Your lesson ends, the recess bell rings, and you release your students to the playground to let off some steam. But on the way you notice one of your students, call him Anthony, rudely shoving others aside on his way out the door.

How dare him, the little bugger.

So you run out, pull Anthony off the playground, and let him have it. You give him a fire-breathing, finger-pointing, he’s-got-it-comin’ lecture, topped off with a stern, “Do you understand me?”

He hems and haws, looks at his shoes, and mumbles an apology. Semi-satisfied, you send him on his way and head back to your classroom with a sigh.

Of course, not all lectures are so vigorous. More often, teachers lecture because they believe that with the right words their students will see the light and suddenly be transformed.

But does it work? Is lecture a viable classroom management strategy?

On the surface the answer appears to be yes. Lecturing often works in the immediate aftermath. But in the long run, it’s a costly mistake that makes classroom management more difficult.

Here’s why:

1. It’s stressful.

Using words to try and convince students to behave is perhaps the number one cause of stress among teachers. And because lecturing kinda-sorta works in the short term, teachers feel encouraged to keep on doing it—despite the tension headaches.

2. It replaces real accountability.

When you lecture students, they know that your talking-to is the accountability. And so if they can just endure it and tell you what you want to hear, then they can be on their way—free and clear and with no real accountability.

3. It sabotages real accountability.

If you send a student to time-out but give a lecture along the way, then from the student’s perspective your not following your classroom management plan as promised. It feels like a double consequence. So instead of sitting in time-out and contemplating their mistake, they’re simmering with anger over the injustice.

4. It tempts students into argument.

When you lecture, you all but dare your students to argue with you. In fact, it takes a strong-willed student not to. When backed into a corner and forced to listen to something they already know, they’re going to want to fight back.

5. It causes resentment.

Few students respond well to a lecture. More often than not, even the most genteel dressing-down causes resentment. Whether they deserve it or not doesn’t change this fact. Truth is, teachers who lecture struggle to build behavior-influencing rapport with their students.

6. It’s time-consuming.

If you rely on lecturing as a classroom management method, then teaching and learning will be affected. Lecturing students takes time, brings tension into your classroom, and takes you away from preparation, instruction, and the joy of teaching.

7. Actions speak louder.

Your words will never carry as much weight as your actions. And the longer students are in school, the more this is true. By the time they get to you, they may have been on the end of dozens of lectures—making it unlikely yours will have the desired effect.

Speak Less, Act More

The next time a student misbehaves, try saying as little as possible.

Simply tell the student what rule was broken, then enforce a consequence and move on to more important things—like teaching your class. This ensures three things:

1. You won’t be stressed-out.
2. The misbehaving student won’t be resentful.
3. Accountability will do its job.

Instead of lecturing and telling your students what lessons they ought to learn, which go in one ear and out the other, let accountability work…

And they’ll soak up those lessons on their own.

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

Much of your classroom management success is dependent upon your ability to avoid making big mistakes. Make them often enough, or repeatedly, and you’ll lose control of your classroom quickly.

Before long, you’ll begin to believe teaching in a chaotic environment is just part of the job.

It’s not. At least, it doesn’t have to be. The truth is, you have the power to create the class you really want, regardless of where you teach.

But classroom management must be a daily commitment. It must be your top priority if you hope to build a classroom of happy, well-behaved, and motivated students.

Use the following list as a way to evaluate how close you are to reaching your classroom management goals. When you’re finished reading, you can score yourself on a five point scale.

Some of these items have been covered in previous posts, so if you’re interested in more complete explanations, I’ve included a link.

1. Not enforcing classroom rules 100% of the time. This is by far the biggest mistake, and it’s a common problem for a majority of teachers. For every time you let something go, you create more misbehavior in the future.

2. Lecturing, pleading, scolding, and reminding students instead of letting your consequences do the job they’re intended to do. Lean exclusively on your classroom management plan, and you will eliminate the need to use these ineffectual methods.

3. Taking poor student behavior personally. Revenge isn’t sweet, it’s self-sabotage. Letting your emotions get involved in classroom management will cloud your judgment, make you do things you will regret, and alienate your students.

4. Yelling at students. Raising your voice creates tension and ruins rapport. It also provides a poor model for your students by showing them the wrong way to behave when things don’t go their way. Most important, it communicates to your students that you only mean what you say when you raise your voice.

5. Preaching your classroom management plan instead of teaching it clearly through detailed modeling, role-play, and practice, practice, practice.

6. Not smiling or showing your personality the first month, semester, or, for some, the entire school year. Likability is the key to building rapport. And rapport makes everything easier, especially classroom management.

7. Praising students for what is a common expectation or praising them in order to influence other students (i.e., caught being good). These are dishonest methods. Teachers who rely on false praise typically do so shortsightedly to get through the day, the week, or the year. But false praise doesn’t change behavior; it’s a momentary fix devoid of meaning. Students are perceptive and see right through inauthenticity.

8. Having weak consequences. This is often dependent on who the teacher is and the amount of leverage he or she wields with students (i.e., likability, orderly room environment, honest and direct classroom management, exciting lessons, and many others. See Dream Class). This is one reason why time-out works well for some and not for others.

9. Talking too much. Having clearly understood routines and procedures is critical to effective classroom management. Not having enough of them results in constant explanation and a boring, teacher-centered classroom. Your students should know exactly what to do, and be busy doing it, every minute of the school day. Otherwise, their eyes will glaze over, and they’ll grow tired of you and your shtick. Inattentiveness and troublemaking will ensue.

Avoiding these nine mistakes will help you attain the classroom you’ve always wanted. A worthwhile exercise is to rate each one on a scale of 1 to 5.

A score of 1 = The mistake is a daily occurrence.

A score of 5 = You never make this mistake.

Work on raising each score to a 5, and I think you’ll be a happier and more successful teacher.

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

Your classroom management plan doesn’t have to be complex to be effective. Four rules and three consequences will usually do the trick. Indeed, there is no magic in the plan itself.

It’s the stuff in between, the strategery (see Will Ferrell), that determines whether classroom management is successful or not.

Time-out is an excellent example. Undoubtedly the most commonly used consequence, time-out can be incredibly effective or a waste of time depending on how it’s carried out. As teachers, we’re often overly focused on what to do rather than on how to do it.

The power is in the how.

How your students fulfill time-out decides its effectiveness. With that in mind, here are 10 ways to make time-out more effective.

1. Model it. Detailed modeling is a powerful teaching strategy and is especially effective for teaching classroom management procedures. Model your time-out procedure by playing the part of a misbehaving student. Show your students exactly what is expected of them if they’re sent to time-out. Understanding the realities of your classroom management plan will reinforce the importance of following rules.

2. Never waver. Resolve that you will follow through every time and for every rule violation, regardless of what is happening at the time. You might be in the middle of a superb lesson, but if a student breaks a rule and your plan calls for a time-out, send them immediately.

3. Tell them why. Whenever you enforce a classroom rule that requires a time-out, it’s important to tell the student why he or she is being separated from the rest of the class. Be brief and to the point. It’s not a two-way conversation. Simply state the rule that was broken and what the student did to violate the rule.

4. Don’t lecture students on the way to, or while they’re in, time-out. Let the time-out be the only consequence. Otherwise, you run the risk of breaking your agreement (i.e., your classroom management plan) in the eyes of your students, thereby causing resentment. Creating friction between you and your students is counterproductive and will hurt your classroom management effectiveness.

5. Don’t give them anything to do. If the time-out is in your classroom, they should be required to follow along with your lessons and complete any work the rest of the students are doing. But if you send them for a recess time-out, they should sit silently with nothing to do. Not only is this easier for you, but it works better.

6. Supervise. Time-out doesn’t work well unless you’re supervising your students yourself. I realize this can be tough to do during a recess time-out. But it’s worth it. It sends the message that your rules are important enough for you to make sacrifices. And students appreciate it. It’s meaningful to them. Children are perceptive and will pick up on how much you care.

7. Ignore. When students are sent to time-out, they’re not part of your classroom until they return. Don’t speak to them, even if you’re supervising them during recess. The rest of your class should ignore them as well, but know that after the time-out is over, any returning student is once again a valued member of the class.

8. Let the student decide when he or she is ready to come back (note: only for in-class time-out). For students who have a proclivity for misbehavior, this can be especially effective. Simply say, “Let me know when you’re ready to be part of the class again.” After twenty minutes, if the student did what he or she was supposed to—as defined by the time-out procedures—and is sitting quietly with his or her hand raised, walk over and say, “Yes?” If the student is remorseful, then invite him or her to return.

9. Don’t hold a grudge. After the time-out is over, it’s over. The student has paid the fine and is therefore a class member in good standing. Holding grudges and taking behavior personally will result in more bad behavior.

10. Have fun. For time-out to be effective, your students must feel like they’re missing something. If your classroom is an exciting and interesting place to be, they will always feel like they’re missing something. However, there is nothing wrong with reminding them. Placing a student in time-out is the perfect time to start a learning game or a fun activity.

There you have it. Ten ways I’m certain will result in a stronger and more effective time-out consequence. Try one or more and then let me know what you think. Leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.

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

The sight of a teacher lecturing an individual student is commonplace on school campuses. This classroom management method seems to be preferred by a majority of teachers, but is it effective? Does it work to curb unwanted behavior?

Another common sight on campus is the stressed-out teacher. They’re easy to spot: furrowed brow, tight smile, and frequent sighs. Stress has been blamed for the surprisingly large numbers of teachers who leave the profession in less than three years. But is stress just part of the job or is there something else at work?

The answers to these questions about both seemingly unrelated topics are, in fact, intertwined. It is my belief that the number one cause of stress among teachers is a reliance on one’s words to try to convince students to behave as desired—i.e., lecturing students as a method of classroom management.

If I woke up every morning knowing that I had to rely on the creative use of language and speech—to intimidate, persuade, plead, demand, explain, and otherwise get through to my students—as a major tool in my classroom management plan, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed.

I shudder at the idea of having to rely upon finding the right words to say and striking the right tone to convince my students to follow my directions.

Yet many teachers get up in the morning and fight this uphill, no-win battle every day.

And unless you’re Vince Lombardi, lecturing individual students is near the bottom of the list of effective classroom management strategies. It doesn’t change behavior—though it may temporarily suppress it—and it will make your goal of having a dream class made up of well-behaved students a more difficult proposition.

Lecturing individual students isn’t an effective classroom management strategy because it doesn’t work in the long run, it creates resentment in your students, and it’s stressful to you.

The goal of this blog, as well as my book Dream Class, is to provide you with sound classroom management strategies and tips that really work, that anyone can do, and that will make your job—and life—easier. Secondarily, the goal is to help you steer clear of those methods that seem right because everyone else is doing them, but are in fact minimally—if at all—effective.

Lecturing individual students falls into this second group you should stay away from.

Words can be powerful, and when used to encourage or praise students, they can be an important part of your classroom management plan. Whole class lectures, too, for the purpose of rallying or motivating your class can be effective. But words used in the form of a one-on-one lecture will hinder your ability to manage your classroom.

When you pull a student aside to speak to him or her about a behavior issue, what you’re actually doing is delivering an act of discipline—or consequence. At least, that is how students see it. They know that as soon as you single them out for a “talking to”, stiffer consequences are more than likely not forthcoming.

Listening to your criticism is the consequence. If they can weather your lecture, they know they will be free from further consequence when it’s over.

Moreover, lecturing often degenerates into an interrogation. As in, why did you do this and why did you do that? Again, answering these mostly unanswerable questions is the consequence for the student because you (the teacher) don’t really need to know why.

Why a student breaks a rule is, in most circumstances, irrelevant. Very few students, or adults for that matter, are able to articulate why they made a bad choice. They just did, or they wanted to at the time. Knowing does nothing to curb the unwanted behavior.

Forcing answers from students does, however, goad them into an argument, which is the last thing you want.

Arguing with students lowers your leadership stature and authority to the same level of the student—which it is not. You are the teacher and leader in the classroom and you make the decisions.

Rules are rules. Other than for the purpose of gathering information, there is nothing to talk about. If a student breaks a rule, you give him or her a consequence and move on. That’s it. And if you send them to time-out, leave them alone.

When I see a teacher lecturing a student already in time-out, I want to say, “Stop, you’re messing it up. Let the time-out be a time-out. Don’t make your students dislike you because you promised a time-out but added a scolding for good measure.”

Lecturing a student about a particular behavior issue or incident draws more attention to the behavior and to the same misbehaving students over and over again. Inevitably, your other students will privately begin to resent you and the few students you spend most of your energy on.

The reason teachers lecture students is because they don’t know a better way. They look around and see so many other teachers doing it and think it must be the best method. They want so badly for their students to do well and pulling them aside seems to be the most direct way of accomplishing this. But it doesn’t work.

What does work is following your classroom management plan exclusively.

Lecturing doesn’t support your plan; it hinders it. Let your consequences do the job of dissuading bad behavior, and stop relying on lecturing students to convince them to behave as you desire. Doing so will lower your stress level and allow you to focus your attention on creating the best learning environment for your students.

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