I’d like to share with you a uniquely powerful classroom management strategy, one that, when used correctly, stands above the rest. This particular strategy never fails to make an impression and can be used as often as you wish.

And the best part is, you will see immediate improvement in your students.

I call it the “how not” strategy. It’s a close but rebellious cousin of detailed modeling. If you’re not familiar with detailed modeling, read the linked article. If you’re interested in a complete explanation, I’ve devoted an entire chapter to it in my book, Dream Class.

The “How Not” Strategy

The “how not” strategy is so powerful because it clarifies for students exactly what unacceptable behavior looks like, and they’ll immediately recognize it. In fact, when you use this strategy, you’ll find your students laughing and nodding their heads knowingly.

Some of its power comes from its entertaining qualities. When you use the “how not” strategy, your students will be fully engaged. They may even clamor for you to teach it again.

How It Works

After using detailed modeling to demonstrate a specific part of your plan, or a certain classroom procedure, model how not to do it. For example, let’s say you’re teaching your students how to line up for lunch. After showing them how to do it properly, you would then model for them how not to do it.

If you’ve been teaching even for a short time, you can predict the most common ways students line up incorrectly. For example:

• Leaving chair out
• Talking in line
• Cutting in line
• Pushing

To use this method, you would pretend to be a student lining up while engaging in one or more of these behaviors. Choose a few students to be extras in your mini-sketch and have them waiting in line the correct way. Choose another student to play the part of the teacher, giving you the signal to line up.

Start the modeling session by sitting at a student’s desk, waiting for the line-up signal. When the teacher—acting student—gives the signal, line up how you’ve seen your students doing it improperly. Except, ham it up and have fun with it.

The more you exaggerate the unwanted behavior, the more memorable it will be for your students.

In fact, they’ll never forget it. And few will behave in the way you modeled ever again. They’ll be embarrassed to. The “how not” strategy works so well because it points out the absurdity of poor behavior.

Poor Behavior Is Absurd

As much as possible, create a classroom environment where poor behavior is looked upon as absurd.

I was at a museum in Europe several years ago, waiting in line to see an exhibit, and a man and a woman cut in line, positioning themselves near the front. Those of us behind were astounded at their rudeness and demanded they go to the end of the line. Given the environment, their behavior was absurd.

The reverence toward learning in your classroom must be held in the same regard as art is viewed in a museum. That isn’t to say that students must always be silent or speak in hushed tones. Fun, after all, is an important element of a successful classroom. But learning must always be held in the highest regard.

The “how not” strategy effectively gets this message across to students.

Seeing things from a different perspective changes the way students view their world. Allow your students to see what their poor behavior looks like and how it affects others, and it will hit home like no other classroom management strategy.

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

John Wooden is considered the greatest coach in college basketball history. His UCLA teams of the 50s, 60s, and 70s produced 10 national championships, 38 consecutive NCAA tournament wins, and a remarkable 88-game winning streak.

No other coach comes close to these accomplishments. Mr. Wooden set the standard for excellence and is revered for the class and dignity he brought to coaching.

Ironically, however, he didn’t consider coaching to be his profession. He thought of himself as a teacher. Writer Steve Jamison, who co-authored Mr. Wooden’s 1997 book, Wooden, calls him “the legendary teacher of basketball.”

In fact, Mr. Wooden started his career as a high school English teacher and never found marked differences between the way he taught in classroom and on the basketball court.

Highly Detailed Teaching

Before the start of every season, during the first meeting with his players, Mr. Wooden would teach a very peculiar lesson.

Here is Mr. Wooden in his own words:

I would watch as the player smoothed the sock under and along the heel. I wanted it done conscientiously, not quickly or casually. I wanted absolutely no folds, wrinkles, or creases of any kind on the sock.

Then we would proceed to the other foot and do the same.

Coach Wooden would explain every detail as he modeled for his players how he expected them to put on their socks. Then he would have his players demonstrate for him, and he would watch as they practiced, offering suggestions along the way.

Although Mr. Wooden had a practical reason for doing this—socks that have creases in them tend to cause blisters—a lesson regarding such a mundane procedure, especially one aimed at grown men, seems ridiculous. But to anyone who has experienced the power of detailed modeling, it makes perfect sense.

Mr. Wooden was sending a message to his players that he expected them to strive for excellence in everything they did. A seemingly unimportant exercise like this transfers to other, more important things.

If his expectations are high for putting on sweat socks, think of what they are for using proper shooting form or for encouraging teammates?

Avoid “Big Idea” Teaching

Excellence starts with the little things, the details. If you don’t have specific expectations for how your students walk into the classroom and hang up their backpacks, then you’re going to have a more difficult time teaching them how to treat one another with respect.

“Details win championships” and “Success is in the details” are maxims that have great value in teaching. Unfocused, “big idea” teaching produces confusion. And confusion always produces misbehavior and poor performance.

Furthermore, details are inherently interesting and lend themselves to being taught with clarity. Big idea teaching tends to be ambiguous and is difficult to convey clearly and without bias. It’s also preemptive.

Big ideas should come from students, not you. Teaching big ideas or overarching themes removes the opportunity for students to think for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

Giving students the big idea (“We need to respect each other because we’re a family.”)  means nothing to them. Sure, they can repeat this statement, but in order for it to resonate, they have to come to this conclusion on their own through real, experiential, and highly specific teaching. Only then will it stick. Only then will it mean something to them.

John Wooden didn’t tell his players, “Men, we need to win a championship because it would be a great accomplishment.” No, he told them how to put their socks on. He started with the building blocks necessary for being successful.

If the greatest college basketball coach in history, who first and foremost considers himself a teacher, chooses as his first lesson the finer points of putting on a sock, then we would do well to follow his example.

Here’s what Mr. Wooden has to say about highly detailed teaching:

These seemingly trivial matters, taken together and added to many, many other so-called trivial matters build into something very big: namely, your success.

Do you want a well-behaved class, one that you love to teach, one that makes you excited to come to work every day? Then stop telling your students what your hopes for them are, and start teaching them the nitty-gritty details.

- 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.

Modeling is so effective that it should be among your most often used teaching strategies.

When most people think of modeling, they envision a teacher standing in the front her class performing a task she expects from her students. For example, if she were modeling an art project, she would most likely make the project herself in front of her students using the same materials they would be using.

There is nothing wrong with modeling in this way. It can be effective, especially if the students are attentive and the project is interesting. However, you can supercharge the effectiveness of what you’re modeling, regardless of what it is, by adding an important element: explicit detail.

Adding detail to your modeling exercises is easy to do, doesn’t take any extra work or planning, and happens to be a lot of fun. Let me explain how it works and then show how it can make your classroom management plan more effective.

Adding detail simply means taking modeling to a more exact degree than you or your students are accustomed to, making it highly specific and realistic. To use the example of the art project, instead of making the project in the front of the classroom, the teacher would do the art project at a student’s desk with the students circled around in close proximity.

Instead of merely constructing the art project, the modeling session might include clearing off one’s desk, lining up to pick up the art materials, and acting out common scenarios, including what not to do. In other words, the teacher would put herself in her students’ shoes, from start to finish, and model everything they would need to do, including eventualities, in order to complete the project successfully.

Though important, modeling the actual making of the project is the least important aspect of this example. It’s the peripheral stuff–the stuff that teachers typically don’t model–that is the most important and will make the greatest difference to your teaching.

Detailed modeling won’t take the creativity out of art or any other subject. On the contrary, when you use detailed modeling, you eliminate distractions, allowing your students to focus on learning, as well as their individual creativity. Furthermore, students love this way of teaching. It’s fun and participatory, and they always know exactly what is expected of them–a comforting thought indeed.

Students’ knowing what is expected of them is a critical part of any successful classroom management plan, and detailed modeling does just that. Too many teachers are vague in this regard. It’s unfair and breeds contempt to hold students accountable for something they don’t fully understand.

But the real power of detailed modeling comes from the ability to cover eventualities. More specifically, it allows you to model the most common behavioral scenarios and what happens as a result.

Take something as simple as calling out in class. I choose calling out because it can be a real showstopper. Nothing breaks up the momentum of a lesson quite like a student calling out. I’ve been in many classrooms where this isn’t a priority, which is beyond my comprehension. How do they get anything done?

To model calling out, the teacher might sit at a student’s desk while a student plays the part of the teacher. This gives the teacher the opportunity to demonstrate the rudeness, and even absurdity, of interrupting someone who is speaking in front of a group of people. By allowing the students to fully understand why raising their hand is important, it becomes less likely that they’re going to call out in class.

Your students must also be clear about what exactly will happen if a rule like calling out is broken. This should also be modeled and, taking it one step farther, practiced by your students. You can have volunteers act out the roles of students misbehaving.

For example, choose students to purposely interrupt you as you’re speaking, and then administer your consequences to them. Go through the whole process, including what happens when they call out a second and even a third time.

Merely explaining classroom rules, or anything else for that matter, is minimally effective. Students must actively participate in and experience what it means to break rules and how doing so negatively affects the learning and enjoyment of everyone in order to understand why rules are important.

When your students unequivocally understand your classroom management plan, they’re much less likely to break classroom rules. Nothing is as effective as detailed modeling in communicating anything important to your students… nothing. Try it and let me know what you think. I know you’ll be pleased.

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

There are teachers who have been searching for answers to their classroom management problems for years without success. They try one new idea after the other in the hopes of finding the magic combination of techniques and strategies that will work for them.

They test drive interactive bulletin boards, ever-new sets of rules and consequences, echoing chants, bells, and other attention-getting devices, and time-consuming community circles. Soon, they discover that these methods aren’t making the impact they hoped for.

They become frustrated and fall back on lecturing, raising their voice, and sending students to the office.

The fact is, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these ideas. They’re just missing an important ingredient, something so important that nothing will work well without it. You’ve no doubt heard of this not-so-secret ingredient, probably hundreds of times. But only a small number of teachers are actually using it.

99% of teachers have rules or standards of behavior for their classroom, and most of these teachers have consequences in case these rules are broken. This is good. But here is the problem: only a small percentage of teachers actually follow their rules and consequences to the letter.

Your success in creating an optimal learning environment for your students hinges on your willingness to follow your rules and consequences precisely and every single time.

The central reason why so many teachers struggle with classroom management is because they don’t really follow their plan. Most only kinda-sorta do. The beautiful bulletin boards and creative sound makers can be fun and enhance your room environment, but they’re not going to make much difference unless your management plan is etched in stone.

Once a rule is in place and has been clearly defined for your students, never waver. This is a critical factor in effective classroom management, one that goes unnoticed by a majority of teachers.

Every time you let something go, ignore a broken rule, or fail to enforce a rule with a consequence, you are letting your students know that you don’t really mean what you say, that you can’t be counted on or trusted.

It’s important to note that there are ways of creating leverage with your students that will make your classroom management plan much more powerful and effective, and we will discuss these in future posts. But if you aren’t following your plan exactly, not much is going to work well for you.

Try this experiment. Tomorrow, or the next time you meet with your students, decide that you’re going to follow your plan exactly how it was presented to them. For example, if you don’t allow calling out in your classroom, then follow your hierarchy of consequences whenever anyone speaks out without permission. Regardless of how minor the offense is, deliver your consequence every single time.

If you find that you’ve given out more than the usual amount of warnings and time-outs, then you know that you can be a more effective teacher. If you’ve given a lot more, then this too is good news. You’ve found the reason why your classroom management plan hasn’t been working as well as you would like.

Your students may react poorly to your insistence on following your plan so exactly. If they complain and act shocked that you would have the audacity to follow the agreed upon plan, then it’s probably a good idea to start over from the beginning.

Go over your plan from start to finish with your students. Role-play the most common scenarios (i.e., calling out, side conversations, not following directions the first time they’re given, etc.). Model exactly what will happen if they break a classroom rule. Double-check their understanding and explain that the reason rules are so important is that they protect each student’s right to learn and enjoy school without interruption.

In the beginning of the school year or if you’re starting over, it’s a good idea to review your plan daily for the first four to six weeks. Once per week thereafter is usually sufficient, but occasionally you may have to revisit your plan more often. It’s that important. Over the course of a school year, you will save vast amounts of learning time previously wasted on interruptions and inattentiveness.

And then do it. Follow your plan. Don’t give in and don’t let anything go. You’ll gain better classroom control, professional confidence, and the all-important trust of your students. And here is the best part: it’s not personal. Because you’re following your plan and delivering on the promise you gave your students, there will be no more need for less effective and potentially hurtful methods like lecturing, arguing, or raising your voice.

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