There is a phenomenon common among many who teach in the toughest schools.
It’s something that skews their perspective.
It tricks them, lies to them, and pulls them down into a state of pessimism.
As they walk the hallways, overhearing ‘F’ bombs, put-downs, and appalling derision, it whispers to them.
It whispers to them when they see the latest tests scores and battle their way through yet another talkative lesson.
It whispers to them when they witness daily malaise, boredom, sneaky AirPods, and indifference toward learning.
And it darn near yells at them as they make their way to the parking lot after another disheartening day.
It says, “Your students can’t do it.”
It tells them that the situation is hopeless, that their students are too far gone, so shaped and bent by bad influences that the good doesn’t stand a chance.
That civility and work ethic has been lost.
But it’s all a lie. It’s a lie told by a liar from the pit of Screwtape, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles.
If you teach in an especially challenging environment, what you’re witnessing every day isn’t who the students really are or what they’re capable of. You’re in a Matrix that tricks you into thinking that in some places and with some students it isn’t possible.
So who is this liar?
It’s your school culture. It’s the permissiveness, the astoundingly low expectations, and the capitulation of standards every one of us knows deep down is best for students.
It’s a systemic failure that views a 1% improvement in abysmal reading scores as something to crow about. It’s a focus on everything but challenging content and high behavioral standards.
It’s pretending that everything is hunky-dory while a thief slips in and robs our students of the right to a good education.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you have to stand for it.
It doesn’t mean that you have to accept the lie. Your school and district may be in disarray and failing your students, but you’re free to see the world as it really is and do something about it.
You, after all, control the world within your classroom—at least, in a classroom management sense. Yes, it’s difficult when chaos runs roughshod over everything around you.
Creating a polite, well-behaved, and hardworking classroom within a bad school culture is one of the greatest challenges in teaching.
But it’s doable for anyone feisty enough to say, “Not on my watch.”
The SCM approach, as detailed in our books and guides, will give you the knowledge and skill you need to transform any group of students, no matter how bad things have gotten.
This is our promise.
And week after week we’ll continue bring you the most effective strategies you can find anywhere.
In the meantime, however, what follows are three critical keys to creating a classroom culture that stands apart from that which has infected your school.
1. Take your time.
The only way to make a change in a culture gone far astray is to slow everything down. It’s the most powerful and effective thing you can do to begin removing indifference and immaturity and restoring a sense of purpose.
It breaks the long chain of apathy, raises the level of seriousness and scholarship, and inclines students toward the crucial role education plays in their future.
So move slower, speak deliberately and less frequently, and pause often. In between, teach and model every little detail you want your students to do or to know to the highest standard.
—Including such trivials as how to sit, open a laptop, hold a pencil, and ask a question. Often glossed over, it’s the little things that hold the secret to opening the door to knowledge and excellence.
2. Make them prove it.
There should be accountability in everything you teach your students, and for every moment of the day, including expectations and routines. It’s the fundamental element in changing attitudes and behaviors, acting as a predictable lever and path to high achievement.
As such, you must require your students to prove to you they understand and have learned well the content of your lessons by doing, performing, or otherwise mirroring back to you what you’ve taught them.
For everything.
This requires expert instruction, clear expectations, and true independent practice. A school day or period with you should be an experience in commitment, concentration, and one success after the next.
This in turn very effectively builds true and sustained confidence and ignites the joy of learning.
3. Hold them to it.
There must be a consequence for anyone who disrupts or refuses to cooperate with any of the above. As long as your consequences are taught in detail and enforced consistently, it heaps upon students a hard but healthy choice:
Either be part of something special or be separated from it and left behind.
Yes, it’s tough love and not for the faint of heart. But here’s the kicker: Done right and with patience, using the strategies we recommend here at SCM, no student can resist.
They all love the feeling of legitimate, independent success and self-improvement. They crave it. It’s addicting when experienced and virtually irresistible.
Students long for connection to something bigger than themselves and the pride that comes with acquiring skill and competency.
Lead them there, show them what it feels like, and nothing about your classroom will resemble your school’s toxic culture.
An Oasis
There is a lot to this topic, which we’ll be sure to revisit with more specificity in future articles. But I encourage you, if you haven’t already, take the time to dig into our archive.
Study the classroom management plan guides (right sidebar) until they become second nature.
As for books, if you’re an elementary teacher, I recommend The Classroom Management Secret. If you teach high school, The Happy Teacher Habits.
If you’re a longtime SCM reader, The Smart Classroom Management Way will take you to the next level.
And if you want a step-by-step guide that will tell you exactly what to do and what not to do, check out The Total Classroom Management Makeover. The content isn’t new, but the simplicity and delivery of the material is.
If you invest the time to learn our approach, no school on earth can stop you from creating an oasis of truth and excellence in what may very well be a vast desert of dysfunction and disarray.
Finally, if there are topics you’d like us to cover in 2020, please leave a comment below or click on the contact tab along the menu bar and email us.
We’re here to serve you.
If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
Thank you for addressing this. Students pick up on your thought and intent within 2 minutes when you first meet them
I feel like I can’t enforce my classroom rules because I feel like my class is so boring, my kids have no recourse but to act out. There’s not really ever any draw for them to want to do good. I teach 9th grade Algebra. I’m not sure how to, as you say in Happy Teacher Habits, “have fun” and “engage students”.
Can you write more details about how to relax and have fun?
I hear you. I also teach 9th grade Algebra, but in an at-risk environment. This article speaks volumes about issues I’m currently facing, along with trying to prepare disengaged students for a state-mandated, required-for-graduation test. The high-stakes testing has sucked the marrow out of teaching.
Try to find Algebra teachers in other schools to connect with. There are professional organizations that have listservs and Facebook groups. Search for lessons outside of your prescribed curriculum. Here is a book I found on Amazon Teaching Math in Fun and Relevant Ways (A Compilation of 14 Algebra-Based Lessons to Use in Your Classroom) Perfect Paperback – 2018. There is also a cArtoon Guide to Algebra. Find interesting, but structured ways to vary the way the lesson is presented and practiced each day. Lastly, tell the students why you like math and how learning it will be helpful.
Teaching math is a special challenge, but it can be fun for your and your students. It might require a lot of work to shift from a school culture of “let’s get ready for the tests” (which students don’t care about and is boring) to a classroom culture of “let’s really dig in and understand the mathematics here ” (which is intrinsically interesting because, as Michael points out, everyone has a drive towards mastery). Make it visual, make it relevant, make it inquiry-based so that students have to think and not just memorize. Here are some math resources I would recommend to help start rethinking what math class looks like:
https://www.saravanderwerf.com/
https://makemathmoments.com/
https://robertkaplinsky.com/
https://www.youcubed.org/
Hi Emma. I teach High School math as well. I regularly use puzzles, riddles and even math magic tricks to get them curious about learning. It’s a nice diversion from the standard notetaking and independent practice routines. Look up wodb.ca (it’s a website, amazing). Google 15-second graphing stories. Print out Kakuro and Hashi puzzles (similar to Sudoku). YouTube search math magic tricks and games. YOU CAN MAKE IT FUN. Math is awesome. Check out a few resources at http://www.sint.org
How about coming up with a management plan specially geared toward middle school? The elementary school ideas are too young for 7th graders and the high school ideas are too old for 7th graders.
Middle-schoolers are a whole different animal! They are trying not to be thought of as “babies” any more, but they have great difficulty taking on responsibilities. I teach in a suburban middle school, but the problems with discipline there are also frequent and serious. Also, parents are less likely to buy into rules and discipline codes– it’s as if they think that when their children hit middle school, they become less in need of parental control/guidance. For a teacher, it’s exhausting. I have a management plan, I stick to it, and the problem behaviors with a segment of each class continue.
Just a thought… a handbook for middle school teachers.
Thanks!
Michael Linsin has already addressed this in his book High School. It has helped me so much! https://smartclassroommanagement.com/the-smart-classroom-management-plan-for-high-school-teachers/
Yes please!! I substitute teach at the middle school level, in large part because very few subs are willing to work with this age group. I regularly encounter classrooms in which students enter the room so rowdy it takes 20 minutes to take attendance, some students are huddling under the tables crying with their hands over their ears, and others are climbing on top of bookcases to bombard classmates with books. Initially I thought it was me, but school security, para educators, and the lost well behaved students all tell me the disruptive students are better behaved with me than with the regular teacher. It’s really hard to follow key SCM principles, such as waiting and watching, when some students are so brazenly disrespectful. However, I’ve found that there is some improvement if I give 1:1 attention, starting with the better behaved students. All this to say, classroom management is at crisis point in many middle school classrooms so a specific focus on remediating classroom management for this age cohort would be wonderful. Also, specific advice for subs who walk into a classroom in which the regular teacher’s management is not working would be helpful.
What I do is I tell they kids I will call every number on the roster EXCEPT the students that are following my rules. Then I start to publicly get the names of those who are doing well. They start quieting down then! Works like a charm EVERY time!
Yes! Thank you for talking about school culture. So many schools are like this these days. Chaotic and unruly places. Apathetic administrators who just sweep behavior under the rug so as to not have bad “data” to present. Teachers stressed out and pushed to the limit.
More than anything else, we need to fix school culture if we want to improve public education.
As a classroom teacher, I had only so much authority to truly hold students accountable. I spent at least 5 to 6 hours every week on parental contact. Administration didn’t want to hold students responsible because everything boils down to statistics now. After a 28-year teaching career in a variety of settings, I decided to early retire before I became seriously injured.
Hi Kathy,
Unfortunately you are not alone in making this difficult decision. I use to joke that I was a middle school teacher because I was afraid of the under 3 foot tall set. Lower elementary students would always give me a big grin when they heard me say this. For the last few years my son has taken to greeting me when I get home at the end of a school day with “Any serious injuries?” Bruises that last for more than a week no longer qualify as worth mentioning. Black eyes that last weeks? Administrators scolded me for not taking better care in covering them with makeup.
I’m now working as a longterm substitute teacher. The pay is even worse than teacher salary pay, but I can leave an assignment at any moment. Subs in my district receive what the district calls “High Needs Schools Rate” and subs call “Hazard Pay” for working in the most out of control schools. You’d think the financial cost of poor school culture would motivate administrators. Nope.
Best of luck as you transition to the next chapter of your life.
Karen
Thank you for posting this. I’m dreading going back to work on Monday because of the school culture. It’s not the students or the work at which I balk: it’s the teachers who yell all day, complain about even minor things, and overall bring in an aura of doom-and-gloom into the classrooms. I have thought, “If I don’t want to be here (and I’m not a student having to take assessments), how much less do the kids?” Thank you for the encouragement, support, and hope. It’s been mentioned that I could be like Miss Honey from the movie Matilda. Your strategies will help me reach this goal.
Looking at this as a longtime teacher, wrapping up and going into sub teaching. What suggestions do you have for those of us in classrooms where we have a short time to make an impact? I believe that the students are accountable, and that I have expectations of 1. follow school rules/procedures 2. follow classroom rules/procedures 3. do your work 4. complete other work (only you know what you have to do)
sub teacher? 1. safe class 2. follow teacher plans as near as possible 3. Army vet/20+ year teacher(HQT)/40+ coach
Expectations: admin, teacher, student, and parents are all striving as am I for the best for this student (why bring ideals less than this to something you love to do?)
WHAT OF US WHO HELP KEEP THE CLASS GOING WHILE TEACHER IS OUT OR TRAINING?
Thank you for these encouraging words! Your weekly posts always are food for my teaching soul! Carry on colleagues!!
I very loudly, although digitally :), second KW’s sentiments. I truly appreciate the content and encouragement of your posts each week! Mondays are rarely the most settling thought, but your insight always offers a hopeful and helpful nugget to ponder.
Thank you for finally beginning to write about School Culture/Climate.
I have taught in a number of schools, and sadly I am finding that in nearly every one, Administrators are lowering the bar for high expectations for students. It makes my life as a teacher even more of a challenge. What are these Administrators learning in their programs when they are becoming Administrators? I am dumbfounded.
Do you have any advice on working with paras and/or volunteers who are under qualified? I’m not provided any time to train or meet with them without the students being present. They’re all well intentioned but make my classroom chaotic. It’s mostly things like: babying the kids, chatting loudly, constantly moving around, doing everything for the kids, hovering over the kids, not paying attention when I’m giving directions… My school has very low standards for the non-professional staff.
These are all great comments from teachers. I’m only going to throw in my two cents on working with The Paras, or instructional aides. I teach HS art. I have requested to them to NOT use their cell phones in my class, because the students aren’t allowed to either. AND I ask them to do the art project also, because then they will be able to scaffold or reteach it to the individual they’re working with. Sometimes they look at me like I’m crazy, sometimes they do the project and surprise themselves that they enjoyed it. Hope this helps.
You know what? I know a school, hint, hint, where it also looks a bit like nobody cares anymore and the students couldn’t care less. But there is a certain teacher, and whenever she shows up in the corridor or in the classroom, she somehow transforms the whole place into a different school. All of a sudden, the shouting students calm down and everybody makes sure they hear what she tells them. They love her classes and even try to discuss all kinds of problems with her personally, as the students trust this woman. Of course, you may say, she is a natural. But you know what? If you go through everything Michael Linsin advises us to do and not to do, it seems as if she has studied all that carefully. She hasn’t. But we can learn a lot. I have seen a lot of progress in my relationship with students. So each one of us, teachers, can transform the school at which we teach, not the place as it is, the school may not change objectively, but the universe it becomes whenever we show up.
Just as some are requesting middle school specifics …I would love to know of kindergarten specifics.
I second the need for material for substitutes.
But in a class, where the teacher attributes the failure to the children, it is very tough to manage. In that situation, how to motivate the teacher for better learning of all children???
I would also love a specific guide for middle school. I have read all your books and read your posts religiously. Middle school presents its own unique challenges that need specific strategies. Thanks in advance!!
There is an important root problem in this whole situation that isn’t mentioned enough, and that is the student’s home environment. Just as the teacher can be taught to bring about change in his/her own own classroom environment, so too can the school be instrumental in changing students’ home environment. Parenting classes should be made mandatory for parents of students in preschool through grade 8, with no apologies offered. Among other things, these classes should address school related issues including instruction on how to guide one’s kids through homework hour. (Wow, you mean the parent(s) should show the child, on a daily basis, that they are interested in their child’s academic progress and that they, the parent(s) will not accept lack of effort? Yes! that’s exactly what I mean.) The school should also stipulate that parents who don’t attend the parenting classes as scheduled will be required to attend makeup sessions, or shouldn’t expect their failing child to be promoted. Of course, the administration would have to show that they mean business and stick to these rules. This, too, would contribute to a positive change of attitude and atmosphere in the classroom.
That’s insane. Govt should stay out of the home and stop trying to control parents. So impertinent Smh
Hi Michael,
Thanks as always for the great content and Happy New Year! Regarding topics to possibly be covered in 2020, I’ve actually been thinking about this one for awhile: how about a post on seating charts? I’m just curious as to your all-around thoughts on these long-trusted devices including, but not limited to, should students who “have to be separated” be separated or should the teacher just give the appropriate consequence (as outlined in their classroom management plan) for each instance of misbehavior and leave it at that? Thanks again!
Hi Michael,
I loved your article and resonated with it strongly.
In the near future, it would be very much appreciated if you could address an alternative classroom management plan for high school teachers.
I bought your book and read it, only to find that I can’t use the ‘points’ system to influence students’ grades because our curriculum standards do not allow it in my country. Their academic grades can only come from their performance in assessments.
Thanks and have a great year this 2020.