“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
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