With over 25,000 page views, How To Handle Disrespectful Students is one of the most popular articles on this website—and for good reason.

A disrespectful student can get under a teacher’s skin like almost nothing else.

When confronted with disrespect, it’s easy to take it personally. This is a normal reaction from a passionate teacher.

But it’s a colossal mistake.

Because when you take behavior personally, you’re likely to react in ways that make managing that student’s behavior much more difficult.

Your leverage and influence will then plummet right along with his or her behavior.

But if you can refrain from doing what comes naturally, then you can hold the disrespectful student accountable and still retain your ability to influence future behavior.

Here’s how:

Lose the battle.

When a student is disrespectful to you, you have to be willing to lose the battle. In other words, you must resist the urge to admonish, scold, lecture, get even, or otherwise attempt to put the student in their place.

Don’t take it personally.

Disrespect comes from a place inside the student that has nothing to do with you. So don’t take it personally. Your job is to help the student see the error of his or her ways so that it doesn’t happen again.

Stay calm.

Take a deep breath to quell any angry feelings rising up inside you. Remind yourself that you’ll be much more effective, and the situation will go much smoother, if you maintain emotional control.

Pause.

In the immediate moments following the incident, don’t say a word. Simply maintain eye contact with the student and wait. Let their words hang in the air for several seconds, leaving no doubt about what was said, how it was said, and who is responsible for saying it.

End it.

It’s important not to escalate the situation, but to end it as quickly as possible. Your pause and unwillingness to react is unnerving and will leave the student devoid of anything to say. As soon as you break eye contact and walk away, the incident is over.

Move on.

Refrain from enforcing a consequence—for now. Just continue on with whatever you were doing. Leave the student standing there, unsure of what to do. It’s always best to get back to normalcy as quickly as possible for the sake of the rest of your students.

Do nothing.

Proceed with your day as if nothing happened. Don’t approach the student. Don’t try to talk to him or her about what happened. Don’t do anything until you’re confident that the student has mentally moved on from the situation.

Enforce.

As soon as the student is calm and the incident is forgotten, approach and deliver your consequence. I recommend bypassing the warning step of your classroom management plan and sending the student directly to time-out. Say simply, “You broke rule number four. Grab your work and go to time-out.”

Notify.

For overt disrespect, the parents should be notified. A letter home is most effective. It also adds a layer of accountability that lasts beyond the day of the incident. Near the end of the school day, hand the student your letter and walk away–without adding a lecture. Let accountability speak for you.

Note: For more information on this topic, including a sample letter home, see the article, Why A Letter Home Is An Effective Consequence.

Let remorse set in.

When you handle disrespect this way, without lecturing or scolding or taking it personally, even the most obstinate student will be affected by his or her mistake. So much so that you’re likely to get a sincere and unforced apology.

A Lesson Learned

By following these steps, you can turn a student’s disrespect into a memorable lesson. The steps work because they heap the entire burden of responsibility on the student’s shoulders, with none of it clinging to you.

He or she can’t blame you or be resentful of you—thus undermining the lesson—because you didn’t try to get even. You didn’t have to win the battle. You didn’t yell, threaten, scold, or lower yourself to the same level of disrespect.

You kept your cool and allowed accountability to work, which is the right thing to do for both you and the student.

Thanks for reading.

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- Smart Classroom Management - Copyright 2009-2011, All Rights Reserved.

Photo courtesy of elvissantana.com

Have you ever noticed that some teachers don’t have to work as hard at classroom management?

Certain teachers can walk into a classroom, and almost magically, the students become calmer, more mature, and more receptive in their presence.

These teachers may use the same classroom management plan as everybody else, but somehow, year after year, their students are always better behaved.

What are they doing differently?

The answer to that question is this week’s topic. By virtue of how they communicate with students, both verbally and non-verbally, some teachers are able to command an almost effortless respect.

Lessons From The Dog Whisperer

Have you ever watched the television show “The Dog Whisperer?” When Cesar Milan enters a house to work with an unruly dog, the dog knows within seconds who is in charge. You can see it in the dog’s eyes and body language.

It’s amazing to watch.

Cesar is able to command respect from a dog he has never met before just by the way he walks into a room. Forgive me for comparing dogs to students, but in this one regard, the comparison is accurate.

Students, too, know whether you’re in charge or not as soon as you enter the classroom. The way you present yourself in front of them has a profound effect on their behavior and the ease in which you are able to manage your classroom.

10 Ways To Command Respect

To command respect from students, you don’t have to be born with a royal bloodline or have the bearing of a drill sergeant. And you don’t have to have any magical powers.

Follow the guidelines below, however, and it will appear that you do.

1. Use confident body language. Keep your head up, shoulders back, and look directly at students when speaking with them. Confident behavior earns immediate respect.

2. Slow down. Rushing around creates negative, excitable energy and makes you appear as if you’re not in control. Work on moving efficiently and gracefully.

3. Be decisive. Don’t argue with students, appear wishy-washy, or let them dictate your response to misbehavior. Make decisions quickly and then move on.

4. Pause before speaking. Always wait until every student is attentive and looking at you before giving instructions. This shifts control to you and adds more importance to whatever you say.

5. Do exactly what you say you will do, especially when it comes to your classroom management plan. Your students will respect this above all else.

6. Practice brevity. Talk less and your words will mean more.

7. Keep your cool. When you overreact, yell, or lose emotional control, you provide a poor model for your students. And they’ll lose respect for you because of it.

8. Listen. Let your students speak and wait until they finish before responding. If you don’t respect them and what they have to contribute to your classroom… they won’t respect you.

9. Be prepared. Your students won’t respect a leader who is unorganized, has poor time management, or is not in complete control of the classroom.

10. Radiate confidence. Like dogs, children can sense fear a mile away and will prey upon it if given the opportunity. If you’re feeling unsure of yourself, practice confident body language until you begin to feel it on the inside.

Students quickly clue in to behavior that appears weak and not worthy of following. A teacher who doesn’t command respect will always have a more difficult time with classroom management.

On the other hand, most students are craving for a leader, for someone to look up to. So when a teacher comes into their life that displays the qualities they respect, they bend over backwards trying to please her/him.

Practice the ten points listed above and be cognizant of the image you’re projecting to your students, and you’ll notice a big difference in how they respond to you.

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- Smart Classroom Management - Copyright 2009-2011, All Rights Reserved.

One of the biggest classroom management mistakes teachers make is that they take disrespectful behavior personally.

To quote Tom Hagen speaking to Sonny Corleone in the classic movie The Godfather, “This is business, not personal.”

When you take disrespectful behavior personally, two things are likely to happen:

1. You will desire to get even, to show your students who is boss.
2. You will be inclined to scold, lecture, or react with sarcasm.

Both will encourage more disrespectful behavior from your students. When you react angrily or with spite, you cause your students to resent you, resulting in more of the same unwanted behavior.

I’ve heard teachers say that they don’t care if they’re disliked, that it isn’t their job to have students like them. This may be true, but it will make you a less effective teacher and make classroom management more difficult.

Taking poor student behavior personally sends the message to your students that they can push your buttons and disrupt your day if they choose. This shifts control over to your students and weakens your ability to manage your classroom.

When you react out of anger, you are inviting, even daring, disrespect. Back anyone into a corner, and they’ll want to fight back or resolve to get even. Butting heads with students always results in more bad behavior.

You must have a bit of shrewdness in you when it comes to classroom management and understand that the most effective classroom management strategies don’t always jive with our most natural reactions.

So when a student is blatantly disrespectful, especially in front of the rest of your students, it is only natural to take it personally. It’s how we’re wired. But if you can take a step back and realize you’re shooting yourself in the foot every time you react on instinct, then you can gain immediate control of the situation without losing your cool—or your authority.

So how should you react?

The most effective way to handle disrespect is to simply and dispassionately follow your classroom management plan and enforce a consequence.

Enforcing your classroom rules—which should include a rule specifically for disrespectful behavior—with an attitude of indifference strengthens your authority and your classroom management effectiveness.

This can be a challenge at times because initially, as a jolt of adrenaline surges through your body, it can make you feel like somehow the student won, that he or she got away without knowing how their disrespect made you feel. But a student only wins when they’re able to get under your skin.

Like the old deodorant commercial says, “Never let them see you sweat.”

Rest assured, you’re not folding or giving in by resisting the urge to react emotionally. Rather, your constraint is a model for your students for how to handle negative situations with poise and without lowering yourself to the same level of disrespect.

Let your classroom management plan do its job. Relying upon yourself and your words, besides being ineffective, is stressful. Send the message that being respectful is not a choice in your classroom and that anyone who engages in disrespectful behavior will be held accountable.

However, if your first consequence upon a student breaking a rule is a warning, then this isn’t a strong enough response to disrespect.

Therefore, as part of your classroom management plan, there must be an allowance made for situations in which stiffer consequences are needed immediately. Disrespectful behavior, emotional outbursts, and bullying other students are examples of behavior that would warrant an immediate time-out separation from the rest of the class and, more than likely, a letter home to parents.

Your students must be made aware that there are circumstances that are up to the discretion of the teacher. Therefore, this exception must be part of your classroom management plan and posted on your classroom wall.

Handling disrespectful students with calmness and dispassion will decrease the likelihood of it happening again. But there are other things you to do to create an atmosphere of respect in your classroom. For example:

1. Students will emulate you and the way you treat others, particularly if they admire you. So it’s important to set the tone of respect in your classroom by the way you speak to students.

2. You must be respectful, exceedingly so, in all of your interactions. I know you’ve heard it before, but saying please and thank you works. For your students to get the message, you need to use exaggerated politeness (though never obsequiousness) in front of them.

3. Gain your students respect by doing exactly what you say you will do and having your words congruent with your actions. If you require your students to keep their desks clean and neatly organized, but you don’t keep yours that way, your students will notice. They clue in to little discrepancies like this. They glean more about who you are from what you do than for what you say.

4. Stop telling your students how you expect them to behave and instead show them how. Model what respect looks like (for specifics about effective modeling, check out this previous article) and role-play how to give it. Teach respect like you would any other subject area.

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- Smart Classroom Management - Copyright 2009-2011, All Rights Reserved.