School starts back in a few weeks, and even though this is
my second year not going back with the crowd, I still feel like the year really
begins in August. I have this huge
desire buy school supplies and some kind of phantom excitement that I’ll see my
friends (ie coworkers) again after our long separation. Even though I’m still teaching online, and
will start school about the same time everyone else does, I still miss those
first days of schools with bright, clean classrooms, organized materials, new
bulletin boards, and attitudes that haven’t yet been worn down. Frankly, I miss the hustle and bustle of a
new school year in a physical place. So,
I thought I’d deviate from my typical blog, and post my favorite classroom
management ideas. This is always a topic
I end up discussing with new teachers, and it is actually an area where I felt
mostly successful, so I thought it would be a fun way to remotely join the back
to school fun!
1. Build a
relationship. Kids want to work for
someone they care about who cares about them.
To that end, learn their names.
Learn what they like. Go to their
sporting events and then tell them specifically what awesome things they did in
the game. Ask them what they are wearing
to prom. Ask them where they got their
cool new shoes. Spend a little time
talking to them about something that has nothing to do with class or the
curriculum. Stand at the door and greet
them when they walk in. It is great to
talk with your coworkers across the hall during that time, but engage your
students in that conversation, too. Let
them feel like they are part of the community that is their school.
2. Know that class
rules/expectations really aren’t as important as your college professor or
administrator wants you to think they are.
Ok, so here is the real deal.
Jump through the hoop. Have the
rules, put them in your syllabus, post them on the wall, phrase them positively
and short and line them up to the school behavior plan – whatever is asked of
you. But be real with your kids. They are in high school, and they don’t want
to be treated like babies (even if they act like babies 90% of the time haha). After a few years of trying all the stuff I learned
in college, this is the speech I ended up giving: “You guys have been in school
for 10 years now. You know how to act,
so just act right.” I used to give the
whole “This is what I expect of you and this is what you can expect of me”
speech, and frankly, I think my students took me much more seriously when I
kept it short and sweet and was real with them.
3. Tell them your pet
peeves. In conjunction with the
school rule talk, I usually would tell them my pet peeves since every teacher
has those two or three things they are passionate about. I’d finish the “act right” speech by saying
something like, “But in case you are tempted to not act right, let me tell you
a few of my pet peeves. If you do these,
I’ll for sure over react because they make me CRAZY. I’m just warning you in advance.” You cannot have a long list for these. I only had two: Talking while I’m talking and
sleeping in class. I made it humorous. I’d tell them that talking while I was
talking made me crazy because I like to ease drop on people’s conversations
(follow by some example of how I’d heard juicy gossip in the hallway) and that
if they were talking, I’d be so distracted because I’d want to know the gossip,
and I’d forget what I wanted to say, which would make for a terrible class
period. With sleeping, I’d tell them
that it made me feel like I was boring, so it would completely hurt my
feelings. That is why I couldn’t
tolerate sleeping. Being humorous about
these two pet peeves from the beginning helped me handle them well when they
inevitably happened. I could call kids
out like this: “Sam, please stop
talking while I am because I’m DYING to know what you are saying. It is killing me. I’m so distracted. Help me out here!” It saved their self esteem, everyone had been
warned, and it took the attention off them and put it on me. I know other teachers who make a joke about
how they want to be the center of attention in their class because they come
from a big family and have a complex when it comes to not getting enough
attention. So sorry, kids, but you have
to deal with all the insecurities I’ve harbored since childhood.
4. Have a bathroom
policy. I HIGHLY recommend a
bathroom policy. If you find out your
kids are awesome, you can get rid of it, but it is very hard to start a policy
after not having it (and I had maybe two classes ever who didn’t need the
policy). I used to tell them the bathroom
policy and then tell them that once they had used all their passes, they couldn’t
get my permission to leave the class. I
would usually say, “But, look, if you are going to pee in your pants, and your
passes are gone, please leave. You don’t
want to be the 9th grader who peed in his pants in English
class. You’ll never live that down. We’ll still be talking about it at your
graduation. So walk out and go to the
bathroom. But then know I’m going to
write you up for walking out of class. I
will understand why you had to do it, but you’ll still have to suffer the
consequences – which, if this is your first offense, will probably only be a
warning. No big deal.” Stick to it, too. In seven years of teaching, I only had two
kids ever walk out to use the bathroom after running out of passes, and of
those two, only one really had to go. I
did allow kids to bring in doctor’s notes to go whenever they wanted, though,
so usually I’d also mention to the class that if they saw someone going more
frequently than was allowed, that person probably had a doctor’s note (though,
if they asked me directly, I’d neither confirm nor deny it).
5. Don’t create a
power struggle. Be calm. Be matter
of fact. Be consistent. Be quiet.
This is the policy, and they know it, so don’t lose your cool – just give
the consequence. After they see you
handle discipline this way enough, everything will run smoother. They will be less likely to test you because
they know they REALLY WILL get in trouble.
They will also be a lot more compliant about taking consequences. Kids who had had me for a few years in a row would
joke that they didn’t even feel like they were in trouble until they were half
way to lockout because I handled the situations calmly, quietly, and matter of
factly. Plus, in all honesty, high
schoolers can be little devils. If they
think they can make you cry or scream or throw a fit, they will do all they can
to get that reaction because, let’s face it, watching your teacher melt down is
WAY more fun than diagramming sentences.
6. Keep discipline
private whenever possible. No one
wants to be embarrassed in front of their peers. Until you know who can handle
it and who can’t (basically until you have built a relationship), don’t call
kids out in front of class. Approach
their desks and whisper. Quietly, ask
them to meet you in the hall after everyone else is working on an assignment. My BEST times with students were hallway
chats – even when they spent half the chat cussing. Also, if they drop that F-bomb in the
hallway, I don’t have to address it and can instead address the REASON they are
cussing. If they drop it in a conversation
they are having with me across the classroom while everyone else is watching –
well, that is another story.
7. Bring candy and
provide materials. Candy is a HUGE
motivator. Even one M&M or one
Skittle for a correct answer can be awesome – they will give you a hard time
about being stingy, you will say you are on a poor teaching salary, and then
everyone is happy and willing to do what it takes for that little treat. In addition to stocking up on candy, I
stocked up on school supplies. I quickly
learned that about 50% of the kids in my lower level classes would not have any
materials, so I bought enough notebooks, file folders, and pencils for everyone
when school supplies were on major sale.
I kept those items in the classroom, so they didn’t have to carry them
back and forth to lockers. Everyone
won. They always had what they needed,
and I wasn’t pulling my hair out. My
upper level classes could usually borrow from a neighbor, but when they couldn’t,
I had extra paper and pens/pencils.
Besides, what are you really going to do to the unprepared kid? Administrators could kill you for sending
them out for that.
8. Don’t send kids
out of class often, but if you threaten it, be willing to follow through. On
the heels of that last one…I don’t think most new teachers know this, but there
is a TON of pressure on administrators to suspend less kids. It isn’t worth explaining the politics on
this one, but the truth is that most of the discipline referrals a principal
gets will be ignored. And, if you are a
teacher who writes kids up every day, ALL of your referrals will get
ignored. So, do all you can NOT to write
them up and send them out, which means have those hallway chats, don’t make a
big deal out of things like being unprepared, make sleeping kids stand up
instead of sending them out, offer Friday detentions in your room if the school
will allow it. Whatever you can devise
to make the discipline fit the crime and happen in class, do it. But, when you tell them that you are going to
send them out, really send them out. Don’t
give idle threats. And if you don’t send
them out often, the administration will usually give a consequence for the
behavior (and if they don’t, at least you have a leg to stand on when you
protest). As a side note, asking a kid
to sit in the hallway is NOT an appropriate punishment. It is MAJOR fun to sit in the hall and talk
to everyone who is headed to lockout or the bathroom, and a great chance to
socialize with the kids in the room across the hall.
9. Have a sense of
humor and be creative. My best
advice is to just enjoy the fun part of high school kids. They are wild and crazy and silly. Enjoy that.
And relish in the fact that YOU don’t have to act like an adult all the
time when you are with them. One time, I
had my 1st period freshmen make group posters for an activity we were doing. The posters would be tools to track their
progress all grading period, so we took an entire class period, made them
pretty, and hung them on the wall. In 4th
period, my seniors informed me that one of the posters was an acronym for a vulgar
phrase. In retaliation, I got a few of
my artistic seniors to help me rework the offending poster into a beautiful
piece of artwork renaming the group “The In-grown Toenails” – complete with a
graphic picture. I said nothing about
their original poster, and when they finally noticed the reworking the next
day, we all got a great laugh out of their being caught and the punishment of
being the “in grown toenail” group for six weeks.
10. Find good mentors. Obviously this little list does not cover all
the issues a teacher will have in his/her classroom. I have used a million other tactics for
individual situations, but those solutions were either “stolen” from other teachers or developed with another teacher. Work together! And find the coworkers with positive attitudes
who actually LIKE high school students – those people will be the best
resources.
HAPPY TEACHING!!!
