Why You’re Tired, Stressed, And Not The Teacher You’d Like To Be

It’s easy to stick with your classroom management plan the first few weeks of the school year. You’re eager to make a fresh start, and your students are on their best behavior.

By week three, you’re cruising. But then… slowly, imperceptibly, things start becoming routine, more day-to-day, and you become a wee bit complacent.

A little voice in the back of your head tells you that you don’t need to be such a stickler. Things are going well, so why not back off some? After all, being inflexible doesn’t suit your personality.

But as your students are becoming more familiar with you and their surroundings, school starts to feel routine for them too.

And they become restless.

Then, subtly at first, they start pushing back. They start testing you.

The Perfect Storm

You know where I’m going with this.

When your ever-so-slight complacency runs headlong into your students’ restlessness, it creates the perfect storm, one that builds slowly and ominously just out of your awareness.

Before you know it, it’s upon you.

Behavior, motivation, and respect take a nosedive. In an instant you go from calm and pleasant, to stressed and snapping at students.

And at the end of a long day you didn’t see coming, you slouch into your desk chair exhausted and wonder where it all went wrong.

Such is the fate of those who abandon even part of their classroom management plan.

Never Waver

Here are seven more reasons why you must never, ever waver from your plan:

1. Parents

A classroom management plan is an insurance policy against parent complaints; it’s fair to all students. If you don’t follow it, then managing your classroom in a way that’s fair—and proving that it’s fair—becomes nearly impossible, opening yourself up to complaints that are difficult to defend against.

2. Respect

For every time you fail to enforce a consequence (i.e., not doing what you said you’d do), you lose a layer of respect from your students. And if your students don’t respect you, you will struggle with classroom management.

3. Stress

When you don’t follow your plan, you’re left with using your voice and your wits—persuasion, intimidation, manipulation—to curb unwanted behavior. Besides being ineffective in the long run, both are pull-your-hair-out stressful.

4. Resentment

Teachers who disregard their classroom management plan are the same teachers who find themselves being ‘that’ teacher—the one they never pictured themselves being: stone-faced, angry, sarcastic. Being this way in an attempt to gain control will virtually guarantee that students will resent you and have every incentive to make your life difficult.

6. Chaos

This one is easy. Your classroom will fall into chaos and disorder without a willingness to stick with the plan you agreed to on the first day of school year. It’s a predictable and inevitable result, one many teachers don’t see coming until it’s too late.

7. Effectiveness

I’ve never known an effective teacher who didn’t have a commitment to following, defending, and enforcing clearly defined boundary lines of behavior. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to be the teacher you want to be without a determination to follow your plan at all (ethical) costs.

Leave The Dirty Work To Your Plan

Teachers struggle mightily with classroom management when they abandon following their classroom management plan exactly as it’s written.

They fall into the trap of reacting emotionally to misbehavior—which makes behavior worse—instead of letting their plan do the dirty work for them.

You owe it to your students, their parents, and to your own sanity to make a commitment to stick with your plan regardless of who breaks a rule or when that rule is broken.

No matter how inconvenient it may seem at the time or how well things seem to be going, no matter how badly you’d like to tell that one student what you’re really thinking or how much you like and respect that other one, when a classroom rule is broken, calmly and assertively do what you said you would do…

And enforce it.

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