Classroom Management Strategies That Work
The beginning of the school year is well underway, and your knowledge about each of your students is growing. If you have not done so already, now is the time to begin instilling clear expectations for your students about how you want your class to run. Whether you’re a veteran teacher or this is your first year, aside from building strong relationships with your students, classroom management is the most important thing you can do to keep your classroom running smoothly for the rest of the school year.
The great thing about classroom management is that it is a learnable skill. Like with anything in life, practice makes perfect. The more you flex your classroom management muscles and continue to work on them, the better they grow. In this post, I am going to outline my experiences with classroom management and provide some helpful tips and tricks to get your classroom running like a well oiled machine.
When I first started teaching 16 years ago, the teachers on my staff would tell me, “Don’t smile until Christmas, let them know who’s the boss.” That advice is antiquated, and honestly never worked for me. There is no way I could survive until December without cracking a smile. My teaching style is not one of stern consternation. I joke, sing, and dance my way through lessons. However, classroom management is a fickle friend. If you do not practice your management skills daily, cracks in your strong foundation will begin to show.
Students need structure and clear boundaries, they need to feel welcome, and they need to feel that their opinions matter. Duh, right? But guess what, our classrooms, like life, are made up of a vast tapestry of students with very individualized needs. One size does not fit all when it comes to the students in our classroom, So, what do you do? What are some tips and tricks that I can distill onto you?
Consistency is key:
Start each day with a high-five. That high-five may also be a fist bump, elbow tap, or even just a smile and solid eye contact. Greet your students outside your classroom door and make sure to try to say hello and welcome to every student who walks into your class. Pro tip - say your students’ names as well. This gesture goes far!
Come up with clear limits and expectations for your students at the beginning of the year. Be consistent with those limits and expectations.
Model your expectations. This may sound silly, but it works. You may be wondering if middle and high school students need behavior or expectations modeled for them…the answer is yes! Model your expectations for your students. Do you want them to walk into class a certain way? Model it. How about when they transition from one task to another. Model that as well. How about how they raise their hand or turn and talk with a peer? Clear expectations and teacher modeling set your students up for success. It may sound silly, but it works.
Model acceptable behavior and controlling emotions. I get it, we are not psychologists, counselors, or therapists…but we are teachers. We model great writing strategies and reading strategies. We need to help our students also practice how to deal with frustration, anger, and embarrassment. We can practice those skills along with our students. A student who loses her temper needs to be taught ways to calm herself and use appropriate language to express frustration. Too often schools punish students by removing privileges or placing them in a contained setting without teaching more acceptable alternatives and providing opportunities for practice. Without opportunities to learn and practice, it is impossible to improve.
Chunk your learning. You have heard this before. I am telling you again. Middle school students have the attention span of 15 minutes. Chunk your learning into bite sized pieces that allow for movement. Give your students a break. The behavior problems start when students grow bored…or when they have hit a wall in their learning. Build in those breaks to break up the monotony.
Be genuine. Show genuine interest in your students. Get to know them as individuals and on a personal level. Instead of always redirecting misbehavior, take one minute each day with that same student and ask questions about themselves. Once you take the time to learn about them and their lives…to show a genuine interest…many times, those misbehaviors will stop.
Friends, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s a big, bad, dark, secret of mine. It has taken years to grow my classroom management skills. I have read countless blogs, educational articles, and books on the subject. I have talked to peers, received advice, tried that advice with some success, or with no success, depending on the situation. But, one thing is for certain, I have never stopped learning and growing in my classroom management skills. If you take one thing away from this post, it is this: do not stop working on your classroom management. One size does not fit all. Classes change from year to year. You may feel that you have it dialed in one year, but in the next year, those same strategies just don’t work. Just remember, consistency is key. Work on those relationships first with your students. The learning comes second.