Your students love video games.

They love action movies and bawdy comedies. They love snowball fights, skateboards, birthday parties, and action sports.

They love laughter and thrills, challenge and daring-do.

They want to leap off thirty-foot cliffs into murky water below. They want to go on zip-lines, amusement-park rides, water slides.

They want to score the winning goal, hang out with their crazy friends, and eat pizza seven nights a week.

They spend their waking moments thinking about, pursuing, or engaging in their desires.

And then they walk into your classroom.

Boredom Equals Misbehavior

I know, I know… It’s not your job to entertain your students or compete with the excesses of the world.

True enough.

But if you can’t grab their attention and enchant them with your lessons and teaching style, you’re going to lose them to boredom and disinterest.

And, as predictable as the rising sun, unengaged students misbehave, break rules, and seek fulfillment in less-than-acceptable ways.

Just the way it is.

Four Desires

The key to capturing your students’ attention, and keeping it, is to tap into four desires nearly every student has in abundance.

1. Adventure

Students crave adventure, and if you can give it to them, even in small doses and in vicarious ways, they’ll love being in your classroom.

Organize scavenger hunts and walking field trips and outdoor art lessons. Choose read-alouds that transport to other worlds. Act out scenes of scientific discovery. Perform your favorite book passages. Reenact moments in history instead of just reading about them.

Dive headlong into the dramatic stories of adventure behind the yawn-inducing curriculum you’ve been saddled with. Be wary of the current push in more and more technology, and get your students up and experiencing their learning.

2. Laughter

Bring regular doses of fun and laugher into your classroom, and your students will follow you to the ends of the earth. Besides storytelling, nothing compares to the rapport-building, behavior-influencing power of humor. Be open to it and you’ll find it everywhere you look.

There is no place like a classroom full of kids to find the comically absurd, the notably amusing, and the downright hilarious. No, you don’t have to abandon your rules or waste learning time.

The truth is, when your students are happy to be in your class, when they can have a good laugh once in a while, they’re less likely to misbehave and more open to learning.

3. Challenge

Among the happiest of people are those whose work challenges them—without it being unreachable, undoable, or discouraging. And this is what you must do with your students. You must continually give them challenges they think they can do, but aren’t absolutely sure.

The best way to do this is through provocative questioning: Who thinks they can teach the class how to perform the experiment? What group wants to try to tackle this problem? Which pair can do this the best, the fastest, or without making a mistake?

Your job is to know what your students can do so you can ask for a little more—in tempting challenges dangled before them throughout the day.

4. Fascination

This is where your skill as a teacher and showwoman (or showman) comes in. I’ve found that in every lesson and in every activity there is an opportunity to infuse a dose of fascination and wonderment.

This strategy can be so powerful and can be used in so many different ways, limited only by your imagination. Find the one thing in your lesson that is unique, unusual, magical, shocking, incredible, secretive, special, exclusive, or in some way different and use it to lure your students in.

Now on the surface this one thing might not be very compelling. The trick is to visualize your lesson objectives through the eyes of your students. Find the one thing that stands out and then make it compelling. Make it something your students can’t ignore, even if they tried.

Teach To The Heart

If your classroom doesn’t include these elements, if you’re simply following along with the paint-by-numbers curriculum you’ve been provided, then classroom management will be a never-ending struggle.

And academic progress will be teeth-pulling slow.

When you regularly tap into your students’ natural desires, however, when you speak and teach directly to their hearts, rather than into their ears and over their heads…

Then their eyes will widen, their backs will straighten in their seats, and they’ll be filled with the love of learning.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

Many teachers make the mistake of trying to talk their students through each moment of the school day.

The idea being that if a teacher provides continual guidance–through reminding, cajoling, and micromanaging–then he or she will be more effective.

It makes sense.

But it doesn’t work. Too much talking has the opposite effect. It makes classroom management more difficult.

Here’s why:

• It causes students to tune you out.

• It lessens the meaning and impact of your words.

• It communicates to students that you don’t trust them.

• It causes tension, distraction, and rebelliousness.

Being more selective about how often you address your students, on the other hand, makes classroom management easier.

Here’s why:

• It improves listening and attentiveness.

• It gives your words power and meaning.

• It helps you build trusting rapport with students.

• It brings peace and calm to your classroom.

How To Talk Less

The following tips will help you limit the amount of talking you do.

Lean on your classroom management plan.

When you let your classroom management plan do your talking for you, you can eliminate lecturing, pleading, yelling, scolding, arguing, and the like from your school day. This liberating experience improves classroom management almost immediately.

Teach procedures thoroughly.

Your students should know exactly what to do during every minute of the school day–with only modest direction from you. Well-taught procedures allow you and your class to transition and move through the day like a well-oiled machine.

Don’t repeat yourself.

Many teachers repeat everything they say–sometimes three and four times. When you repeat yourself, you weaken your words and encourage students to ignore you. And why shouldn’t they? They know you’ll always give the same direction again…and again…and again.

Speak only when you need to.

Never feel like you have to fill up every minute of the day with your support and guidance. If your students are giving you what you want, then leave them alone. This is one of the keys to developing a mature, independent classroom.

Practice brevity (and say more with less).

The more efficient and direct you can be with your words, the more effective your teaching will be. “Take out your math books” is infinitely more powerful than, “Okay, boys and girls, it’s almost ten o’clock, which means that it’s math time and…”

Observe more.

It’s unnatural for many teachers to take a step back and just observe. But the more you do, the better teacher you’ll be. When you hover and offer unsolicited opinions and reminders your students don’t need, you create greater and greater dependency on you. Furthermore, the more you observe, the less your students will misbehave.

Get to know your students.

By limiting the amount of talking you do, you’ll have more time to get to know your students. And when your relationship becomes more than simply what you need from them, then you can develop the kind of mutual admiration, rapport, and influence that changes behavior.

A Challenge

Talking less doesn’t mean that you’re going to withhold help or support when your students really need it. It doesn’t mean you’ll be aloof or standoffish. It doesn’t mean you’ll ignore them.

It just means that you’re going to be more thoughtful about when and how you speak.

This is a simple but powerful strategy that will have a profound effect on how your students respond to you.

My challenge is to use the suggestions above to try cutting your talking by a third. If you do, you’ll find yourself speaking with more power and impact.

And classroom management will be a lot easier.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
~Thomas Jefferson

Have you ever taught a lesson in another teacher’s classroom?

In other words, have you ever taught students whose classroom behaviors, attitudes, and habits have been shaped by someone other than yourself?

It’s an odd and enlightening experience.

Sometimes, if the teacher is good, it can be very pleasant. Other times… not so much. It’s hard to overcome weeks and months of poor teaching in a 30-minute lesson.

The difference between a classroom taught by an effective teacher and one taught by someone struggling with classroom management is striking.

You know within five minutes how much–or how little–learning is taking place.

There is a lot that stands out in your mind while teaching students from both ends of the classroom management spectrum. But one thing is indisputable. In classrooms with poor classroom management, the students believe they are, to some degree, in charge.

When a teacher leaves a leadership vacuum of any kind, and to any degree, the students will fill it with a vengeance.

So how do you know if this is happening to you? How can you tell if you’ve ceded leadership control to your students?

There are three telltale signs:

1. Your students will offer frequent suggestions.

Your students may not yet be able to write a coherent paragraph, read at grade level, or tie their shoes, but if they’re unsure about who the ultimate authority in the classroom is, they’ll tell you how you should do your job.

They’ll give frequent suggestions and reminders. They’ll advise you on how they think you should do this and do that. They’ll tell you that Tim is still in time-out, recess is starting soon, and, oh yeah, you forgot to teach vocabulary this morning.

In other words, they’ll be more interested in your responsibilities than their own.

2. Your students will be bold and disrespectful.

Without raising their hand, or having an understanding of the facts like you do, they will brazenly tell you that you’re wrong. They will lie to you when you both know the truth. They will approach you whenever they feel like it, interrupt you, and speak to you like they would a younger brother.

They’ll look you in the eye after an act of misbehavior and dare you to do something about it.

3. Your students will have a blasé attitude.

They’ll sit with a slouch. They’ll groan. They’ll take their sweet time. They’ll roll their eyes. They’ll chew gum in front of you. And if you have the audacity to correct them or give them a warning, you’re likely to hear a dramatic, “Oh my gosh! What did I dooooo?”

Absent of strong leadership, there is no sense of urgency in students, no bright-eyed enthusiasm, and little work ethic. They’ll appear jaded, bored, disinterested, and way too cool for you.

What To Do About It

Some teachers respond by trying to be buddies with students, with trying to be more like a facilitator than the teacher they desperately need. The fact is, when a teacher reveals him or herself as less than the ultimate authority in the classroom, the students will exploit it for all it’s worth.

The solution is to establish yourself as the clear leader of the classroom. Few teachers ever really do this, and because of it, their students walk all over them.

So how do you do it? How do you communicate to your students that you are unquestionably in charge of the classroom?

You tell them. And then you tell them again whenever they need to hear it.

You stand to your full height, look them in the eye, and give it to them straight. Say something like:

I’m your teacher and I’m in charge of this classroom. That’s my job. That means I make the decisions. I decide how you behave, what we learn, how we learn, and when we do the things we do. You don’t. Your job is to sit up straight, follow directions, and be the best student you can be. And that’s it.

If there is anyone who doesn’t understand this, anyone who is unsure about what your job is and who is in charge, then I want to see you at recess. Otherwise, show me right now, for the rest of the day, and for the rest of the year, that you understand.

These aren’t just words you recite. They must be part of who you are—your conviction, your principles, and your passion for leading students. They must also be backed by a classroom management plan you’re committed to following.

Deep down our students don’t want to slouch or goof off or tell us how to do our jobs. They do it because they’re uninspired. They do it because they have no one to look up to, no respected leader in the classroom to follow, and no reason to buckle down and focus on their sole purpose for being in your classroom:

To learn.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and receive free articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

If you’re like most teachers, you’re in a hurry much of the time.

Your schedule is overloaded. Your curriculum is bursting at the seams. And you have precious little time between one activity and the next.

Stress rises along with your dissatisfaction, but you continue to push the pace because you’ve been lead to believe that if you can somehow shoehorn everything in by the end of each day…

You’ll be a good teacher—doing your job, making progress, moving the curriculum along.

But it’s not true.

Being in a hurry will make you less effective, not more effective.

Here’s why:

Being in a hurry…

• Gives you less control of your class.

• Causes your students to become excitable, restless, and inattentive.

• Diverts your attention away from students.

• Causes you to cut corners with your classroom management plan.

• Gives you less leverage with students.

All are textbook examples of poor classroom management, and they lead directly to misbehavior, interruptions in learning, and slower academic progress.

Slow Down

The solution is to slow down.

Easier said than done, right? If it were that simple, everybody would go about their day at a nice, leisurely pace. With everything on your plate, how are you supposed to slow down?

I’m going to show you.

I prepared a short list of things you can do tomorrow to slow things down, give yourself more time, and become a better, happier teacher.

Trim the fat.

Most teachers try to do too much—much more than they really need to. Take a close look at everything you do and cut out what isn’t directly related to improving academic progress or classroom management. Focus only on what’s important, and eliminate the rest.

Look ahead.

Take two or three minutes every morning and visualize your day. Let the images flash quickly through your mind. Athletes use visualization to improve performance and avoid mistakes. It works just as well for teachers. You’ll be a more effective teacher and save yourself a lot of time if you mentally rehearse before the day begins.

Wait.

Never move on with a lesson, an activity, or a transition unless you’re getting exactly what you want from your students. Moving on before every student is locked in and following along will come back and bite you later. Waiting is the best defense against future interruptions, misunderstandings, needless questions, and other time-wasters.

Stop and enforce.

When you’re in a hurry, you’ll cut corners—especially with classroom management. But nothing wastes more time than misbehavior. So when a student breaks a rule, enforce it immediately. It may feel like an interruption at the time, but it will save you loads of time in the long run.

Talk Less.

Over-explanation is a common mistake teachers make. Get to the point and move on. You’ll save a lot of time by talking less, and you’ll enjoy other benefits as well—including improved behavior, better attentiveness, and deeper comprehension.

Teach your routines.

In many—if not most—classrooms, the time wasted on transitions is staggering. Your students need to know exactly what to do every minute of the school day. Done efficiently, routines and procedures can save hours of time during a typical week.

Observe.

Good teachers observe a lot—which is itself an excellent time-saver. It keeps students on task and completing their work faster. It’s also the best way to know the needs of your students and what changes you need to make to your instruction.

Remember to breathe.

Being aware of your breathing will keep your mind in the present and guard against racing headlong into the next thing. No, you don’t have to behave like you’re in a yoga class or float around in a meditative state. Occasional awareness is all that’s required. Mindful breathing will also protect you from stress, focus your mind, and help you perform at your best.

Fight Back

Teachers have more demands on their time than ever before—and less control over what, when, and how to teach.

The above list is a way to fight back.

It will ease the time pressure and allow you to slow down—which is a beautiful thing. Because, by slowing down, classroom management will improve, academic progress will accelerate, and you’ll be a better, happier teacher.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

It’s easy to stick with your classroom management plan the first few weeks of the school year.

You’re eager to make a fresh start, and your students are on their best behavior.

By week three, you’re cruising.

But then… slowly, imperceptively things start becoming routine, more day-to-day, and you become a wee bit complacent.

A little voice in the back of your head tells you that you don’t need to be such a stickler. Things are going well, so why not back off some? After all, being inflexible doesn’t suit your personality.

But as your students are becoming more familiar with you and their surroundings, school starts to feel routine for them too.

And they become restless.

Then, subtly at first, they start pushing back. They start testing you.

The Perfect Storm

You know where I’m going with this.

When your ever-so-slight complacency runs headlong into your students’s restlessness, it creates the perfect storm, one that builds slowly and ominously just out of your awareness.

Before you know it, it’s upon you.

Behavior, motivation, and respect take a nosedive. In an instant you go from calm and pleasant, to stressed and snapping at students.

And at the end of a long day you didn’t see coming, you slouch into your desk chair exhausted and wonder where it all went wrong.

Such is the fate of those who abandon even part of their classroom management plan.

Never Waver

Here are seven more reasons why you must never, ever waver from your plan:

1. Parents

A classroom management plan is an insurance policy against parent complaints; it’s fair to all students. If you don’t follow it, then managing your classroom in a way that’s fair—and proving that it’s fair—becomes nearly impossible, opening yourself up to complaints that are difficult to defend against.

2. Respect

For every time you fail to enforce a consequence (i.e., not doing what you said you’d do), you lose a layer of respect from your students. And if your students don’t respect you, you will struggle with classroom management.

3. Stress

When you don’t follow your plan, you’re left with using your voice and your wits—persuasion, intimidation, manipulation—to curb unwanted behavior. Besides being ineffective in the long run, both are pull-your-hair-out stressful.

4. Resentment

Teachers who disregard their classroom management plan are the same teachers who find themselves being ‘that’ teacher—the one they never pictured themselves being: stone-faced, angry, sarcastic. Being this way in an attempt to gain control will virtually guarantee that students will resent you and have every incentive to make your life difficult.

6. Chaos

This one is easy. Your classroom will fall into chaos and disorder without a willingness to stick with the plan you agreed to on the first day of school year. It’s a predictable and inevitable result, one many teachers don’t see coming until it’s too late.

7. Effectiveness

I’ve never known an effective teacher who didn’t have a commitment to following, defending, and enforcing clearly defined boundary lines of behavior. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to be the teacher you want to be without a determination to follow your plan at all (ethical) costs.

Leave The Dirty Work To Your Plan

Teachers struggle mightily with classroom management when they abandon following their classroom management plan exactly as it’s written.

They fall into the trap of reacting emotionally to misbehavior—which makes behavior worse—instead of letting their plan do the dirty work for them.

You owe it to your students, their parents, and to your own sanity to make a commitment to stick with your plan regardless of who breaks a rule or when that rule is broken.

No matter how inconvenient it may seem at the time or how well things seem to be going, no matter how badly you’d like to tell that one student what you’re really thinking or how much you like and respect that other one, when a classroom rule is broken, calmly and assertively do what you said you would do…

And enforce it.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

In his book, Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys To Creativity, Hugh MacLeod points out that Abraham Lincoln penned the Gettysburg Address on borrowed stationary.

Hemingway wrote with a simple fountain pen.

Van Gogh rarely used more than six colors on his palate.

And MacLeod, himself an artist, sketches cartoons on the back of business cards.

His point is that there is zero correlation between creative talent and the materials and equipment used.

The same can be said about an effective classroom management plan.

A simple set of rules and consequences hand-printed on ordinary poster board is all you need.

You see…

There is no magic in the plan itself. It has no power to influence behavior. Only you have the power to influence behavior by creating a classroom your students want to be part of and then strictly—obsessively—holding them accountable.

Therefore your plan doesn’t need to be elaborate, complex, or involved.

It just needs to be followed.

A Classroom Management Plan Is A Contract

A classroom management plan is a contract you make with your students that promises you will protect their right to learn and enjoy school without interference.

And once it’s presented to your class, you’re bound by this contract to follow it every minute of every day and without exception.

Otherwise, if you don’t, you’re breaking your word—and your students’ trust.

A classroom management plan has two, and only two, purposes:

1. To state the rules of the classroom.

2. To state exactly what will happen if those rules are broken.

That’s it.

Some will tell you that you need to include a system of rewards and incentives. But to really change behavior, to create the class you really want, you have to let go of this idea.

The “do this and get that” mentality is a short-term solution that may get you through the day, and thus is a good strategy for substitute teachers, but it won’t actually change behavior.

It won’t transform your students into the class you really want.

A Classroom Management Plan I Recommend

I recommend the following plan because the rules cover every behavior that could potentially interfere with the learning and enjoyment of your students, and the consequences, when carried out correctly, teach valuable life lessons.

It’s proven to work regardless of where you teach or who is in your classroom.

Rules:

1. Listen and follow directions.

2. Raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat.

3. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.

4. Respect your classmates and your teacher.

Consequences:

1^st time a rule is broken: Warning

2^nd time a rule is broken: Time-Out

3^rd time a rule is broken: Letter Home

Notes:

*For information on warnings and how they can be effective, see the articles Should A Warning Be Your First Consequence and How To Give A Warning That Improves Behavior.

*For information on time-out, see How To Get Students To Stay Seated And Quiet In Time-Out and 10 Ways To Make Time-Out More Effective.

*For information on sending a letter home, see the article Why A Letter Home Is An Effective Consequence.

A Small Role, But A High Priority

A common mistake teachers make is assuming that a classroom management plan is able to do more than its intended—and quite narrow—purpose (see above).

On its own, it provides little motivation for students to behave.

Its usefulness comes from how it’s implemented, enforced, and carried out, from how you communicate with your students, from how much leverage you have with them, and from how much they enjoy being part of your classroom.

Your classroom should be exciting and creative. Your classroom management plan, however, shouldn’t be.

Avoid cutesy and colorful designs. Even kindergarteners need to know that your classroom management plan and the rules by which it governs are sacred, serious.

Let it have a look worthy of its utilitarian purpose.

Two large pieces of poster board or construction paper—rules on one, consequences on the other—will do. Put them up on your wall, prominently, so everyone who enters your classroom will know that behaving in a manner that is most conducive to learning is a priority in your classroom.

Then honor the contract you made with your students by following it exactly as it’s written.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and receive free articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

If you’ve been teaching for longer than say… three minutes, then you’ve no doubt been hammered over the head with the idea that enthusiasm is important to effective teaching.

In order to motivate students, you have to be passionate about your subject.

I don’t disagree.

Enthusiasm is important—critical even.

But what if it’s causing your students to misbehave?

Yin And Yang

Regular readers of this website know that calmness is important to classroom management success.

Students feed off of your energy, and excitability isn’t a good thing when it comes to classroom management. Yet, if your students are uninspired, then you’re not helping them grow academically.

So what do you do? Can you be both calm and enthusiastic?

Well… yes and no. You can certainly be calm on the inside while showing enthusiasm. But there are times when you need to show calm on the outside.

Effective teachers understand when it pays to be enthusiastic, and when it pays to be calm.

They work together—like yin and yang.

The key is to use both to your advantage. Below are a few guidelines to help you know when to use one, and when to use the other.

When To Be Calm

You should be outwardly calm during…

Transitions

Transitions can be opportunities for students to misbehave. So it’s important your students see that you’re calm and in control. During transitions, position yourself in a highly visible area of the classroom and silently observe.

Procedures

Like transitions, your students need to be focused on completing procedures and routines quickly and correctly, so you can get on with the business of teaching. Again, stand in one place and calmly observe.

Independent Work

During this most critical learning time, resist the urge to interrupt your students—enthusiastically or otherwise. Your job is to fade into the background, keeping the classroom peaceful and conducive to concentration.

Entering & Leaving The Classroom

A high percentage of misbehavior occurs on the way in or on the way out of the classroom. So refrain from shuffling papers, talking to students, or making announcements. Instead, observe silently and be ready to enforce your rules with a consequence.

Misbehavior

When students misbehave, enforce your classroom rules dispassionately. This keeps you from losing your cool and ensures that the burden of responsibility remains with them.

When To Be Enthusiastic

You should be enthusiastic during…

Lessons

Whenever you stand before your students to teach a lesson, you must show passion for your subject. To convince students that the subject your teaching is worthy of their attention, they have to see that you’re excited to teach it.

Modeling

Modeling can be drudgery for students, or it can be an opportunity for an unforgettable learning experience. Which one depends on you. Detailed modeling in particular lends itself perfectly for having fun with your class—which makes classroom management a lot easier.

Read Aloud/Shared Reading/Guided Reading

Reading great books aloud with gusto will motivate children to read better than any other method, technique, or strategy. Your student’s love for reading will grow every day if you merely tap into your inner Meryl Streep.

Storytelling

I believe so strongly in the power of storytelling that I devoted an entire chapter to it in Dream Class. Nothing compares with the rapport-building, leverage-creating, and excitement-producing power of acting out stories for your students.

Learning Games/Science Experiments/Special Projects

Children will like and enjoy whatever you show enthusiasm for. The success of experiential activities hinges on the amount of excitement you can generate. So channel your favorite game show host, dance like an Egyptian, or throw on a lab coat and spectacles and really go for it.

Warning: Don’t Do The Opposite

Teachers who struggle with classroom management typically do the opposite of what is recommended above.

They get excited, stressed, and angry (enthusiasm of a different kind) when they should be calm and observant, and they become spiritless when they should be teaching like their hair is on fire.

Following the guidelines above, however, causes everything important to improve—classroom management, attentiveness, motivation for learning, and love for school.

Note: I was sad to learn of the passing of former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. He was an amazing teacher and an inspiration to many. Last September I wrote about him in an article called The Effective Teaching Secrets Of A Master.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

The key to effective classroom management is leverage.

If your students like being part of your classroom, then you have leverage, and accountability will work the way it’s supposed to.

If your students don’t like being in your classroom, then you’ll struggle with classroom management.

It’s that simple.

Because without leverage…

• Your consequences will be ineffective.

• Your students will be unmotivated.

• It’s a lot more difficult to get students to behave.

• You will have to rely on bribing, lecturing, reminding, and other minimally effective, energy-sapping methods.

• You will be tired, stressed, and frustrated.

• Every new school year will find you hoping for a “good” class rather than creating your own.

Done correctly, a teacher’s leverage can become so powerful and so influential that even the toughest students need no more than a glance to curb behavior.

That is no exaggeration.

Regardless of where you teach or who your students are, the power of leverage can transform your students into the class you really want.

How Leverage Is Created

Here is a partial list of some proven ways to create leverage in your classroom:

• Be likable.

• Build a natural and trusting rapport with students.

• Have a clean, organized, and peaceful classroom.

• Rally around the pursuit of challenging goals.

• Allow freedom within boundaries.

• Use meaningful praise.

• Show your students what you expect from them.

• Keep your cool.

• Don’t talk so much.

• Transform your students’s limiting beliefs about themselves.

• Hold students accountable without causing resentment.

• Treat the cause of behavior problems, not the symptoms.

• Be a great storyteller.

• Use humor.

• Protect the rights of your students to learn and enjoy school without interference.

• Encourage independence.

• See the best in your students.

• Have fun together.

• Develop maturity and confidence.

• Create a classroom that makes sense to students.

Teachers seeking to improve classroom management tend to focus on finding the right combination of rules, consequences, and rewards that will work for them.

These are important, no doubt. But what makes them go, what makes them effective, is leverage.

This should be your focus.

The idea is to create a tsunami of leverage so wide and deep that no student can resist its power.

Every article on this website, from ways to make time-out more effective to how small gestures of praise can make a big impact, either directly or indirectly works to create leverage with students.

Future articles, too, will focus on this irresistible force. Some of the topics listed above have been written about in detail and can be found by exploring the categories along the right side of the page. Others are on the way.

I encourage you to keep reading. Try out the tips, strategies, and techniques revealed every week. Put them into practice.

You’ll discover your influence with students growing right along with your love of teaching and everything—classroom management, motivation, attentiveness, academic performance—becoming much easier.

If you would like a complete guide to transforming students that includes all of the topics on the list and many more, purchase a copy of Dream Class.

And if you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

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.”

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, I invite you to become a member of this site. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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

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.

If you haven’t already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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