Smart Classroom Management

In How To Turn Around Difficult Students (Part 1), I made the case that teachers struggle with difficult students because their compassion overrides doing what is best for the student.

If you haven’t read the article, I encourage you to read it before continuing with this one.

In this week’s article, I’m going to going to show you how to turn a difficult student into just another contributing member of your classroom.

Let’s be clear. When I use the term difficult student, I’m referring to those students who exhibit frequent misbehavior, disrespect, and interruptions in learning… despite your commitment to follow through with a consequence for every rule violation.

This is key.

Most so-called difficult students need nothing more than a teacher with a solid classroom management plan and a thorough understanding of how to implement and enforce it.

Take a hard look at how you’re managing your classroom before trying anything else.

Have you taught your students—shown them—how you expect them to behave? Do you enforce a consequence every time a rule is broken? Are your procedures and transitions sharp and efficient? Are the rest of your students well behaved?

If you can answer yes to these questions and yet nothing seems to work with this one student…

I have a strategy that will work.

It’s neither complicated nor time consuming, but it does take a classroom management mindset and a willingness to set aside immediate feelings of compassion for the student in question.

Teachers who make decisions based on feeling sorry for students and their sometimes-awful circumstances can cause behavior to worsen. The most compassionate thing you can do for a difficult student is to hold him or her accountable.

But real accountability, the kind an unusually difficult student needs, isn’t for the weak-kneed.

Members Only Strategy

When a difficult student proves to be unfazed by your classroom management plan, it’s time to take accountability to the next level and use the members-only strategy.

Note: I recommend beginning this strategy on a Monday morning and after you’ve spoken with the student’s parents and your administrator. It’s important to let them know of your plans.

Here’s how it works:

Before your students arrive in the morning, move the difficult student’s desk to a location away from the rest of the students. It must be in a place where the student has a clear view of the front of the room or wherever you conduct your lessons.

No, this isn’t the strategy. I know teachers commonly move a child’s desk to keep them away from certain students or to keep them in close proximity.

This move is symbolic.

When your students enter your classroom, pull the student in question aside and inform her that she is no longer a member of your classroom.

Say, “Jennifer, because you’ve chosen not to follow rules, you can’t be a member of this class anymore. What that means is that you will still be required to do your normal schoolwork, but you’ll no longer be able to participate in any activities that involve the rest of the class.”

Anything and everything that is related to working with or enjoying you or her classmates is off limits. She must be kept apart—and feel apart—but with the same academic work as everyone else.

Sound harsh?

You don’t have a choice.

You can’t let any one student interfere with the rights of others to learn and enjoy school. And to really help her, to change the direction of her life, you must hold her to a standard of behavior required for success in school.

For the first week, leave Jennifer alone. No pep talks. No lectures. No profound words. Don’t tell her what to think or how to feel. Let her discover this on her own.

However, you must be pleasant toward her. She must see that you care about her and want her to succeed. Smiles and hellos are appropriate, but don’t overdue it. Resist verbal praise for now—even if you see improvement.

Soon, maybe within the first day or two, Jennifer will appear calmer, quieter, and more appreciative of you and her classmates. Wait until later in the week—Friday is best—before having a conversation with her.

If you see contrition in her eyes, her speech, and her body language, walk by her desk, lean down and say, “When you’re ready to be part of this class again, come see me.” And then walk away.

She must make an effort to come and talk to you. And she will. Soon.

Why?

Because it’s human nature.

We all want to feel like we are part of something. No student is immune from this desire. This is why the more camaraderie, rapport, and fun you can create in your classroom the better.

Don’t be afraid to ratchet up the joy and togetherness in your classroom while the difficult student is being kept apart. Take advantage of this desire we share to belong to something special and bigger than ourselves.

It’s a powerful force.

When Jennifer finally approaches you, listen to what she has to say. Let her do the talking. She has to prove to you she’s ready. Does she talk about her mistakes? Does she apologize? Does she discuss how she is going to handle herself in the future? Is she sincere?

If so, welcome her back. Tell her how happy you are. But under no circumstances are you to add a warning or lecture. Let your actions do the talking.

After your conversation, move her desk back and let her rejoin her classmates as a member in good standing.

And then get on with your year.

Next week (Part 3) is about your relationship with difficult students and how to communicate with them so that they’ll want to behave.

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At the start of every school year you drag your finger down your roster, hopeful you won’t see one of the few names that can send shivers down your spine.

Every year, it seems, there are a handful of students that have the potential to make your life miserable.

Having one of these beauties on your roster can mean the difference between leaping out of bed in the morning and shrinking pitifully back under the covers.

For most teachers, a year with a difficult student will proceed predictably.

The student will disrupt your class, interfere with learning, and cause you to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to curb his or her behavior.

You’ll manage to keep the damage to a minimum and get the child through the school year.

But at what cost?

How much were the other students affected? How much class time was lost dealing with this one student?

And what about you and your personal fulfillment?

Was it another year of being sick and tired of dealing with misbehavior? Is it going to be another summer of hoping the stars will align and you finally get a “good” class?

And what of the difficult student? Will he (or she) move on to the next grade level no more mature or well behaved than when he walked through your classroom door on the first day of school?

Will you sigh, rub your temples, and say to your colleagues, “I’m so glad this year is over, and I’m sorry to whoever gets Anthony next year?”

What I’m getting at is this:

Are you ready to confront the real reason why you struggle with difficult students?

The Buck Stops Here

The reason teachers struggle with difficult students year after year is because they don’t have the stomach for it.

Their sense of compassion overrides doing what is right for the student.

Compassion is a good thing. We teachers were born with it in abundance. It breaks our hearts to see what some of our students have to go through at such a young age.

I get that. I feel for what some of our students have to deal with.

But this same compassion that in many respects makes you a good teacher can cause you to make excuses for students, which, in the long run, hurt them and undermine your ability to turn them around.

Example:

“I know Anthony was terrible this week and doesn’t deserve to go on our field trip to the zoo, but I don’t want to leave him back at school because ____________________.”

A. Anthony has a tough home life

B. Anthony’s father is in prison

C. Anthony has a learning disability

D. Anthony has never been to the zoo

I know you want what’s best for your students. I know you love kids. I know you want to make a difference.

But do you care enough to stop making excuses for bad behavior? Do you care enough to make the hard decisions? Do you care enough to put your personal feelings aside and do what is right for your students?

Are you ready to say, “It’s over. The buck stops here. The disrespect, the bad behavior, and the excuses are going to stop with me?”

Are you ready to make a lifelong impact on those who need you the most?

Answering yes to these questions is difficult. It’s scary. It means you must confess that there really is something more that you can do.

The power to turn difficult students around indeed resides with you.

You really can make a difference in Anthony’s life. You really can change the course of his life and lead him down the path that leads to success and opportunity—despite the terrible hand Anthony has been dealt.

But you can’t escape this truth:

You do Anthony no favors by excusing his behavior or by saying, “Anthony’s behavior is terrible, but it’s expected. He is dealing with a lot of issues at home and carries around a lot of anger.”

There is no excuse for bad behavior. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Sure, we can try to understand why it happens and where it comes from. We can help Anthony with his anger. We can show Anthony compassion with our encouraging words and notes of praise.

Life is incredibly tough for some of our students, without a doubt.

But if you believe that they can’t overcome their circumstances, and you believe that they—and you—are at the mercy of their home life and their difficult past, then you’re giving up on them.

And by excusing bad behavior and blaming it on outside influences, you’re letting them know loud and clear that you don’t believe in them.

Next week, I’m going to show you what to do when a difficult student like Anthony shows up on your roster. I’m going to show you how to turn them around and make a powerful impact on their lives.

But the last question I have for you is this:

Do you have the stomach for it?

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In their book, Made To Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath describe the story of Jane Elliott.

Jane was a third-grade teacher on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Struggling to explain the tragedy to her students, Jane decided to try something unusual. She separated her class by eye color.

She placed the brown-eyed students in the front of the room and the blue-eyed students in back.

She then explained that the brown-eyed students were smarter and superior to the blue-eyed students and therefore would be allowed extra recess. The blue-eyed students were told that they had to wear special collars around their necks to mark them as inferior.

What happened next affected the students deeply.

The brown-eyed students started discriminating against the blue-eyed students. They became “nasty” and “vicious” and taunted those wearing collars. Within a single school day, friendships were lost.

The following day, Jane reversed the experiment. She told her class she had made a mistake; the blue-eyed students were the superior group. Upon hearing this, those with blue eyes cheered and ran to place the collars on their now-inferior brown-eyed classmates.

While in the inferior group, students described feeling “sad,” “bad,” “stupid,” and “mean.” They were so affected by the negative label that even their academic performance dropped.

Studies done on Jane’s students ten and twenty years later showed that they were “significantly less prejudice than their peers who had not been through the exercise.”

What Jane Elliot did was remarkable. She took something abstract to her students—discrimination—and turned it into a concrete experience.

This made her lesson stick.

Making Classroom Management Sticky

One reason why teachers struggle with behavior is because of the way classroom management is typically presented to students. Traditional approaches like directed teaching and lecture style are slippery, conceptual, and hard for students to grasp.

When it comes to classroom management, scratch-the-surface teaching isn’t going to cut it. To make your rules, expectations, and procedures sticky, they must be made into an experience.

Here are two simple steps that do just that:

(1) You Show Them How

This is a critical first step to experiential teaching and one of the most powerful strategies you can use. To get your students to meet your expectations and behave as you desire, you must show them exactly what you want.

Have your students follow you as you go through the process of turning in homework or lining up to go to recess or being asked to go to time-out. Walk them through every detail. Show them how a good student listens, learns, and behaves.

Put yourself in their shoes—literally. Wear your hair different, put on clothes popular with your students, carry a backpack. These props lend authenticity and detail to the experience and act as hooks along a memory map.

(2) They Show You How

Now it’s time for your students to practice what they’ve learned. Have them show you how to turn in homework, line up, or go to time-out.

Test them on it.

What does good listening look like? How do you ask a question? Show me how you get ready for literature circles. What does it look like to break rule number three? Make them prove to you they understand your rules and procedures by actually performing them.

Classroom management is more effective when students are able to experience what you want from them—rather than merely being told what you want.

Time consuming? It’s good teaching. Go through both steps every time you teach a rule or procedure, and you’ll be happy with the results.

Further Reading

Although primarily a book about marketing, Made To Stick is a good resource for teachers. It covers six qualities you can use to make your lessons stickier.

For more information on experiential teaching, there is an entire chapter devoted to it in the book Dream Class. It’s called, “Show Them How.”

Also, I mentioned in passing that Jane Elliott’s experiment resulted in lower academic scores for those in the inferior group. If you want to know how to do the opposite: raise test scores by changing how your students think, see the chapter titled “Transform Limiting Beliefs.”

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Calling out is a momentum killer of the highest order and can turn a well-planned lesson into a halting mess.

But that isn’t the only reason why you should require your students to raise their hand.

Here are a few more:

Calling out is unfair

Every student has a right to participate, not just those who are more assertive. If calling out is allowed, a segment of your classroom will rarely be heard from.

Calling out inhibits learning

Good teaching allows students to form their own ideas, opinions, and conclusions before an answer is revealed or a thought expressed. Students need time—even if it’s just a few seconds—to puzzle over the presented material before discussion takes place. Calling out interferes with this process.

Calling out tilts the playing field

Students who participate do better than those who don’t. Allowing students to call out gives socially confident students an unfair advantage. Shy or less confident students, then, are left feeling unwelcome and disconnected from the rest of the class.

Calling out is rude

Allowing students to call out encourages selfishness. Students think, if I want something in this class, I’m going to have to bully my way to the front because that’s what everyone else is doing. In this environment, rudeness, unhappiness, and misbehavior are commonplace.

Teaching Students To Raise Their Hand

Requiring students to raise their hand before speaking is a must. However, I’m aware that many teachers struggle to get students to do so consistently.

The following steps are a proven solution.

1. Model

Few teaching strategies are as effective as detailed modeling, especially for teaching procedures. Your students need to know exactly what you expect from them. The most effective way to do this is to sit in a student’s chair, and show them precisely how you want them to raise their hand.

2. Use the “how not” strategy

Show your students how not to raise their hand. Act out common unacceptable behaviors. You know the ones: waving their hand to get your attention, calling out with their hand up, sighing and drawing attention to themselves, beginning to speak before you actually address them. Your students need to be clear about what hand raising does and doesn’t look like.

3. Practice

Have your students show you what proper hand raising looks like. Have them practice by asking you questions about your favorite sport or hobby, or by offering information about their own.

4. Limit

Students need plenty of opportunities to ask questions and share their thoughts. But there are times when your room needs to be closed for discussion. For example, you might say, “We’re going to start independent reading in a few minutes. Are there any questions… about anything? Now is a good time to ask. Once we begin reading, you’ll have to hold your questions or comments until we’re finished.”

5. Ignore

If a student calls out or waves their hand at you, first ignore them. Send the message that you don’t respond to anything except proper hand raising. This also keeps you from accidentally responding—which is a no-no.

6. Enforce

Continue to ignore, but move over to the whiteboard and put the student’s name up—or turn their card over or whatever system you use to communicate a consequence. As part of your classroom management plan, hand raising should be an enforceable rule. (See The Only Classroom Rules You’ll Ever Need.)

One Exception

The only exception to the hand-raising rule is when you’re working with a small group of students. Guided reading or literature circles should allow for polite but free-flowing conversation.

Hand raising is a critical element of effective teaching. I’ve never known a teacher who was lax in this area and didn’t have problems with student behavior, learning, engagement, time management, and more.

So is it really doable?

Absolutely. Follow the steps above and stick with it. Never give in and accept less than what is right for your students.

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Years ago I was asked to teach a summer school science class to a group of eighth graders.

Because many had failed a similar course during the school year, more than sixty students signed up.

Another teacher was brought in to help.

His name was John Dugan, and we hit it off right away.

John was hilarious.

After a test, he would put on hip-hop music and break dance in front of the class. He was terrible, but his students loved it. Many would join him and mimic his nerdy gesticulations.

John and I laughed our way through most of the summer, and along the way discovered we had a lot in common.

We held similar philosophies on learning and both believed in the power of (students) enjoying school. In fact, John believed so strongly in this leveraging power that he didn’t use a classroom management plan. (More on that in a moment.)

John and I split the students into two classrooms but worked together much of the time. We scheduled half a dozen field trips, planned loads of cool experiments, and committed to having as much fun as we could.

In fact, having fun was our top priority.

There is no getting around the fact that students who are happy to be in school, learn and behave better than those who don’t. It makes perfect sense, yet many teachers miss this simple truth.

The Power Of Fun

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you know how important it is to have a classroom management plan that includes a clear set of rules and a willingness to enforce them.

When this plan is combined with a learning environment that students are excited to be part of… well, you have the keys to the kingdom.

My first week teaching with John underscored just how powerful creating a fun learning experience is.

I was watching him as he was showing a group of students how to straighten a coat hanger for their rocket’s launching pad (we were teaching physics), when a few boys standing several feet away started giggling among themselves.

John looked up and yelled, “Hey, knock it off! I’m showing you something really cool and you’re missing it.” They said they were sorry and joined the group.

It occurred to me in that moment that John was teaching without a net: no classroom management plan. Although he was quick to correct students who interfered with learning, he didn’t seem to have any specified rules or consequences.

After school that day, I asked him about it. “Hey John, don’t you use a classroom management plan?”

“Nah,” he said, “but I probably should. My students get too loud and sometimes I have to raise my voice, but I never have any real behavior problems.”

And it was true.

Despite having a room full of students who were there primarily because of poor behavior, his class was well behaved.

His system, however, wasn’t perfect.

John wasted a lot of time and energy reminding students of this and that and asking for quiet so he could speak—which could have been avoided if he had had a classroom management plan.

But it was undeniable that he had very few instances of bad behavior.

And therein lies the lesson.

John was so much fun, and his lessons so interesting, that his students would have done anything to be a part of his class, including behaving in whatever manner he deemed acceptable—however unspecified that was.

Make Fun A Priority

Adding some fun to your classroom isn’t difficult. It doesn’t take a lot of pre-planning and you don’t need any special talent. It just takes a willingness to make it a priority.

Schedule learning games, tell stories, be your silly self, and try to bring a spirit of fun to (almost) everything you do.

Oh, and make a fool out of yourself once in a while.

Your students will appreciate it, and you’ll add more leverage to your classroom management plan.

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