I’ve spoken to thousands of teachers about their classroom management struggles. They all have much in common.
I repeat myself a lot.
My advice is “do this and don’t do that.” This is one reason SCM has been successful. Our strategies are straightforward.
I don’t have to theorize or offer hazy suggestions and I never leave anyone confused. I can just say, “You need to talk less and pause more.” They do it and see results, simple as that.
However, there is one area that isn’t so cut and dry. The advice is still simple. But getting teachers to follow it is another story. Oh, they want to, often desperately, but they can’t seem to overcome the wounds to their heart.
The advice is to not take misbehavior personally.
Refusing to allow disruptions, disrespect, and the like to get under your skin makes you infinitely more effective. It also plummets your stress and skyrockets your influence.
The reason teachers have such a tough time with this, however, is because teaching is highly relational. You see the same kids every day. You get to know them and care about them. You spend more time with them than just about anyone else.
This naturally, but dangerously, can make you view them—subconsciously if not willfully—as cohorts, collaborators, teammates, and even friends. This viewpoint causes you to live and die over how they make you feel.
In fact, it triggers an internal voice that continually judges where your students fall on an annoying you/pleasing you continuum.
In order to not take misbehavior personally, you have to change this view. Here’s how:
1. Do only your job.
Happy and successful teachers maintain a clear boundary between their job and the job of their students. Yours is to teach and lead. Theirs is to listen and learn. Never mix them up.
2. Stay on your plane.
Your students are 6, 10, or 16 years old. You’re not on the same mental, emotional, and intellectual plane. Not even close. It’s absurd to get pulled down to their level. They’re kids who don’t know nothin.’
3. Let your plan do the dirty work.
Not just physically, but mentally. Turn the responsibility for misbehavior completely over to your classroom management plan. Let it take the heat. You just follow it like a referee.
4. Step up to respect.
When you show students that they can’t get under your skin, that their misbehavior doesn’t affect you in the least, then they’ll stop trying. Instead they’ll put you on the highest pedestal of respect.
5. Build one relationship.
Here at SCM we believe in building an influential relationship with your class, not individual students. This approach is vastly more effective and ensures you’re creating the strongest and healthiest rapport.
Diapers
If you’re prone to taking behavior personally, then remind yourself every day before your students arrive that you’re their teacher, which requires a very specific type of relationship.
You make the decisions. You define the boundaries. You set the tone and create the culture. You’re an adult with life experience and decades of education.
They were wearing diapers an hour ago.
The lesson is that when there is a clear demarcation of roles, responsibilities, and maturation between you and your class, both parties benefit. They create balance and clarity. Yin and yang.
Yes, once you begin following the advice above it can still take willpower to merely refer to your plan when someone calls out during a lesson or corrects your learned, erudite commentary on the Civil War.
But once you experience the results, once you begin seeing students as they really are, and they see you as the leader rather than collaborator, you’ll realize how silly you’ve been.
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Mr. Linsin, thank you for this and all your articles. The concept of building a relationship with the class as a whole rather than with individual students is a game changer, and flies in the face of what most of the gurus are telling us. Prioritizing individual relationships while ignoring that of the entire class always made me feel like I was somehow playing favorites. Please continue to hammer this home!
I couldn’t agree more. I feel like my eyes just got opened. Ready for next year!
I am going to try to emphasize this more as well this new school.
Thank you! I really needed this one. This is your best yet; at least it is for me.
Oh my goodness!! I needed this TODAY. We have 1.5 days to go and they are getting on my last nerve. I know their squabbling is from knowing summer is coming and at my very low ses school, they have a lot of summer worries. I try to keep this at the front of my mind but boy, I am so tired right now. I’m going to print this one out and memorize it. Thank you for putting this in front of me.
Thank you for each point on this topic! This is definitely one of my goals for the next school year.
Thank, you Michael. I have been implementing your teachings since I discovered you, and it has made a world of a difference in the classroom. I will continue to read your insights for the rest of my life. Your advice is invaluable and so effective. It makes so much sense. It’s like we already knew this all along, but you help to clear the hurdles for us and see the greater purpose within us to be the best educators we can be, and to stay clear in the course and not let others sway us.
Amazing! I’ve been following you and promoting your teachings for years. I have four days till my retirement after 25 years in grade 7/8. Your ideas are logical and based on sound knowledge of behaviour management. Thanks for all the support over all that time!
Right. I got exactly the same advice almost 50 years ago when I was heading to a residential summer camp as a counsellor. I was 17, my clients were 15, and it was my first job in the teaching field. A friend of mine who was already a teacher said to me: “Remember: these kids are NOT. YOUR. FRIENDS.”
I thanked this teacher many times throughout my entire teaching career. Maintaining the boundaries is a necessity.
Yet sometimes it’s difficult not to feel hurt. Well, when a student misbehaves, it’s manageable. But what if it’s a student’s parent?
Good luck to all of you, colleagues, with this very challenging aspect of our job. Thank you, Michael, for addressing it.
I had a teacher at school who often told us: ” I am your best friend because I teach you, but make no mistake, I’m not your pal!” This was a teacher we loved and who advocated on our behalf. But the boundary was clear: he was not a pal to slap on the back!
Thank you Michael once again for your inspiring articles!
It has been a good experience reading your articles/cross references and some of the comments. Your articles are consistant, informative and contain valuable/ helpful information. It appears that make a plan, learn your population, stick to your successful plans, change plans when assessed and one is needed for sucess and make to successfully completed the requirement curriculumn with success, remain cool, calm at all times will help you to have good days, weeks, months, quarters, grading perions and good, successful years. All it is saying is always be planned, percise, persistant.
Indeed Verlyn. Thanks for commenting. Always good hearing from you.