I have a technique you can start using tomorrow that will eliminate stress from your teaching life.

This no-stress method is so effective, in fact, that many professional athletes use it before a competition.

For them, keeping their composure can mean the difference between winning and losing, success and failure.

For teachers the stakes are equally high.

It’s the difference between having a pleasant day and a miserable one, between loving your job and counting the days to retirement. Plus, teachers who are able to keep their cool have fewer behavior problems.

The technique is easy to use, takes just a couple of minutes, and works surprisingly well.

The Decide-First Method

It’s called the decide-first method of stress relief. I stumbled upon it many years ago while still a wet-behind-the-ears student teacher.

My first student teaching assignment was with an unruly group of fifth graders.

As is often the case, the teacher in charge of the class was looking for a way to take a break from her responsibilities. The students were bouncing off the walls, and she was pulling her hair out. Soon after I arrived she handed the class over to me.

I couldn’t have been happier.

Dirty Little Secret: teachers who frequently volunteer to host student teachers often need mentoring themselves.

When I made the decision to become a teacher, I decided that I was going to love my job no matter the circumstances. I wasn’t going to sit back and see if I was going to be fulfilled, happy, or having fun.

I was going to make it happen for myself.

So when I was thrown to the wolves as a new teacher, this attitude led me to start using the decide-first method.

Every day before walking into the chaos of my first teaching experience, I sat in my car, closed my eyes, and decided that no matter what happened that day, I wasn’t going to let it affect me emotionally.

A herd of elephants could come crashing through the door, but I committed myself to being as calm as a Tibetan monk.

At the time I didn’t have experienced classroom management skills. I knew few of the strategies and techniques that are now second nature to me.

But a funny thing happened.

The students began to feed off of my calm energy. And every day I gained greater control and respect. Within a couple of weeks I was indeed enjoying—loving—what I was doing.

A Lesson From Sports Psychology

I was watching the Tennis Channel recently, and during a segment called Fit To Hit, sports psychologist Dr. Allen Fox was asked how tennis players can best control their emotions on the court.

He said that, before a match, if they will make a conscience decision to keep their composure—despite the adversity they may face—then remarkably, they will.

It’s that simple.

Being stress free in the classroom, as well as on the tennis court, is a decision you make. Stress doesn’t happen to you; you let it happen to you.

But you can’t wait until you’re feeling stressed. By then it’s too late. The key is to decide beforehand.

How To Use The Decide-First Method

The following is a three-step plan for eliminating stress from teaching. Do it every day before your students arrive in the morning, and you will be happy with the results.

Step #1

Close your classroom door, sit down in a comfortable chair, and allow yourself a minute or two of silence.

Step #2

Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and relax your body.

Step #3

Decide that you will stay calm and relaxed no matter what happens that day. Commit yourself to handling every situation, every unforeseen circumstance, and every behavior with poise and confidence.

And you will.

The Benefits

The most obvious benefit of using the decide-first method is that you’re going to like your job a lot better. Here are a few more benefits:

• Your calm, confident demeanor will sweep the negative and excitable energy out of your classroom.

• Your students will respond to you differently. You’ll appear more in control, more confident, and more like a leader they’ll want to follow.

• Your students will become calmer. Your state of mind has more effect on students than you realize. What you’re feeling on the inside reveals itself clearly on the outside.

• Behavior will improve. You’ll begin relying on your classroom management plan instead of trying to force or convince students to behave—which is ineffective and stressful.

Try the decide-first method tomorrow. It could be the best day of teaching you’ve had in a long time.

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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.

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.