“What happens if students don’t care about consequences?”
I get this question a lot.
The short answer: Then your students will continue to misbehave. In other words, you have to make them care in order for your consequences to work.
There is no way around this fact.
The good news is that it isn’t difficult. It takes knowledge and mental discipline, but any teacher can do it.
However, before we can get to how to make your consequences matter to your students, it’s important t0 ensure that they’re as strong as they can be.
Our classroom management plan e-guides do just that.
- The elementary plan (also for lower middle school)
- The high school plan (also for upper middle school)
Once your plan is established, it’s you and the culture you create that cause students to care about your consequences enough to rid your classroom of misbehavior.
So what follows is a list of strategies—all of which have been covered extensively here at SCM—that are most effective at bolstering consequences so strongly that your students will want nothing to do with them.
- Teach your rules in exacting detail.
- Enforce them consistently.
- Follow through like a referee.
- Maintain a calm disposition.
- Be consistently pleasant.
- Bring a spirit of humor to each school day.
- Keep a clean, orderly classroom.
- Stay on schedule.
- Deliver compelling lessons.
- Never take misbehavior personally.
- Never lecture, scold, glare, etc.
- Teach sharp, purpose-driven routines.
- Remove extrinsic rewards.
- Shift more and more responsibility to students.
- Model often and in extreme detail.
- Speak efficiently and concisely.
- Be a content knowledge expert.
Powerful Consequences
You’ll notice that many are core principles of SCM.
The reason is because great classroom management and creating a learning experience students love being part of go hand in hand. They work synergistically to motivate students to want to listen, learn, and behave.
The idea isn’t perfection. Any improvement in the above list will increase the meaning students attach to your consequences.
In time, when you become expert in these areas, time-out or a lunch detention, for example, become so distasteful that a simple warning becomes a powerful consequence.
PS – Check out this week’s YouTube videos:
1. 3 Mistakes Teachers Make While Enforcing Consequences
2. How to Get Your Students’ Attention Within Two Seconds
3. How to Handle an Out-of-Control Class That Tests You From The Get-Go
Also, if you haven’t done so already, join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
Michael,
I look forward to your Saturday posts! I have read your books, but without administrative support, consequences don’t matter to students. The vast majority of students are no longer motivated by grades because grades don’t matter to their family. Everyone is socially promoted to the next grade…there are simply no consequences for failing. Many students know that a call home won’t produce any consequences at home…many parents simply push back at teachers giving their child the ultimate authority. With AI, ChatGPT, etc. students know there is something that will do their work for them. They want to finish an assignment, not learn or master anything. I turn myself inside out planning lessons to be highly engaging only to be met with apathy. I ask myself at the beginning of each new school year…how did we get here and how do we turn this around? I am very envious of those who read this and do not have these issues. That was me just five short years ago. How far education has fallen in that time.
Being consistently pleasant is crucial. I had finished teaching what “observation mode” meant, and about 15 minutes later, one of my new 7th grade students hit that consequence step. I kindly, but firmly said, “Bobby (name withheld to protect the semi-innocent), rule 1, (blurting out) for the 2nd time. Please take your notebook and pencil and go to observation mode.” The look of shock on his face. I nodded at him and turned back to the lesson. He made it to the back of the room, quietly popped open the folding chair, grabbed the lap desk, and got to work. After about 10 minutes of sealed lips and work on his part, I cruised back by him, said, You did well. Please return to your seat.” Later that day, I passed him in the hall and smiled at him . He smiled back. All good.
I am going to defend my use of extrinsic rewards in my kindergarten class. Extrinsic rewards are not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I can say from experience that the military uses extrinsic rewards, too.
The main reason I use extrinsic rewards is: in order to have something to take away as a consequence, students first have to have something to lose that they care about. Grown-ups get extrinsic rewards for going to work because we get paid. We don’t just go to work for intrinsic rewards.
That’s why I use classroom money. As much as possible, I like to model my classroom consequences after real-world consequences. If I get a traffic ticket, my consequence is giving up money that I earned through work. If my students misbehave, one possible consequence is giving up money that they earned through their work. My students earn $1 in class money each day for coming to school. When they save up $10, they can use it to buy a prize from our treasure box. I tell them that school is their job.
Of course, more serious behaviors require different consequences-just as in grown-up life.
As I previously mentioned, the military is another example of the use of extrinsic rewards in real life, and it is one I am very familiar with because I am a veteran. Not only do military members get the extrinsic reward of being paid for serving, but they can also be given extra days off, preferred duty stations, advancement opportunities, awards, commendations, and public recognition in front of peers…just to name some of the extrinsic rewards used by the military. In fact, morale is a really big deal in the military. (I should add that the military also has a slew of consequences for misbehavior, such as reassignment, loss of privileges, extra duty, restriction, forfeiture of pay, reduction in rank, time in the brig, hard labor, etc.)
So even the military does not operate under the idea that people should do everything simply because they are intrinsically motivated to do it.
My point is that extrinsic rewards are not automatically bad simply because they are extrinsic. They are used in the real world all the time.
I am looking at the following strategies, “Deliver compelling lessons” and “Be a content knowledge expert”, and I have the following question:
As a new teacher, what if I am still improving in this area? My thinking is that I want to improve in my classroom management so that I can focus the energy necessary to get better at these two things that I recognize needs to be honed over time.
I am worried about my lessons not being compelling and that detracting from my classroom management. I am wondering if I can have an OK lesson (and commit to improving this) but be super solid in my classroom culture such that kids still have a good experience in my classroom and learn quite a bit.
I do not want to be the teacher that is constantly staying after school and not doing the things that nourish me like spending time with family, exercising, etc. I could spend that extra time really drilling into my lesson plans but I wonder if at a certain point I am spinning my wheels and the first thing I should focus on is ensuring I have solid routines and classroom management. My intuition says that lesson development will come when I can feel good about stepping into my classroom and when I am not stressed or worried about classroom behavior.
Curious what thoughts are on this.
I think you’re right on target, Ben. Focus on classroom management first and foremost, which will only get stronger as your lessons improve.