It’s not because it’s unnatural to you.
It’s not because of your age, lack of experience, or personality. It’s not because of where you work or how many challenging students are on your roster.
The reason you’re bad at classroom management is because you don’t know what works and you’re afraid of your students.
Let’s take these one at a time.
1. Knowledge
Effective classroom management is knowledge-based. Students behave predictably to certain strategies that work together to create a motivated and hardworking class.
These strategies must be aligned to achieve this objective. In other words, they must adhere to a particular approach. Each strategy supports and strengthens the rest.
Your understanding then must be comprehensive.
If you don’t know how to effectively teach routines, for example, then it’s unlikely your students will be able to work independently or behave maturely. The same is true of how to teach and enforce your classroom management plan.
It all transfers and works together to create a well-behaved class. Thus, unless you’ve taken the time to learn the ins and outs of the SCM method, your lack of understanding is going to sabotage everything you do.
There is a fair amount to learn, but it isn’t difficult. Our approach is simple. It’s paint-by-numbers. Apply it and you will succeed. But you must know what to apply and, just as important, what you must stop doing.
The Total Classroom Management Makeover is a great place to start. It describes what you need to do and not do to begin implementing SCM successfully.
But knowledge must come first. In this day and age, confusion and uncertainty about classroom management will result in chaos, misbehavior, and debilitating stress.
2. Fear
In the past, I’ve spent hours upon hours personally walking groups of teachers through the entire SCM approach. I’ve modeled every important strategy and answered every question.
Many of these teachers experience immediate and dramatic success. For them, it’s a life-changing moment; a complete 180 from misery to joy.
They’ll never again return to their previous state of confusion, misunderstanding, and throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. They can focus entirely on their lessons and academic improvement.
For others, however, it’s a different story. They learn well. They can answer correctly every question assessing their SCM knowledge. They’ll even give me a smile and a big thumbs up and tell me everything is amazing.
And then I visit their classrooms.
This happened very recently at a school I was working with. As I approached the door, I heard students yelling out at the teacher.
- “I don’t know what to do!”
- “Why are we doing this?”
- “What page are we on?”
- “Can we play on our laptops?”
- “Justin pushed me.”
Playing it cool, the teacher reacted with silly sarcasm. He warned them. He reminded them. He talked over them. He tried to get them to work on an absurdly easy assignment of which they were completely unprepared for.
I stayed less than five minutes. It was a disaster and I was embarrassed for him.
So why, if he knew what to do, didn’t he do it? Because he was afraid. He was afraid that if he actually followed the steps and strategies and held his students accountable . . .
- They would rebel and behave even worse.
- They wouldn’t think he was cool anymore.
- They would complain to their parents.
Plus, he felt he knew better. He felt that his students needed to become unburdened. He felt sorry for them. His empathy and need to be their friend precluded him from asking much of anything from them.
Two important points:
First, his fears were and are unfounded. They have absolutely zero merit. In fact, the opposite is true. Teachers who use SCM are respected and admired.
Second, any form of empathy that lowers standards hurts children. “Toxic empathy” is apropos. It does real harm. Sadly, people who believe high standards are hurtful and discriminatory dominate the profession.
They make up the majority of every school. In reality, they should be nowhere near a classroom.
How to Be Good
To be good at classroom management takes knowledge of what works to create a polite, motivated, and well-behaved classroom from scratch.
It also takes a modicum of courage and belief that all students can succeed despite any and every circumstance.
Armed with these two, and only these two, you can be an unstoppable force for good in your community. If most schools or districts were to embrace them, it would transform education.
It would upend the failure that it is and rebuild it into the envy of the world.
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Toxic empathy is a fantastic concept. It drives much of what’s wrong with education, from parents to administrators to state and national education policy. I hope you write more about it.
What about learning disabilities or adhd, autism, and ODD? What is your take on inclusion? Students who refuse or get violent? What about when most students are below grade level doing grade level curriculum? Is being trauma informed feeding toxic empathy?
I have these same questions because I work in an urban school district where inclusion is supposed to exist without clear expectations on what that should look like. I, the teacher have 26 students with several who are ADHD, 5 who are ODD, 2 who are autistic. I am 27 years in, and as of last year, also have a degree in school counseling. Yet, I am struggling.
Agree with you and Nick. You have given me courage through the years to do what’s best for my students. Thank you!!!
I agree fear is one of the main reason of not having a good classroom management. But being strict yet caring, just, yet caring, consistent yet caring will balance it out. Students know you care ThatS essential they can smell in from far when it’s fake. I am struggling lesser now because I’ve picked up more courage, teaching helped me a lot in learning not to be a people pleaser, believe in who I am, and trusting that I am unique and I don’t have to be like someone else, like another teacher. students need a leader who truly cares and wants the best of them . Everyone looks up to a great leader and we have to work towards that as not everyone has that natural skill, and this is why teaching has really transformed me, not an easy profession at all but completely rewarding !
These ideas present a bold yet important reminder that effective classroom management is not about personality or luck. In fact, it is about clarity, knowledge, and courage. The author highlights how deeply interconnected routines, expectations, and consequences truly are, and how even well-trained teachers can sabotage themselves if fear stands in the way of consistency. The emphasis on “toxic empathy” is especially thought-provoking, reminding educators that lowering standards in the name of kindness ultimately harms students. At its core, the topic reinforces that strong classroom management is both learnable and achievable when teachers commit to mastering proven strategies and applying them with confidence and conviction.
Does anyone have advice on what to do when you’ve successfully implemented this program, but a challenging student makes it to consequences three (family contact), and doesn’t bring the note back signed, and parents don’t respond to follow-up emails or phone messages? For clarification, I am a school librarian and I have each class once a week for 45 minutes.
Phone call, email, letter through mail comes to mind immediately
For those out there with questions or concerns, if you look through the resources available, SCM has addressed most if not all of your concerns in previous articles. Check around and see!