If you take misbehavior personally, then you’re weakening your ability to manage your classroom.
You’re also:
Creating stress.
Building resentment.
Increasing the odds you’ll lash out at your students.
But you’re not alone. Scores of teachers struggle with this.
So what to do about it?
Well, first it’s important to understand how detrimental the problem is. When you feel frustration, anger, or hurt in response to misbehavior, you’re taking its burden upon yourself.
This isn’t your intent, of course. But it’s the effect. Students can sense when their actions affect you. It’s something you can’t hide.
To the degree you experience these feelings is subtracted from the weight of responsibility on your students. It’s a phenomenon many teachers never grasp, but it’s as sure as the Northern Lights.
The outcome is that the same students continue to break the same rules again and again. They also henceforth hold the power in the relationship, pushing your buttons nearly at will.
Part of the solution is simply being aware of it. What you’re thinking and feeling inside—and revealing on the outside—when a student breaks a rule has a powerful effect. In fact, this alone can be the difference between chaos and peace.
Just knowing is half the battle and can be all the impetus you need to remain calm no matter the behavior. Just water off a duck’s back.
However, to tackle the root of the problem, and rid yourself of all unnecessary internal strife, we must look to 19th century psychologist Alfred Adler.
Adler believed, and millions can attest, that healthy relationships stem from what he called a “separation of tasks.” A separation of tasks entails focusing solely on what are your responsibilities.
In other words, you aren’t to interfere with the tasks that belong to others—which also includes any associated mental burdens. This doesn’t mean that you won’t or shouldn’t have empathy or offer encouragement, far from it.
It just means that you’re going to allow your classroom management plan to do its job fully and completely. It isn’t your task to feel bad about your students’ misbehavior or to try and control how they think or feel about it.
Taking on any strain or encumbrance hurts both you and them.
You end up stressed-out and resentful and they lose out on the life lessons they need to develop into kind, responsible, and contributing adults.
Accountability is going by the wayside in all areas of society chiefly because of a misunderstanding of compassion. It’s not permissiveness. It’s not blaming outside circumstances. It’s not allowing students to listen to music while working or talk during instruction.
Or treat you with disrespect.
Compassion in a school setting is protecting every student’s right to learn and enjoy school and your right to teach them without interference. It’s letting them feel the full weight of their mistakes, failures, decisions, and responsibilities.
It’s refraining from yelling, scolding, glaring, lecturing, or any other harmful or manipulative reaction in favor of letting your classroom management plan do its good work.
It’s embracing your responsibility, which is to teach great lessons and provide a clean and safe environment, and then shifting in total the responsibility to listen, learn, and behave where it belongs.
With your students.
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NEVER have I EVER disagreed with any of your advise. Thank you for always putting things into perspective.
I’m wondering about an issue that I’ve had in one of my 8th grade classes. It feels like you’ve written about it before but I wanted to ask. This class never misses an opportunity to display their disgust with school, a lesson, my teaching, etc. “I hate this”. Or “this is dumb”, or whatever they’re feeling. Normally I react with “I understand that it’s not what you want to be doing but there is purpose in school and the things we learn.” Then I equate it unspecifically to something I don’t love about my job and remind them that I will never waste their time in school. But it feels disrespectful and I wonder if my conversation is enough. This is also my lowest performing class.
What medium does your class like to use – hands on, action, more speaking less writing – I’m wondering if the answer lies here?
When do the fun comments come – what have you done differently in these times?
You have challenged me to become curious about your situation – thank-you
It feels disrespectful because it is disrespectful. I wonder what would happen by simply saying, “It sounds like you don’t enjoy learning (validating their feelings), however if you are disrespectful about it, x consequence will occur because you are interfering with other students’ right to learn in a positive environment.” Absolutely don’t argue with them about that. Express the consequence and move on. Saying that there is purpose in school and the things we learn and that you will not waste their time in school when they clearly feel that it IS a purposeless waste of time is not going to get them to buy into wanting to do or enjoy lessons. Similarly, they probably don’t care that there are aspects of your job that you don’t care for but still do because it’s necessary. They are unable to equate that with compassion for you or the life lesson that there’s just things in life that have to be done whether we like it or not. Just my thoughts based on what Michael has written about.
What consequence would you give?
One easy one I’ve done is have students copy a rule or an “inspirational sentence” for HW or after class (or while others have free time).
Eg:
For 3rd grade: “Respect everyone.” x10 for each offense
For middle school “Show respect to people even when they don’t deserve it. Respect is a reflection of your character, not theirs.” x10
I had that with my 8th graders my first year teaching middle school, and it was hard because I was putting a lot of time and money into developing my curriculum. A high-school teacher friend told me I could bring in puppies and some would complain, which helped me let go.
I found that the amount of students expressing dislike of what we were doing went drastically down when I stopped letting those comments bother me. Now if they say anything, I can just let it go with a, “sorry you feel that way”/”not everyone will like every activity we do” or when they don’t want to do the work, I tease gently with “oh dear, a teacher expecting you to do work at school!” They usually laugh and move on. I think it fits into putting responsibility where it belongs.
That being said, of course part of our responsibility is designing engaging and hands-on learning.
Have a video about kids in other countries who would give anything to be in school? Education is an enormous privilege of the few and we are extremely blessed in this country to have free public education available to all children. Even a video of kids working in the garbage dumps in Brazil to get food for their families. A class project to do something for others will help change self centered and extremely miopic attitudes common to teenagers.
I ‘ve been told by our Principal that not doing homework is tha Teacher’ s fault.
Never such an excuse from a student though 😁
I cannot stop reacting to my students’ misbehavior. Everything bothers me. I suffer from Sensory Perception Sensitivity, so noises like pencil tapping, constantly smacking calculators on the table, or high pitched whistling set me off on an emotional episode.
The constant talking bothers me to no end. The getting up to sharpen pencils, asking for pencils, asking to go to the bathroom or get water, the slamming of binders on the floor, etc make me want to quit teaching.
My blood pressure is through the roof.
Help.
I have noticed that these behaviors behaviors have become more frequent in recent years. I have never heard of Sensory Perception Sensitivity but I know that I can lose my train of thought quickly if interrupted by noises and movements. I also have had students, who are not showing the behaviors, tell me the noises distract them. Sometimes, I find it difficult to distinguish between a fidgety student and a deliberate student. With masks, identifying the source of some noises is difficult. No matter whether the noises and motions are deliberate or not, they are disrupting the learning environment and need to be addressed. This year, I have spent too many prep periods strategizing with students, parents, and school counselors about how to get students to take responsibility for changing these behaviors. They are violating both class and school rules. This week I had one student say “I am sorry I am bothering you but I just like to talk to my friends”. Another student said “Why don’t you just talk over me?” Your last paragraph describes my most challenging class. Coincidently, the other class that had similar issues has more parents who engage with me.
You are correct the students this year have no remorse for any misbehavior. They feel an entitlement to everything. To discipline them is funny. If I give a detention for something they are even acting out in detention. No responsibility for choices at all and they really do not seem to care if they do or do not. I have tried EVERYTHING. Discipline, positive rewards, separation of the class, etc. It is so disappointing because I do have students who want to listen and learn. They even get upset at the other students behaviors. Help!!! I’m at my wits end!
I am bothered by the same, but work hard to keep things like this in perspective. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. BUT, what has helped significantly is that I did a lesson on disruptions.
I had the kids talk in groups and then we chatted responses together on chart paper which I then posted in the classroom.
I teach social studies and started it off with the concept of “Each of you has the right to come into this classroom and learn, but you do not have the right to take away someone else’s opportunity to learn.” Then we talked about…
1. What is a distraction? We defined it.
2. What distracts you (personally) in the classroom? We made a list. Kids talked about ALL the things: tapping, unnecessary comments, water bottles crackling, humming, etc. The great thing was that THEY were saying these things were making it hard for THEM to learn. It wasn’t coming from me!
3. How do these distractions affect learning in the classroom? They did a great job here as well of naming the things they were losing because of these distractions. We also talked about ways we could help ourselves if we are prone to doing some of these distracting things. (Like put your pencil away, if you are prone to tapping.)
I posted the chart paper in the room and would simply direct kids to it as needed. It greatly cut down on these behaviors!
Love this!
I have a very active block this semester that continually disrupts with all the items you mention. I have moved the tissues, a trash can, and hand sanitizer to a table in a corner without windows and away from the door. It seems much less attractive to them now. I have put the pencil sharpener there as well. Without the entertainment value of peeking out the window or down the hall, there is also suddenly less need to sharpen pencils.
Keep yourself open to ideas from colleagues to streamline and quiet down routines. You will be happily surprised at how a little change can have great results.
Hang in there, winter break is coming!
Wow, this is incredibly insightful, especially about not feeling bad about student’s choices.
“When you feel frustration, anger, or hurt in response to misbehavior, you’re taking its burden upon yourself.
This isn’t your intent, of course. But it’s the effect. Students can sense when their actions affect you. It’s something you can’t hide.
To the degree you experience these feelings is subtracted from the weight of responsibility on your students. It’s a phenomenon many teachers never grasp, but it’s as sure as the Northern Lights.”
I definitely have work to do on this.
Well said. I have to work on this particular point as well. I had a former colleague that said, “You do your job. To an extent you just have to let them do their job.” She was unflappable. There was little disruption in her class because they knew they couldn’t get to her.
My classroom management plan goes out the window when the student defiantly refuses to accept consequences. At my new school four students a day tell me “no” when I ask tell them it’s time to sit out. I call the office, I call the parent, but they do not respond. This is elementary!
In a “normal” year, I wouldn’t be bothered very much by their misbehavior and it would be easy to fall back on my classroom management plan. But this year, it’s the perfect storm. The kids are back after 1 1/2 years of either completely online with zero accountability or hybrid with minimal accountability. They’re unlearning bad habits, and it’s taking forever for them to adjust to being back. Meanwhile, I’m coping with my own stress regarding not just my job, but having to constantly police masks (they lose a daily point each time I have to remind them, but it’s every freaking day!), and completing my second master’s degree. My ability to cope is less due to the exhaustion of trying to function during a global pandemic. Everyone has less patience and tolerance; our fuses are shorter because we’re already close to our limit. I haven’t lost my temper with students, I follow through on my plan, and I’m seeing definite improvement. But twice this year, I’ve found it impossible to even fake being pleasant, which is incredibly unusual.
We can’t let them see us sweat about their behavior, but sometimes I can’t help but be irritated because they whine one too many times and it puts me over the edge to being unable to even pretend I enjoy being there.
Not sure where I meant to go with this. I guess I just want to acknowledge that even though we shouldn’t react outside of our management plan to their misbehavior, it’s about 10 times harder to check our emotions and reactions this year.
Understanding your article and the comments I read from some of the readers I am still in agreement that the students behavior/ misbehavior should never be addressed as a personal threat to the teacher. Misbehavior is an act by the student that must be redirected where the student behaves correctly. And, “YES”! most assueringly the teacher must react with no detection of anger, temper, irritation, frustration or personal hurt when addressing the issue of misbehavior . Every effort of redirection must be conducted in a peaceful, calm and understanding manner. You will find that most students that misbehave easily accept calm, emotionless, respectful redirection. Expected behavior must be defined ,taught, modeled and used consistently. The students must know correct behavior, it’s purpose, follow it routinely and understand the consequences in advance of any correction.
Successful pro athletes have (were born with?) a rare ability to separate *process* and *results*.
They don’t beat themselves up about sub-standard *results* as long as they’re satisfied with their *process.*
My sons and I call this a “baseball mentality.”
Recently I texted one of my sons, “I was 0h-for-five classes at MS today trying to create a calm learning environment, but I left the school in a good mood because my approach at the plate was good.”
My son, a veteran 7th grade teacher in an urban environment, replied, “A baseball mindset is a key to feeling good about my teaching.”