A danger in trying to improve classroom management is that you tighten up.
You become more tense and wooden. You’re so intent on following your classroom management plan and holding students accountable that it changes your personality.
Somewhere in the back of your mind you think you have to present a facade of austerity to maintain consistency.
This is very common.
But the result is that while behavior improves in the short term, your classroom becomes less desirable. Your relationship with your class suffers. The joy of learning and coming to school deteriorates.
In other words, you’re no fun.
To be effective at both classroom management and inspiring students to want to listen and learn, you must retain a yin-yang quality to your teaching.
It’s the extremes of every-single-time accountability—defined by your classroom management plan—combined with the authentic embrace of your personality that creates a well-behaved classroom that students love.
Only by tightening your consistency and loosening your “self” can you create the leverage to move your students in the direction you want them to go.
Embracing your humor, openness, and kindness is what unlocks your natural charisma, rapport, and influence.
You need both.
In this day and age, one without the other will fail. Real impact, the kind that results in galloping academic motivation and achievement, must contain sky-high standards and a teacher students like.
Likability isn’t just helpful. Not anymore. It’s required.
If you’re not getting what you want from your class, then you must push the extremes. Every class has a price. Keep pushing on each end of the yin-yang envelope. Extend the distance between them until the dam breaks.
The counterpoints of clear and strict boundaries of accountability on one side and a classroom your students look forward to on the other, which is largely a function of your likability, is the secret.
It’s the overarching theme of this website and every one of our books.
When I first started teaching, this two-pronged approach all I had. I brought non-negotiable accountability and probably more silliness and fun than I’d recommend today. And it worked. It worked really well.
I spent the next 15 years or so testing, adjusting, and reverse-engineering everything I was doing day-to-day to create the exact individual strategies that support this secret.
Again, you must have both.
When in doubt about what you’re doing or whether it’s working and if you should make changes, it always comes back to this. The yin and the yang.
PS – A note to the trolls: This is one article. There are 800+ on this website. I don’t and can’t include every strategy that supports everything that is written here.
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