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
Roughhousing can be a tricky area of classroom management. Although nearly every teacher has a rule forbidding it, it can be difficult to get rid of. Especially once it gets a toehold in your classroom. Enforcement and consistency are key, of course. But because … Read more
Recently, I got a new group of students for a high school class I was teaching. Then a few days later, I came down with the flu. It was awful. It took me three weeks to shake and I missed more than a week … Read more