Classroom Management

As we reach the end of the year, I've been doing a lot of reflection on the practice of teaching. This is part of that series. Today's topic is classroom management.

What type of classroom management structures do you implement? This depends in part on the setting. The overall principles are the same, regardless of the environment, but the specifics depend on the context and realities of the school and the kinds of students I have.

For me, discipline, and classroom management are a proactive enterprise, they're all-pervasive, and so entwined within the context of the entire classroom experience that they are in effect nearly invisible to the students (they're only really aware of small pieces of the entire puzzle). To me though, classroom management structures and routines are very much planned out and executed very deliberately. Once in place, they're strategically fine tuned until they're almost inevitable.

The first piece for me happens at the environmental level. Whenever possible, I arrange the room so that I can see absolutely everything happening in it. I put supplies where the students can access them easily, but where I can monitor what's happening with them. I create a mix of different types of seating possibilities, so there's something that will work for nearly everyone. I have a lot of student-created material posted on the walls, and have the students decorate the room, so it feels very student friendly when they come in. I put little bits of my personal life around the room so students can get a sense of who I am. The room, although very much a classroom in appearance, also tends to develop a very home-y feel to it.

The second piece is in the routines. I learned the importance of routines from Special Education teachers, who are the undisputed champions of routines. The specific routines depend mightily on what I'm teaching and what kind of schedule we're on, but overall I tend to do things in a very predictable sequence that changes very little. Once students have been in class for a few days, they could tell you exactly what to expect because the routines are very simple and seem completely obvious. During my last class, the daily routine consisted of the following:

1. SSR (Silent Reading) 15-20 minutes for students to unwind, relax, and read something of their choice. 2. Warm up exercise: A short exercise to introduce the day's topic, sometimes in the form of a game. 3. Main assignments: The main work period where students work (mostly) independently. 4. Review/Vocab quiz: A time for either reviewing assignments, or doing a short vocabulary quiz. 5. Question of the Day (an end of class exit slip procedure that was a transition cue, review, and behavior management tool wrapped into one)

Conveying expectations are the key to managing all of the routines, so this is a time to set up parameters for expected behavior, and how it varies depending on context. These are the occasions when students get to hear my most famous behavior management "lines". For instance, silent reading is not a time for talking, so I might say something like, "You can tell her about that in 20 minutes." Another example, is that work-time is prime-time for getting work done, so if a student is off-task, I might say something like, "You are more than welcome to enjoy that when you're finished." The idea, then is to reinforce the routine, not make a big deal out of the behavior itself. It's a subtle difference, but it basically a way of reinforcing the importance of the routine, and staying on track, without giving the student an opportunity to discuss the occurrence or non-occurrence of a specific behavior. For instance, if you tell a student to stop talking, they may argue and say, "But I wasn't talking." This puts an end-run on that game.

Relationships are the third ingredient, but I've written about that topic elsewhere, so won't rehash it here. It's the key ingredient to buying a great deal of cooperation, and worth any time you invest in it. Routine number 5, in particular, addresses this piece because it's a communication tool.

The importance (or non-importance) of rules: aside from the school rules, I don't tend to have a lot of "rules" because there's really only about 3-5 things that are terribly important at any given time. And I don't do the democracy in action thing where I let students "vote" on the rules. I know what it is I'm looking for, and you can sum it up with one phrase: "Doing the right thing at the right time." So generally, I don't have lists of rules posted on the walls. Students know the rules, especially by the time they're in high school. The main things I'm interested in, as a teacher, are is the room a safe place for everyone, and are people able to learn without unnecessary distraction. Anything that detracts from those two considerations is dealt with in a variety of ways.

Generally, the discipline stays pretty subtle, and the focus is always on the behavior, not the person. So I usually use pretty low level moves to deal with the common stuff: If a student is talking, I ask them to get back to work. If a student says something rude, I inform them that this is not a place for saying that. If they're off-track because they really need more help, then I address that issue. The importance of this is that I usually get what I need (cooperation), without having to expend much of my arsenal of moves, and without creating an opening for conflict or defensiveness. This takes care of 85% of the room, and leaves me more energy for dealing with the serious stuff.

More advanced moves: Naturally there are those times when subtle isn't working and a student is creating a serious disruption by their behavior. They didn't respond to the lower level hints, and seem to need something more from me. Or maybe they went from 0-60 in record time, and committed a capital offense out of nowhere. Usually in either case, the real issue is a personal one, and has nothing to do with class, but the student's inability to deal with it, means they've brought it to you and dumped it on your desk, so to speak. My number one objective is to avoid putting on a good show for the class, so I quickly separate the student from his or her appreciative audience, go outside and have a private talk about whatever's really going on. If the student can't or won't talk about it then, I either give them space to cool off, give them the option of talking to someone else, or going to another classroom for awhile. This gives them a chance to calm down, and gives me a chance to really analyze the situation and figure out how I want to deal with the problem from there. Usually the outcome of these incidents is the student apologizes to me for causing a scene, and I tell them "it's okay, it happens, we can move on", and things go back to normal. Chronic situations (where the student has dramatic blowouts on a regular basis) work a bit differently, but the underlying principles are the same. The difference is that you have to do a lot more training on "how life works" (social skills training) with these kinds of students, and your overall tactics are geared towards long-term improvement, rather than addressing short-term behaviors.

The end result of all of this, is that I get to spend most of my time in class actually teaching students, and overt discipline is kept to a minimum because most of the time it doesn't take much to get students back on track. I don't have to resort to fancy incentive systems, class behavior charts, assertive discipline, or anythings that's fancy and time consuming. The rewards for going with the flow are a bit more subtle, but the students usually enjoy the overall experience of being in class, and I don't usually have to do anything real fancy to earn their cooperation. The beauty of staying on track for the students is they get more free time if they finish their work, and they realize that pretty early on, so it makes my life a lot easier.