There is one thing you can do right now that will . . .
- improve behavior
- lower your stress
- build better rapport
- save time
In other words, make teaching more fun and effective. Here at SCM we’ve been shouting this strategy from the rooftops for 16 years.
Yet, it’s still an uncommon practice. So what is it?
It’s to stop talking to individual students about their behavior. It’s to refrain from questioning, lecturing, counseling, admonishing, or pulling them aside to convince them to behave.
It does not work.
Because it puts them on the defensive. It’s intimidating. It’s awkward. It’s confrontational and antagonistic. No matter how gentle you are, it encourages them to lie, tell you what you want to hear, or point the finger elsewhere.
Change in behavior only happens through fair, consistent, and previously established accountability via your classroom management plan.
It only happens when students are left alone to reckon with their wobbling conscience.
Taking responsibility must come from them, of their own volition, based on knowing that they’ve interfered with the rights of their teacher to teach and their classmates to learn and enjoy school.
Every student is capable of self-reflection and deciding that they’d rather be part of the classroom than separated from it.
We have dozens of articles in the SCM archive (right sidebar) and in our books about how to create a classroom all students want to be part of, which is key to the strategy.
But to cause soul-searching and introspection from even your most challenging students, to force them into making hard decisions about themselves and where they’re headed, is to stop discussing their behavior one-on-one.
Allow your classroom management plan to do its job without mucking it up with your over-involvement. Let the weight of inarguable guilt press and press and work and work its healthy agency on the conscience.
Focus on great lessons and a classroom that your students look forward to and let the desire to be and do better awaken and grow within every student.
PS – My new book Unstressed: How to Teach Without Worry, Fear, and Anxiety will now be available this Tuesday, March 4th.
Also, 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.
Thanks for the reminder! Fell into that hole this week. Time to regroup and reset.
I need this reminder everyday. I fall into the trap of reminding and having side conversation and then become resentful because they didn’t need the gentle reminder. Wrong strategy!! I need to give immediate consequence with no emotion but detached follow through.
This is the real strength required in classroom management to do this consistently. Thanks for reminder. I will work on this …
A brilliant student has suddenly stopped working on her math text book. She is 4th grader. She is engaged in doodling or cutting a paper into small pieces. She wasted her time. When I ask her to do math in her book after I teach her, she says, ” I don’t want to do”. I heard from my colleague that she has some issues with her parents too. What strategies should I use to motivate?
She is probably bored because if she is “brilliant” she already knows how to do the work and doesn’t need the practice. Can you give her upper-level work or something more challenging as an extension of the work? For example, in math you could have her do the type of math problems you are teaching, graph the answers and make a picture out of the plotted points on the graph (since she likes to draw). Or if she finishes the work in the book quickly and correctly, she could have the privilege of doing a math-related activity like a sudoku puzzle.
On the other hand, if she isn’t completing her practice work and she is getting bad grades as a consequence, let her parents know. Tell them that the grade she received is a direct result of the fact that she’s not doing her classwork, and you are sure that if she makes the effort in class, then she’ll do better on the next test.
I do my best, but how do we approach students who are disrupting the lesson for others? I have a student whom we know has some behavioral problems that may even be clinical. When he does things such as lean his head back and start singing loudly while the others are trying to take a test, what can we do? Sometimes the principal comes and takes him to another room, but sometimes she’s not in the building. I should add for reference that we are a small parochial school with few resources for extreme behaviors.
Yes!… And… Kids ( I teach juniors in HS) are still impulsive and don’t often feel guilty for cheating these days, or guilty for not turning something in. I have a well established management plan on classwork/homework, that I have written and repeated many times. They know it. No penalty for late work (I’d rather you do it right and take a couple of extra days if needed, than to cheat and turn it in “on time”). Students may collaborate with their seat/lab partner on all work. I defined / described for them on several occasions the difference between collaboration and copying. I’ve seen and heard them collaborate successfully many times. All classwork/homework that is “summative” (for a grade) gets a “mulligan”, graded feedback and a do-over attempt. And our district implemented a “No zeros” for grades policy a couple of years ago, so the lowest grade they can receive is a 50% if the work was attempted and a 48% if never attempted. And yet I still catch kids copying work to get it finished. Check it off their list, they don’t want to spend the time with the challenge before them, to think for themselves. It is too easy just to copy someone else’s work to get it turned in. I did pull two students into the hall to ask what they were thinking when I caught them copying a third student’s paper just yesterday. I reminded them of all the freebies they get and that cheating is a short cutting their education. Education is the one thing no one can ever take from you etc.. cheaters never win, winners never cheat etc.. In this case, I think they needed to experience a little embarrassment or shame of being pulled into the hallway for a reminder/reprimand. Will they cheat again? Probably, Will they think twice about it before they do? I hope so.
I want this document for classroom management.