The Essential Ingredient Of A Well-Behaved Class

The essential ingredient of a well-behaved class is your belief that it’s possible.

Because as soon as you accept the myriad reasons why it can’t be done, which bombard teachers like West Texas hail, you’ve sealed your fate.

You’ll never have the classroom you want.

There must be something inside you that knows, despite the very real challenges of teaching, that with the right knowledge a well-behaved class is within your power.

Maybe you’ve seen it with your own eyes.

On nearly every campus there is at least one teacher quietly proving that it can be done. Without fanfare. Without bravado. Without any outward sign that they’re anything special.

Just a regular Joe or Jane. Unassuming. Quiet in staff meetings. Hardly noticeable. But inside the classroom, they’re an absolute beast.

Yet, it doesn’t occur to anyone to ask why the same students who bounce off the walls in every other classroom behave very differently in Joe’s and Jane’s.

Maybe you’ve seen glimpses in your own classroom.

There are moments when everything is just right. Maybe one afternoon your students become inexplicably lost in their work. Maybe all five of your most challenging boys are calm and listening at the same time.

It makes you wonder: Why does it work so perfectly every once in a while? What am I doing differently? How can I repeat these moments? If it happens at all, then why can’t it happen all the time?

For many teachers, these questions nag at them. They can’t let them go. They can’t quite accept the excuses they hear every day. There must be a way.

Maybe it’s how you’re built.

You bristle when someone tells you that something isn’t possible. It could be running a marathon, taking up ice hockey, or traveling the world on a budget. Doesn’t matter.

Accepting no isn’t in your DNA. You don’t like others determining your fate or putting limits on what you’re capable of. It fuels your motivation to prove them wrong.

Your internal voice insists that there is always a way. Look deeper. Work smarter. It’s there. It has nothing to do with your upbringing or trauma, the schools you went to or anything else.

It’s just there.

So Go and Get It

What if, however, for you none of the above applies? You’ve never seen it in your class or anyone else’s, and it’s not in your nature?

Do it anyway.

Decide you that want it. It’s your life, the only one you have. Get fed up with constantly hearing and being told that . . .

• Stress and martyrdom are part of the job.
• Chaos is what you signed up for.
• Parents don’t care.
• Students are too far behind.
• Math and reading scores will always be low.
• Kids these days are undisciplined and disrespectful.

In other words, futility is just the way it is. So sad, too bad. Deal with it.

But to anyone who believes in the capacity of every student to overcome and change and grow—and their own ability to learn and apply what works—none of it makes a hill of beans.

When you determine it’s possible, you’ve jumped the line in front of 99 percent of struggling teachers. You’ve overcome the biggest hurdle. You’ve placed yourself in position to enjoy the greatest rewards of teaching.

You believe.

And thus, are now free to go and get it. To join the tens of thousands of teachers who’ve acquired the knowledge and can now create the well-behaved class they really want.

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