The sad fact is, it doesn’t matter how well teachers know their
content…it doesn’t matter how many strategies teachers know to improve
reading comprehension or to increase academic achievement…if teachers
can not manage their classroom, they can not teach.
Many experts in education agree that the students who are causing
the classroom management problems usually fall into one of four
categories:
1. attention seekers ~ (pencil tappers, hummers, students who talk out etc.)
2. power seekers ~ (always getting in the last word, muttering under their breath)
3. revenge seekers ~ (recipients of frequent punishment)
4. avoiding failure ~ (students who don’t do the work or withdraw from the lesson as a means of avoiding more failure)
However, for most teachers, it is the power seekers that start to
make our blood boil. These are the students who question your authority
and do so in front of the whole class.
Many teachers feel that they cannot let the power seeking student
get in the last word because the will lose face with the rest of the
class…leading others to feel comfortable questioning your authority as
well.
These power seekers are trying to “bait” the teacher by mumbling
something under their breath or flat out stating, “You can’t make me do
this assignment!”
Bottom line…these power seeking students are trying to get a
reaction out of the teacher and there is nothing they would like more
than to have their fellow classmates watch the teacher explode.
Don’t do this…Don’t fall for their tricks…Don’t take the bait!!!
At least not then and there in front of the other students.
There are other options…A much better approach is to take a deep
breath, don’t lose your cool, and in a calm, matter-of-fact manner
simply tell the student to see you after class and then immediately
continue on with the lesson.
If the power seeking student then mutters something under his
breath again just ignore it…that’s right ignore it…the rest of class
already knows that you will handle the situation without their
presence. There is no need for further response at this time as all you
will be doing is disrupting your own lesson and giving that power
seeking student just what he wants.
Then, when the bell rings and the class is leaving, simply pull that
power seeking student aside and follow through without the audience
that the student desired. Depending on the situation you may also
follow that up with a phone call home, parent conference, detention
etc.
Just don’t get “into it” in front of the rest of the class.
By knowing the reasoning behind why a student is misbehaving (i.e.
seeking power) teachers can make much better classroom management
decisions.
What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
And his teacher, Socrates said:
The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.
Nothing is new, strategies are the same it's just that we're getting old....
There will be a detailed post from Rob in the near future.
There is one true key to successful behavior
management. It doesn’t matter how many effective teaching skills and
useful behavior strategies you have in your arsenal; without this, your
efforts will eventually come unstuck.
The secret ingredient is… the teacher-pupil relationship.
You
see, when you really get to know a pupil you become aware of their
triggers – the things that upset them and cause all sorts of problems
in class. And when you’re dealing with children who carry all kinds of
emotional baggage and flare up for no apparent reason, this is valuable
knowledge.
After all… stopping behaviour problems from occurring is much easier when you know in advance what causes them!
When
you take the time to get to know a pupil, you find out what they enjoy,
what they like doing and what their interests are. With this
information you have the power to make all your lessons instantly
appealing and your conversations with them stimulating.
When
you reach out and get to know any child in school you show them they’re
valued as people. Once they learn this, their ability to take an active
role in other positive relationship is improved; they fit in better and
so are less likely to get into serious trouble and less likely to spoil
your lessons. Also, when you show you're actually interested in
them as individuals they will respect and trust you. Pupils will behave
much better for the teacher they trust and respect.
Once
you get to know them anything really is possible; doors are opened to a
whole new world of communication, cooperation, fun and mutual respect.
The best technique I’ve found for helping you discover their likes, dislikes, hobbies, passions and interests is…
…an age-old salesman’s tool called the ‘Record Card’.
Record
cards are used by salesmen to record a client’s personal information
and so enable him to be more ‘familiar’ on his next visit. Each time he
returns to the same client and has a conversation, more information is
recorded on the card. It might be a chat about the football last night
– revealing his favorite team for example or a few words about his
family.
These
tidbits gradually build up and form library of useful information which
can be drawn on to deepen the relationship during the next meeting.
It’s a well known fact that people would rather have a conversation
about their own lives and interests than anything else, so the salesman
that does this will always make the sale.
The
huge benefit of the information on the record card is that it enables
the salesman to tailor the conversation, and even new product lines, to
the client’s interests, needs and desires. When this is done, the
client is far more receptive and likely to buy.
We
can discover the passions and interests of our students very quickly
through our own simple version of the Record Card – a fun questionnaire
to give to the worst pupils in class as a fill-in activity.
The information you glean from these completed questionnaires is priceless and these are just some of the ways you can use it…
Tailor
rewards to a pupil’s interests making them have more effect. (if you
have a pupil who’s nuts about a certain breed of dog there’s no point
in giving him a sticker with a car on it!)
Provide
reading material – magazines, journals and books – that relate to their
specific areas of interest – for break times, quiet reading sessions,
registration etc.
Plan
really, really interesting lessons! I’m talking about lessons that grab
them from the word go and hold their attention all the way through.
This is only possible when they’re actually interested in what you’re
talking about. You might choose to plan a series of lessons for the
whole class around a topic that several pupils are interested in, or
cover a skill such as narrative writing and encourage them to write a
story about their subject of interest.
Use
them as a relationship-building tool. They enable you to strike up
conversation on a topic you know they’re interested in and this is
crucial with ‘hard to reach’ kids – it shows you care about them and
are interested in them as people. Being able to chat with a pupil on
their level is magical and is the short-cut to having far fewer
discipline problems.
The first of these
mistakes, that most teachers make, is that they base their classroom management
strategy around the idea that you can control the students by using force. Using
force to control students never works in the longterm. If you enter the
classroom believing that you are really going to force the students to behave,
and do exactly what you want them to do, when you want them to do it by using
threats of sanctions or something similar, you're in for a very tough or, at
least, very exhausting time. It just doesn't work in the long term. The pupils
see this from all their other teachers and they simply become immune to it’s effect.
And yet, I see so many people go into each and every lesson waving a big stick
hoping in vain that this will be as effective as an electric cattle prod, when
in reality, it’s about as useful as a piece of spaghetti leftover from last
night’s dinner!
Within minutes of the
students entering the room, you will hear many teachers threatening to take
away the child’s lunchtime, breaktime or detain them after school. They continue
to do it day after day, lesson after lesson, hoping to get a different result, and
with the same pupils. Not only is this approach unsustainable, but it’s also exhausting.
I've done it before. Every single lesson is a battle; you're constantly having to
bark at the students like some demented hound!
That puts a lot of
pressure on you because you’ve got to follow through with what you’ve said.
When you set these punishments, you will often be the one that is responsible for
administering the sanction. This then takes time away from you, that you’d
otherwise be using for preparation, chatting to other staff, etc, etc. So not
only are you inanely setting these ineffective punishments, you're also
punishing yourself since you end up using your own free time making sure they
do what they’re they're supposed to.
And that's if you're
lucky. If you're unlucky, the students don't turn up to the detention, or some
other sanction you have set, and then you've got to chase the students to do what
you want them to do. When it comes to this point, the battle has been lost.
Controlling students by
placing too much importance on the overt use of force will only ever be
effective when you're there, actually physically in the room, watching them all
the time. Should you turn your back on them for a short while or step outside
the room to deal with another situation, chaos or some version of chaos, will
rein. I exaggerate only slightly, but I'm sure you understand the gist of what
I’m talking about.
Teachers that control
their classes by force, also experience great problems when they're feeling a
bit below par. We all have those days when for some reason or other, we’re just
not up to our best, and when this happens the students can behave like a pack
of wolves encircling wounded prey. Relying primarily on punishments alone
clearly doesn’t work since we all know that there are a significant number of students
who collect detentions, etc….like they’re going out of fashion. Basically
though, in these times of change, we can no longer use force to frighten, or
even effectively deter, pupils into compliance – rightly so. We need to develop
preventative measures that use constructive influence rather than firefighting in
vain with impotent sanctions. Punitive measures do a have a place in your
classroom management strategy, but to place it at the core is a mistake so many
people make. You can always spot the teachers who adopt this approach – they’re
forever spending their own free time filling out forms and going through time consuming
procedures chasing miscreant pupils. You don’t have to do that. What you have
available to you is a whole kaleidoscopic array of techniques and tips that can
really bring sustainable control to your classroom, the way you want it.
Don’t try to be their
friend
The next major mistake
that so many teachers make, when it comes to controlling student behaviour, is
that they try to become the students friend, or they try to be “nice” to them. Again,
because students are still children, this is a flawed strategy since it’s in the
nature of students to test your “friendship” to the limits to see what they can
get away with. You will find yourself being stretched more and more by their
incessant pushing of the boundaries and testing of your friendship.
The sort of thing I’m
thinking about here is, where a teacher will go into a class and to try to
befriend their group and pretend that they are one of them. Students can see
right through this behaviour and will take advantage of the situation.
Being nice to the
students means, from their perspective, giving them what they want. What the
pupils believe they want, is not very often what you want to do in the lesson. Therefore
they’re continually going to push you to do this or that to get their own way because
you've indicated to them that you want to accommodate them, and from their perspective,
being nice to them, means letting them do what they want to do. Students do not
respect this type of teacher. They will be perceived to be weak and a pushover.
Listen to a few of their conversations, and you'll hear what I mean. Not only
is befriending the students totally ineffective over the medium to long term,
because it does not lead to trust or respect, it is a total disaster when there
finally comes a point (and it will come) when you've got to sanction them and
issue corrective measures. You would then become public enemy number one, since
not only are you no longer their friend, you'll be perceived as someone who has
betrayed them. Poacher turned gamekeeper.
You’ll be the devil in
the making and they will hate you. Ouch!! Fundamentally though, the main reason
why trying to be nice to the students it's absolutely ineffective is because
the real reason why the teacher has chosen to control a class in that way is
because of fear. Fear that they’re not good enough. Fear that they can't do it
any other way. Fear because they know issuing traditional kind of punishments like
detentions, lines, or even shouting at them, is about as useful as a chocolate
teapot! If, from inside your mind, you’re coming from a place of fear, the
students will detect this at a subconscious level and you will be perceived to
be weak, which will adversely affect the way the students see you. Being
positive to the students is an integral part of any effective classroom
strategy, however, this is different from trying to be the students’ friend,
which is not what the pupils want, and will only be perceived to be a sign of
inner fear and uncompelling vulnerability.
Don’t take their
behaviour personally
The final major mistake,
that the vast majority of classroom practitioners make, is that they invoke
their negative emotions at inappropriate times.
They simply become too
emotionally attached to what's happening in their lessons and take things
personally when things go wrong. This doesn't mean you should be cold and clinical,
because that in the long-term is ineffective too. It simply means that one must
learn to detach themselves from how the students behave in the lesson, to how
that really relates to you as a person. The students don’t really know you at
all, so how can that really have any bearing on you as a person? I once read a
quote that went something like this: if I offered you a gift and you absolutely
refuse to accept it, to whom does that gift belong? Think about it. I'm sure
that’s heavily paraphrased, but you get the point. Many teachers are adversely
affected by the negative behaviour that occurs in their lessons, and blame themselves
for what's happened and continue to focus on the problem and not the solution.
But there are solutions out there. There are solutions available to all of the troublesome
situations that occur in the vast majority of school lessons. These problems
can be completely avoided, or at the very least, constrained to a very low
level. My philosophy is very simple: kill the monster while it’s little, while
it’s a baby. Don't wait until its eating the city before you kill it. And we
all have little monsters in our own classroom management techniques that can be
destroyed or, at the very least, tamed. All it takes is taking a few effective
strategies and implementing them on a strategic and systematic basis.
Here's a list of some homework strategies that teachers can share with their
students' parents:
1. Set up a consistent place for homework to be done.
Homework should be done in the same place every night - not on the
couch one night, at the dinner table the next, and the bedroom
the following night.
2. Organize your homework spot to maximize
efficiency. Have a box with everything your child might need to complete any
given homework assignment...pencils, erasers, glue, scissors,
markers, paper etc. This will greatly reduce homework procrastination.
3. Help your child establish a consistent schedule for completing
homework. Depending on the child's after school schedule, it may not be
possible to do the homework at the same time every night. Therefore, it may
be wise to sit down Sunday night each week and create the homework schedule
for the upcoming week.
4. Do not sit with your child and do the
homework together. The purpose of the homework is for your child to practice
what he or she has learned in class. If your child cannot do the
homework by herself then you need to contact the teacher.
5. After
your child completes the homework, discuss it...What did he or she learn from
the homework? What steps were easy? Difficult?
6. Your child should
spend roughly 10 minutes per grade level on homework. For example, a 2nd
grader should spend 20 minutes on homework while an 8th grader should spend
80 minutes. Again, if your child continues to consistently spend more time
than this on homework make sure to contact your child's teacher.
Many
parents are just not aware of the best way to help their child complete the
homework. By providing a list of helpful homework tips for parents, teachers
will see an increase in homework completion and therefore, an increase in
academic achievement.
I'm currently in Singapore running a series of training courses on classroom management and will be back in the UK to run the OSL courses at the start of December.
It would be wonderful to 'meet' anyone who is due to attend the OSL dates here on the blog/forum over the next few weeks - I am at my laptop most days and will be happy to answer any questions.
Best wishes,
Rob
OSL Classroom Management Trainer
Courses: details hereEssential Classroom Management, Success With Difficult Pupils
The sad fact is, it doesn’t matter how well teachers know their
content…it doesn’t matter how many strategies teachers know to improve
reading comprehension or to increase academic achievement…if teachers
can not manage their classroom, they can not teach.
