's probably also very patient and understanding with 9th graders...something I'm not, for some reason...

This example illustrates another point--know thyself. Know who you are, and do what you love. If your calling is to teach in the inner city, or in an area with a lot of racial/ethnic/language diversity, by all means go for it--people who are effective are badly needed. However, if you know deep in your heart that you're most effective with upper class white suburban TAG kids, don't inflict yourself on a Title I school (and spend all your free time whining about how much you hate everything about it). If you aren't sure, there's ways to figure it out. You can spend some time subbing, or volunteering, or doing something that's low risk until you figure out where your strengths are as a teacher.

If you don’t like kids, do everybody a favor and quit.

Amen! I'm always meeting or hearing about people who went to all the trouble to get certified to teach, taught for a few years, then came to the stunning realization that although they love math, science, history, art, whatever--they don't particularly like kids. Huh?!? You would think that would be one of the first things they should have figured out before you spent thousands of dollars on schooling. Or worse, they figure that because they were a TA in college, they'll automatically be just as effective with children. Ha! Yes, I realize that jobs are scarce out there, and that may be the reason why they show up to work every day. But seriously, if you're not feeling the magic, give someone else a chance to do their thing. I have seen plenty of teachers that are just going through the motions. Poor kids...they do notice...trust me, they do.

As a teacher I had two rules. The first was not to stop me from teaching. The second was not to stop another student from learning. Kids get it. If you mean it, and you enforce your rules fairly, they cooperate.

Sure, once you train them... Seriously though, it does help to frame the issue of discipline in a context students understand (my rights). No one likes it when someone infringes on their rights...students do get that, although some need more help than others with the empathy factor.

No one can make you like kids.

That should be the number one concern of people who hire teachers...does the candidate like kids? The best teachers I've ever seen in my life were the kinds of people you could tell really like kids--and are passionate about their subject area. They usually have pictures of kids all over their walls. Their rooms tend to have that "child friendly feel to them". They usually have lots of funny stories about the things one of "their kids" did just the other day. They tend to have notes or drawings from students near their desks. They also usually have a lot of visible evidence that their classroom is a fun place to learn about whatever subject they happen to teach. Regardless of what they teach, you can tell they genuinely enjoy (and get) kids. When I talk to people who are contemplating becoming teachers, that's what I ask them too:

A college student: "I'd love to teach high school math..."

Me: "Why? Do you like teenagers?"

College student: "I don't know...I'm not sure...I hadn't thought about it."

Me: "Well you better figure that out first..."

It's worth remembering that kids generally have to attend school whether they want to or not. Some kids come to school every day and are excited about learning and being there (in the teen years, that's maybe 5% of the student body). Some kids in fact are so into school that you literally have to make them leave. The rest, however, may feel ambivalent at best about your subject area, or school in general. Generally speaking, you can't learn about things you don't care about from someone you don't like (and who doesn't like you). It's really hard to put any effort towards something for someone who you suspect doesn't like or respect you. Kids are very perceptive that way, and are pretty good at spotting someone who's faking it. You may not convince kids to love your subject area on it's own merits, but often, if you have the right kind of relationship, they'll at least make more of an effort, if for no other reason, than to try to please you. (The college version of this is taking a class that you don't necessarily need just because you've heard the professor is really amazing.) I've seen kids that loathed reading and writing come religiously to the after-school tutoring sessions (run by teachers) for no obvious reason that I could fathom--it wasn't compulsory. Sure they got some work done while they were there, but I don't think that's the main reason why they were coming every week. After being puzzled by it, I really think that a lot of the motivation was just have a more personal one-on-one relationship with their teachers. (And these were teenage boys with a lot of behavior problems!)

"Schools are not difficult to run, if you’re logical and can juggle dynamite." Or herd cats. Or perform miracles...

Source: School discipline: A very quick and totally inadequate teacher primer
March 26, 2009, http://www.examiner.com/x-3865-Chicago-Public-Education-Examiner~y2009m3d26-School-discipline--A-very-quick-and-totally-inadequate-teacher-primer