Charming, stylish, and often athletically talented, entitled students believe they’re special and not subject to the same boundaries and expectations as others.
Thus, they skirt the rules. They do less work. They speak and move as if princely treatment is their royal birthright.
And nobody calls them on it.
Either out of fear or swooning enthrallment, the teachers, administrators, and coaches in their life give them a free pass.
“I got you, Anthony.”
“No problem, Chloe.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
It’s terrible for them. One day the piper will come calling requiring skill, discipline, and hard work and they’ll have none of these. In the end, they pay. And they pay dearly.
But you can put a stop to it. You can be the one person who sees through the charade and cares enough to say, “No more. It ends with me.”
Yes, it can be hard.
We all like special treatment and will fight like hyenas to hang on to it. You will get pushback. You will get hateful looks and disrespect. You will get storming off and under-the-breath comments.
But this can be mitigated with a few guidelines.
1. Do it from the start.
When you commit to your classroom management plan and the sky-high expectations you have for your class ahead of time, it’s much easier than to go back and reinvent or reassert yourself.
Promise to follow through for all students from day one, damn the torpedoes, and everything becomes much easier.
2. Don’t talk to them personally.
If you want entitled students to begin acting like everyone else, then you need to treat them like everyone else. Don’t explain yourself to them. Don’t pull them aside for special talks.
Just be a person of your word, and they’ll eventually respect and admire you for it. Plus, it will send the message to your class that you don’t play favorites.
3. Don’t respond to their charms.
They’ll act angry for awhile and when that doesn’t work they’ll lay on the charm. You must resist. Smiling is fine, but don’t say much when they begin to justify, cajole, and plead.
Say you understand—as in, you understand what they’re saying—but then stick to your resolve. Tell them that all students deserve to be treated fairly.
4. Follow through boldly.
Being a good teacher in this day and age takes mental toughness. Digging deep into your fortitude during challenging moments throughout the day pays big dividends.
It brings peace to your classroom and relieves a sea of stress. So be bold. If an entitled student breaks a rule, enforce without hesitation. Let them and your class know that you mean what you say.
5. Say hello.
Let those students who have been misled into entitlement know that you never hold a grudge. You never take their misdeeds personally—because you understand where it comes from.
Say hello and be friendly. Ask how they are. But stay the course. They’ll begin to see that it’s you, the one they hated in the beginning, who truly cares.
Sold a Lie
Treating some students differently because of their personality or athletic ability or any other reason is discriminatory. Plain and simple.
They don’t get that, however, not at first anyway. How could being given special privileges be discriminatory? Because it denies them the benefits of a good education. It denies them the habits of hard work and responsibility.
It denies them healthy humility and the skills they need to compete and excel in the future.
So many of these students find out too late that their entitlement doesn’t last beyond eighth grade or high school, and they can’t handle it. They’re unprepared for it.
They can’t face the prospect of an entry level job. They can’t handle the mountainous work it takes to turn their lives around. They’ve been sold a lie.
And the piper has arrived for his payment.
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They will call in their parents.
I was going to say… with the next article, please discuss and give tips for how to address the parents that are raising them and feel strongly that their children “deserve” this special treatment.
Yes! Please. The parents with multiple entitled students across the grades are infamous. Then of course special only child syndrome is another challenge.
I think we respond in the same matter of fact way we respond to students.
“I want your son or daughter to have the same opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive as my other students.”
That includes the consequences of whatever action has occurred. We learn through mistakes, poor choices, etc when the consequences are less appealing than the actions. We are for our students and do not want to neglect to teach any of them. Allowing one student a pass is neglecting to teach that student.
So let them call in their parents. Have a meeting with principal too and work for a school that had same rules for everyone. If parents dom’t like their kids having to be like everyone else, they cam home school them to learn
I like the tips you gave to deal with this kind of students.
I’ve heard of parents calling a college instructor for their children. And the instructors just laugh and laugh…
I have a friend who is a vice-president at a Fortune 500 company. A parent called to complain about the high expectations he had of her son during his college internship!
I agree. Often the entitled student craves the extra attention and special talks. But that takes time away from the others…
What about the parents who are entitled as well and feel their child should get preferential treatment?
As Michael often states, the best teachers have the exact same rules for every student. We cannot let students cause us to deviate from this important tenet of classroom management. Some kids try to train teachers to lower our expectations of them. Oh no you won’t! They need to learn this, and they will.
My thought is- make your admin deal with them. Truly supportive admin should have your back 100%. We can’t be scared of parents.
I really agree with you on supportive administrators. They need to be involved in serious behavioral issues. As we realize, this doesn’t happen at some schools. Some parents don’t want to be bothered it seems. No, we cannot be scared of them.
This is where I am at too. The parents of a child in my class are working to get her moved out of my class because I don’t treat her like a porcelain doll. I think it’s in the best interest to remain in my classroom, and don’t know what the Central Office will decide (Yes, I did say Central, as in Board Office.) But at this point, from a personal perspective I would like to request that she be removed from my room. The parent has talked to everyone AROUND me about this situation, but has yet to talk to me. At this point, I’m not willing to spend the rest of the year in an adversary relationship with a parent. The year is MUCH to young!
Suggest home school then parent can do it herself with her porcelain doll
Give those parents option to home school and they can spoil their kids themselves and understand the consequences when they can’t get far in college or a job. Then thd parent’s have no one to blame but themselves.
I have pointed out to parents in the past that when their child gets to make the rules of my classroom then all the other students get to make their own rules too. With everyone making their own rules, the result is chaos and not much learning will take place. This has usually worked to get them to back down.
I had a student in my first years of teaching who was the child of a principal. I treated him like all the other students, no special treatment. During the second week of school, he actually replied to my “no” with “do you know who my mother is?” I turned around, paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t care if your mother is the president of the United States, in my classroom, you are my student. You’ll get no special privileges or punishment because of who any of your family members are. I don’t play favorites, you get to follow the same rules as everyone else.” He and several students were shocked when I kept right on teaching. At the end of the year, he told me thank you, that it had been his best year. I’ve had several students of teachers, principals, board members since then & I’ve always done the same. I believe that this makes my life & their’s easier. There have been a few times of pushing back by the parents, but after their questions, I usually say something like, “Your student should actually be better behaved because you’re a teacher or principal. Would it be fair for me to expect better behavior or hold them to a higher standard? I’m sorry, the best thing for your student is to be treated as an equal amongst his peers in my classroom.”
This. Well done & I’m so thankful to hear of the pushover responses, too.
Hello, I think you have a typo in paragraph 5:
“stay the coarse” should read “stay the course”, shouldn’t it?
Thanks for all the advice,
Clara
You absolutely nailed this SCM topic! Teachers should not be a part of creating the monster of an entitled child. Encouraging or even tolerating this in students is such a disservice to the child. Life is real and real life requires hard work, discipline, and often humility. Teachers have the opportunity to shape the future in all areas of development – cognitively, socially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. We have to step up our game!
Hi Michael, I am such a fan of your articles and I read them weekly. One of the things it seems to be missing here is, seeing you in action as an example of how to enforce the rules that you discuss in your articles. is there a way that we can see a video of this? Maybe that’s not around because of liability, but it would be really helpful for me and maybe some of your followers if there were visual examples of how you would enforce the rules. Personally, I would learn best by watching someone in action. Thank you so much for any advice you can offer here or somewhere we can go to see.
There are useful master teacher videos you can view through the NEA website, if that helps.
I have appreciated your posts for years now, and every one of them are spot on. I am sorry that your comments are becoming more and more disrespectful, but know that there are so many of us out here that truly appreciate your skill and expertise. Looking forward to the next post. Be well.
Thank you for this article.
Entitlement is so pervasive but rarely spoken about as it involves speaking out against systems which benefit a few
Thank you. I’ve been successfully working with SCM for a while now and this was the topic I wanted to focus on more this year. And with focus, I mean on my own behavior and how I respond to the “cool” and privileged kids. I needed this little reminder to help me stay my course.
I can relate to this situation. I am trying to unravel years of entitlement that one student has experienced, and it’s a challenge—but one I am accepting and growing from.
One of my coworkers said that one of the parents said that last year their child had a smaller spelling list than the rest of the class. I was her teacher last year. I looked at my coworker and said “Uhhh no she had the same list as everyone else.” Some of these parents are really sneaky.
These are all good ideas, however, in my experience when they get nowhere with you, they bring in the “big guns”, ie their parent(s) which are the ones who lead them to believe they are more special than “regular” kids. If you have an admin that doesn’t back teachers, this can cause your situation to get worse bc then the student “wins” at a level even above your head and this emboldens them even more. I guess my point is, make sure if you are going to do this, know there is a risk of elevation to higher authority, so you better make sure those above you will have your back or you just ended up spending a lot of the time and effort to prove to the kid that they actually are above the rules…
How do I handle an entitled children who are 4+ grade levels above the others? I need to enrich and help them but that often involves pulling them aside for certain assignments and tasks.
hello!
I just want to thank you for your excellent posts!
Reading and trying my best to apply your advice and tips really made a huge difference in managing my classes.
I should have done this years ago…
thank you from Israel
Unfortunately, these entitled students have parents who have board members and administration in their pockets for a variety of reasons. Unless you have a strong administrator, a teacher’s rules are worthless. Private education is the worst for entitlement, but it also exists in the public school arena. It all comes down to integrity, which there is little of in this world, especially in education.
Unfortunately, not all students meet someone who cares enough to treat them properly, and the sense of entitlement continues into adulthood. Even then, the entitlement and enablement continue, and we have athletes, entertainers, politicians, celebrities, and others who both expect and receive special treatment. A few will never have that moment of reckoning, and the later in life it occurs, the worse the consequences. Thus, teachers in elementary, middle, and high school save students from more severe effects later. During my teaching career, I worked hard to overcome this bias in myself and could honestly say I enjoyed teaching all my students.
I have noticed that teachers who give this special treatment will come to a point when the special students do not listen to them anymore. Then, the teachers try to lay down the law, but the special students will turn on them and make life a living hell.
Thanks for another good article, Michael. Each article, like this one, has little golden teacher management nuggets to cherish and use in the classroom…and in life. Looking forward to many more articles. They keep me grounded :).
I am also very grateful for your articles and blog posts, but I was a little instantly discouraged when I read tip number one. I have one student in particular that is extremely entitled- poor behavior, popular, smart, athletic, etc, but I have yet to do a good job holding him to consistent expectations. I guess I’ll work on the other tips and 🤞🏼!
Michael, this is a situation that you touched on several years ago in one of your articles. I had always considered myself good at classroom management with a few ups and downs along the way. But when I read your words all that time ago it was like the light went on for me. I had to face that I didn’t treat all my students the same. For me it wasn’t so much the students acting entitled as I myself was entitling them. And it was those “good” students. All teachers know them; the sweet little girl who rarely steps a foot out of place, or the funny little boy who every so often disrupts class with his silliness but is so sorry afterward and really means it. And there I was, overlooking the ways in which these students stepped out of line, because it was so seldom, or so out of character, that I felt I could give them a break. Michael, your words at that time opened my eyes to my own behavior and my first thought was how many behavior problems was I creating in my own classes by not following through with every single student every single time? I read your articles and bought your book and changed my classroom management. It wasn’t that my old rules or behavior plans were out of line but I changed how I enforced them. I felt I now had a classroom management plan that was so clear and so clearly and fairly enforced that less time was spent on behavior and more time was given to teaching, learning, and fun. It helped me realize that even veteran teachers need to question what they are doing sometimes and ask themselves if they are doing the absolute best they can for their students. I am semi-retired now but I can say that I feel you helped me make the last years of my career feel even more successful.
Consistency is key. Thanks for the article.
I’m dealing with a lot of bathroom requests some times more than once in a period. Wandering if giving a tardy for going might be a logical consequence since they’re missing class.
My policy has become that no bathroom passes will be allowed in the first 15 minutes from the start of class or at the end of class. We have 45 minute periods.
This resonated with me as I recently had an experience dealing with this. Supervising a year level excursion (10) some poorly behaved boys showed me and others disrespect and were inconsiderate throughout the day. They were high ability students, one often praised widely. I called the parents of two of the boys, didn’t make a big deal of it, just calmly raised the issue and expressed disappointment. One boys parents said how he had been treated unfairly (boy telling them) and that “he was a teenager finding his voice”. I calmly listened and thanked them for communicating with me, but then provided some specific examples from the day. They were shocked and said it was “unlike him”. But I think perhaps not, that this kid gets away with this a lot, and I was just one of the few to call him on it.
There is a Second Grade girl in my class who tries to be a boss to other students. She often yells, “I don’t care!” She becomes upset if she isn’t able to help with everything and I tell her we have helpers. M. wants to help or boss students around instead of doing her own work. She pushes her way to the front of the line, uses profanity and often yells. I’ve invited her mother in for a conference yet she hasn’t responded. The girl in my classroom tells me that her mother doesn’t care. It’s definitely a challenging situation.
Hi Michael
Can you address a future article about having students fidget with things at their desk while you say instruction or are explaining a concept? This began creeping up in my sixth grade classroom and although I am known for having superb classroom management, thank G-d, I’m wondering if I should be taking a stand against this or giving the kids room to do this. Examples are fidgeting with their highlighters, doodling on a sticky note etc. while I am speaking. They take notes when supposed to and all participate, absolutely love class and are involved… Right now, I’m giving out about 2 warnings a day about this (just began happening 3 days ago), but I can be tougher about it or just let them do it and stop fighting if they are listening and not disturbing others… I think this is common in every classroom. What would you say about this?
Thank you so much for this inspiring,meaningful and challenging insights on how to handle entitled students.I usually start my class with a game getting to know each other,then we set rules,discuss grading system policy of our school then present my syllabus.
I find the homeschooling threat to parents one of the most interesting arguments. As it is impossible for some parents financially to maintain their household on one income. It seems like a childish response to a child exhibiting childish behavior. I expect more from the adult in the situation. It is not these children who are switching homeschooling so the comment is purposely confrontational.
I like to tell them all that they are amazing, unique and special, but not so special they don’t have to follow the rules.
This article is so on the money!
The charm that follows after is so true!
Was very glad to be reminded of how sticking to the rules will help them in the long run. Even if you feel horrible enforcing them in the moment.