Cultivating a calm disposition will make you a better teacher. It will also improve classroom management. Because students respect it. They’re drawn to it and admire it. Perhaps more than any other trait. It gives you a natural leadership presence and an effortless ability … Read more
As the school year draws to a close, voices tend to grow louder. Routines get sloppier. Students become distracted, excitable, and primed for misbehavior. After all, they can feel the warmth of summer on their skin. The smell of sunblock and freedom is in … Read more
Success is secured ahead of time. It’s something you set your students up for through detailed instruction. You make your content compelling. You show them—model for them—what you expect. You provide precise steps to follow. You practice, review, take questions, and check for understanding. … Read more
It’s demoralizing. You plan a great lesson. You give it your enthusiastic best. But your students don’t respond well. At all. They’re distracted and sleepy. They’re bored and slouched in their seats. They’re uninspired and blase’ about what you have to teach them. When … Read more
So you have this student who disrupts your class every day. They’re a constant annoyance. You spend more time dealing with them than any ten students put together. You think about them in your off hours. You talk about them with your spouse. They … Read more
There is a common misconception that effective classroom management means silence. It means rigidness and tight restriction. It means backs straight and eyes forward. Hour after hour. And while there are teachers who try to run their classroom this way, or think they should, … Read more
It can be especially frustrating. You’re working with a group or helping an individual student. Perhaps you’re walking the perimeter of your classroom, observing and looking over shoulders. Then you hear a burst of chatter and giggling just out of your view. You look … Read more
It happens every day in classrooms from Fresno to Kathmandu. The teacher pulls aside their most difficult student for a private meeting. Sometimes it’s a lecture. Sometimes it’s a pep-talk. Sometimes it’s to threaten or praise or question like a trial lawyer. But in … Read more