The jettisoning of firm consequences in favor of a purely restorative approach has caused more dangerous behavior among students.
It’s like nothing I’ve seen in 30+ years of teaching.
Nowadays, a student can fight, bully, torment, throw chairs, and threaten a teacher without being suspended. The result, of course, is that they do it again and again and again.
It’s simple arithmetic.
But this article isn’t about why administrators are pushing this approach. I’ve covered this and related topics in previous articles and videos. This article is about what you can do to keep it from happening in your classroom.
The following strategies aren’t a perfect hedge against violent behavior, but they’ll virtually eliminate it on your watch.
Clarity
Your precise and detailed teaching of your nonnegotiable boundaries ahead of time free students to relax in knowing that you will protect them.
Accountability
Following through on the little things as defined by your classroom management plan keep the big things from ever happening.
Rapport
Having trusting rapport and mutual likability with every student causes them to want to please you and heed your demand for respect and kindness.
Calmness
Your stable easygoing nature, good humor, and calmness bring peace and psychological safety that every student can feel while in your classroom.
Order
Your impeccable room environment, efficient organization, and clear communication allow students to let down their guard and focus on school.
Purpose
Compelling lessons, sharp routines, and a perpetual focus on the next goal/objective keep students on task, purpose-driven, and intrinsically motivated.
Supervision
Vigilant observation, positioning, and pushing the envelop on independence allow you to anticipate, witness, and nip misbehavior before it escalates.
Consistency
Your day after day commitment to your classroom management plan and steady temperament remove the antecedents that cause dangerous behavior.
Success
Guiding students from one success to the next feels great, raises self-worth, and effectively tempers the compulsion to act out in frustration.
Embrace It
These strategies, which are core to the SCM approach, are effective against the rise of violent episodes sweeping the country.
They keep students prone to dangerous behavior and now more emboldened than ever by the lack of administrative accountability from even minor disruptions.
But it takes not just dabbling in SCM, but a complete embrace.
If you’re not yet fully committed, now is the time—before the scourge of dangerous behavior reaches your classroom. The book The Total Classroom Management Makeover was written for this very purpose.
It’s short read and will put you on the fast track to the peaceful classroom your students will love and that you’ve always wanted.
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.
This was helpful. Thanks.
This resonated so deeply for me. Thank you.
Too much in teachers without administration support .
Admins always defer to parents and students, leaving teachers to jump through bigger hoops to to keep oversized classes functioning
As a substitute teacher your articles are so helpful to me. I do have the occasional tough class but I’ve found that the easiest days I’ve had are when the teacher leaves an assignment with multiple steps, a clear goal in mind, and has a strong management system that I can back up. The class kind of runs itself, and I’m just the facilitator.
Mr. Linsen, the grammar, spelling and punctuation in this article were not checked before publication, which is disconcerting for an educator. While I agree wholeheartedly with the content, I found myself re-writing paragraphs in my head as I read along.
Hi Erin,
The three editing errors are fixed. Thanks for pointing them out. Oh and it’s LINSIN and REWRITING. Very disconcerting. 🙂
As my fifth graders would say, ROASTED!
What are your thoughts on evacuating classrooms and allowing a student to trash the room because they are dysregulated and angry?
The greatest resource out there. Thanks so much
I teach elementary mild/mod SDC students. My background as a former Gen. Ed. Teacher makes your strategies resonate with me, but in CA our leaders have really taken away a lot of our ability to hold students accountable, especially if they have an IEP. When you add factors in such as Autism and mental health challenges, these students often don’t have the ability to regulate their emotions. Do you have any suggestions for strategies to use for students like these? At this time I’m being advised to evacuate my classroom with my calm students, while the behavior interventionists stays back in my room with one or two students who are in a rage and destroying my classroom at least once or twice a month.
This question right here.
These students have the wrong placement. A student who is unable to keep themselves from becoming violent in a normal classroom does not belong in a normal classroom. It is our job as educators to find that placement for them. Unfortunately that’s a job administrators often resist because it means spending more money per student; it affects their bottom line. But, to be clear, this is their legal duty under the IDEA. They are legally obligated to spend the money required to accommodate this child. This has nothing to do with restorative justice and everything to do with your school system’s unwillingness to give these students the support they need.
I really appreciate what you write, but this one kind of bothers me. (And thank you for being confident enough to hear from an occasional nay-sayer!)
I’ll only say that the parameters you suggest for teachers are far, far too many, too complex, too demanding, and they don’t always work.
@Tamar:
It saddens me to read a comment with this much venom directed towards someone who has done, and continues to do, so much good. I used SCM the last few years I taught in very difficult situations, and it really helped-even without much admin support. Give it a chance. Yes, so much is out of a teacher’s control, but there are still things teachers can do to improve many situations.
Wow. I bet you have a lot of friends.
Tamar, at whom are you really angry? Because it can’t possibly be Michael Linsin. Your reply was unwarranted. You are making personal attacks against someone that has helped me immeasurably in my own teaching career. I would encourage all teachers, new and veteran, to continue reading these weekly articles. Give the idea that Michael Linsin offers try. They are tested and true.
My question is along the same lines as Suzanne’s (above). I pull students for intervention from a classroom in which a student FREQUENTLY gets verbally oppositional and in doing so is EXTREMELY loud. I have never seen him be physically aggressive, but there is a hands-off policy at the school so there are no attempts to remove him from the classroom. For the most part, the teacher and co-teacher manage him in the classroom and just continue teaching during his tirade. I appreciate their ability to continue teaching (without losing their minds, something I don’t think I could do!) but saw something recently that made me wonder if that is the best choice for the others in the classroom. As I was pulling my group to take to my room, and other students were transitioning, the looks on their faces was partially “deer-in-the-headlight” and partly “Get me the H out of here.” I guess I am wondering if you have thoughts on when it is in the best interest of the other students to be removed from the classroom for further teaching while someone else attends to the struggling student. Can’t wait to hear back. Thank you.
I taught a disciplinary military school for kids kicked out of the L.A. district public school. It was a last chance sort of thing. It was complete and utter madness! But the article is right. Little wins and showing kids the love they might not feel at home is important. Being consistent is correct as well. I learned these by trial and error. I know it works. I had students that I would send out, come back in a minute later. I understand being pessimistic of the current crop, but then what is the advice? Don’t try? Kids are intrinsically ignorant and it is impossible to teach? That can’t be true either. I know this works not because this guy wrote it, but because I lived it. I know.
Your article is spot on as always. 👍
I wonder what you would recommend (in addition to your tips here) about dealing with students who have diagnosed issues such as schizophrenia or conduct disorders, etc? I use these tips, of course, but is there anything else I can do to support students such as this? They are not in special ed, but are mainstreamed. Thank you!
My question, what do you do in a situation where the students don’t even give you a chance to establish rules and procedures? They walk into the room fighting and arguing and completely ignore you when you tell them to sit down? Each one of my classes has 4-6 students that have completely checked out of school mentally and treat class time as social hour. In fact they have told me that they want to be suspended so that they can stay home and play video games. They want to be sent to to AdMin, so that they “don’t have to sit in the room and do work”. The boys want to rough house, the girls want to put on makeup and gossip. Since these students have never been taught patience or self control or respect, how do I even start to establish rules? And there is no support from the parents, because they refuse to believe that their child is misbehaving and I must have it out for them.
I’m from Ireland and this post resonates ….without going into too much detail I have to teach teens and young adults various educational modules as part of my work ..
The situation outlined in Ida’s post is now extremely common – many second level and ‘continuing education’ projects are little more than zoos with unending mobile phone use, vaping and confrontational behaviors the norm rather than an exception. ‘No touch’ policies and the fear of getting sued for legally frivolous exclusion means that these behaviors are not challenged. It goes without saying that this is a dangerous working environment for an man or woman.
An article on how to cope/manage this would be very useful.
Things started well, this fall. Class was working, rules in place, enforced. Then they heard a girl was coming back. ‘There is going to be a fight!” I reported. I filled a bucket of water in the sink. I told kids – anyone in the fight in my room, I was going to dump the bucket on them. It was a plan, and as I stick to my plan, I didn’t have the fight in my room. But it was in the lunch room. It was incredibly violent, 2 girls against 1. Jerked her by her hair off the bench and onto the floor, kicking and punching. Luckily – security and 3 teachers got it stopped.
I did have procedures down, and I took the rest of the kids to class, and we went on with the lessons. But really, it ruined it for me. I am 65 years old, if that had happened in my classroom, it would have been a long time before adults showed up, it would have been a free for all.
You have very good ideas, and I have used a lot of them. I am considered a strict and tough teacher that can manage kids…but things are different.
Being a substitute teacher, I can agree ,your captions are successful. I am in a plan where rules, expectations, and contracts are in place. Being consistent, calm, in place to provide guidance, precise supervision and knowing what is to occur can be rewarding and very successful.
I’ve found this blog in general to be very helpful, but I’m saddened to see it repeat the myth that restorative justice means no discipline. If the problem is not fixed and the dangerous behavior is repeated, that is by definition neither restorative nor justice. I’m all for calling out administrations that are using the label of restorative justice to do something else entirely. I am not down to blame it for increased violence in classrooms when everyone has just gone through three years of trauma in the pandemic.