Classroom management when things go wrong – they know the rules but still cause trouble

                You’ve done everything right. The first few weeks have gone ever so smoothly. And suddenly troubles start in your classroom. So what are you, the teacher, supposed to do now? It’s so easy to revert to what you experienced as a student. Troubles start and the teacher is in trouble, yelling at the class, demanding order and losing students’ respect. We’ve all seen it happen during our years as students, but how are we going to prevent it during our years as teachers?

                The first thing you must do as a teacher is learn to listen. At this point I am not talking about listening to students – that will come later –I’m talking about listening to adults interacting with children. If you are at the grocery store and hear a parent disciplining a child, listen to what is said and how it is said. If you are at a parent/teacher conference, listen to the interactions between parent and student, teacher and student, and counselor and student. Don’t listen judgmentally, just listen. Watch how the child reacts. Does the interaction end with the desired results on the part of the adult? Has the child learned anything from the interaction?

                As you listen ask yourself how this applies to your classroom. Is this the outcome you seek from your students? What can you emulate and what should you avoid?

                One parent conference I sat through left me resolved not to say anything more to my student about his unwillingness to do the class assignment. After I listened to the mother go on and on, never stopping long enough for me even to say anything to her, I realized that her son’s only recourse to maintain any kind of selfhood was to not do his school work. It was the only way he had of being an individual instead of her puppet. I know I didn’t want that kind of outcome with my interaction with students.

                Another conference I was at was an IPE meeting where I was the classroom teacher of record. Here the special ed teacher talk incessantly about how the student needed to keep on the straight and narrow (he had just come out of long term incarceration.) The student never said one word, just looked at the teacher and the teacher never stopped to even ask the student about his plans. I was not surprised when this student ended up going back into rehab. This conference had been a waste of breath for the instructor and a waste of time for the student. This isn’t what I wanted for my students.

                I will cite only one more conference that I attended, but I could go on and on like too many parents/teachers/counselors. In this parent/teacher conference it was the counselor that would not shut up. He just kept on telling the student what he should be doing in class to get better grades. I came away from that conference thinking if I were that student I’d dig in my heels and do just the opposite, just to assert myself as an individual. That’s not the kind of reaction I wanted from my students.

                As I teacher I developed the philosophy that the least said the better, and more powerful, the interaction. I learned not to use talk to discipline unless it was absolutely needed, and then to use the minimum of words that I could. How did this look in my class?

                As I was standing at the door greeting students, if a student came to class with his hat on, I just pointed to my head as he walked up to me. The hat disappeared immediately without a word said. If he had a hoody pulled up, I would just gesture by brushing my hair back with my hand. The hoody came down with no words passing between us.

                If I were in front of the class, I might have to call a student’s name to get her attention, but then a gesture to pull down the hoody and take off the hat was all that I needed to do.

                If students were talking during instruction when they should have been listening, I simply stopped talking. I always made sure it was in the middle of a sentence, looked at the offending pair, and waited. After all rule four was ‘Only One Person Talks’ so I didn’t talk, just waited. If I needed to do more I would put my finger to my lips in the classic librarian’s gesture asking for silence. Usually that would do the trick and could move on with my presentation. When I started up again, I would start in exactly the place in the sentence that I had stopped as if there had been no hiatus.

                Whenever possible I would use this silent form of communication to keep students on task and learning. It did not interfere with instruction and kept the classroom functioning at a peak of performance. One of my principals commented on the fact I did not let managing behavior interrupt the class. It also meant I was able to teach even when I couldn’t say a word because of laryngitis. I maintain that when the teacher can’t talk the classroom is quieter because the students also tend to be quiet under those circumstances. If the teacher doesn’t talk or limits the amount of talking, the classroom also benefits from the silence.