If you’re like most teachers, two or three difficult students take up most of your time. On the days when they’re absent, or pulled from your class, everything goes smoothly. Teaching is more fun. You’re more relaxed. And you can cruise through your lessons … Read more
With over 500,000 page views, How To Handle Disrespectful Students is one of the most popular articles on this website—and for good reason. A disrespectful student can get under a teacher’s skin like almost nothing else. When confronted with disrespect, it’s easy to take … Read more
The fundamental purpose of classroom management is to spend more time on academics and less time on behavior. The quicker your can handle misbehavior and move on, the better. This is one reason why it’s best to rely on your classroom management plan. If … Read more
There is a reason students tattle. But it has nothing to do with them. They are not the problem. They’re merely doing what they feel like they must do. The problem is with you, their teacher. Have you ever noticed that when students tattle … Read more
Do you hide the truth from difficult students? Do you give them false praise? In the name of encouragement, most teachers do. But if you want lasting improvement in their behavior, then you have to be brutally honest with them. Difficult students don’t benefit … Read more
Emotional outbursts, temper tantrums, yelling, lashing out. Severe misbehavior like this needs to be dealt with differently than typical rule breaking. How you respond to an aggressive child in the classroom goes a long way toward gaining control of the incident, keeping it from … Read more
This third and final part of this series is about communicating with difficult students in a way that will compel them to behave the way you want them to. But I must warn you. It’s going to be different than you’re used to and … Read more
In How To Turn Around Difficult Students (Part 1), I made the case that teachers struggle with difficult students because their compassion overrides doing what is best for the student. If you haven’t read the article, I encourage you to read it before continuing … Read more