Don’t Yell At Students

I took my class on a field trip to a beautiful aquarium one year, and as we made our way along a circuitous passage of small caverns loaded to the gills (sorry) with exotic sea creatures, we found ourselves sharing viewing areas with another class of students.

The aquarium was located on a cliff overlooking the ocean, providing stunning views of the Pacific, and we were enjoying ourselves immensely. That is, until a loud and ugly sound interrupted our contentment.

“Anthony! Get your hands off the glass right now! And Taylor! I said to walk!” The teacher accompanying the class of excitable students just ahead of us was reacting to every misdeed with the screech of her voice.

Soon, a student of mine leaned over to me and whispered, “Mr. Linsin, do we have to walk near them?”

“No, we don’t.” I replied. So I pulled my class aside to review what we had seen and stall long enough to provide distance between our two classes.

After the self-guided tour of the aquariums, we moved on to a lecture about sharks, and then finished our trip outside among several man-made tide pools. While looking at the starfish and enjoying the ocean breeze, we heard the voice again, “Room 35! Keep your voices down and enjoy the view!”

At that, her students stormed the tide pools, elbowed elderly couples aside for better views, and more or less behaved as if they were raised by wolves.

Their teacher was appalled and embarrassed by their behavior, but other than increasing the volume and intensity of her voice, she was ill-equipped to do anything about it.

Her students only modestly listened to her admonitions. Anthony kept his hands off the glass for a few minutes, her students merely jogged from one display to the other, and they lowered their voices just temporarily.

Teachers yell at students for one or more of the following reasons:

1.    They don’t know a better way.
2.    They don’t trust their classroom management plan.
3.    They don’t enforce their classroom rules each and every time.
4.    They take poor student behavior personally and feel the need to scold.
5.    It works initially (though the effect lessens over time and comes at a high cost).

Regardless of the reason, yelling at students is symptomatic of inadequate classroom management.

The fact is, there is nothing to be gained from raising one’s voice above what can be heard by students. There is much, however, to lose.

Whenever you raise your voice, you’re communicating to your students that you only mean what you say when you yell. And to them, the louder you are, the more you mean it.

Therefore, when you speak in a normal voice, whatever you say is deemed by your students to be less important and to carry less weight (i.e., they will tune you out). They come to believe that you only really mean what you say when you shout, yell, or raise your voice.

Yelling also shows a loss of control, which provides a poor model for your students. When you yell or fail to conceal your frustrations in front of them, you’re teaching your students how to behave when things don’t go their way or when they don’t get what they want.

In the majority of circumstances, yelling is the result of not having a solid classroom management plan marked by a faithful adherence to rules and their intended consequences. Thus, yelling, much like lecturing, takes the place of real and effective classroom management.

Your students should always know what is expected of them and exactly what will happen if they don’t meet those expectations. This creates a safe world that makes sense. Yelling, on the other hand, creates distrust and resentment in students because it’s arbitrary, it’s based on intimidation, and it chisels away at a child’s dignity.

It’s also undignified for the teacher. If you watched a video clip of yourself yelling, “Slow down!” or “I said to walk!” across the lobby of a museum or in front of a lovely aquarium, I don’t think you would like what you saw.

Is it really possible to have well-behaved students and, at the same time, be a respected leader who doesn’t raise his or her voice? Not only is it possible, but keeping your voice calm works much more effectively.

Try it. Resolve to never raise your voice in response to misbehavior, and instead, focus on clearly communicating your boundaries of behavior to your students and then enforcing those boundaries 100% of the time. This simple approach to classroom management will make teaching a lot less stressful and will engender admiration and respect from your students.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.