It’s only natural to want to focus on what matters.
To concern yourself primarily with content, lessons, and academic performance.
To be a stickler about students getting their essays or projects done right.
And give short shrift to the ordinary, everyday, and mundane.
But this is a big mistake.
Because the things that matter most don’t happen in a bubble. They’re influenced profoundly by the nuts and bolts of running a classroom.
The truth is, everything you do as a class affects how well your students behave and progress.
In fact, it’s the wee little boring details—like the way students turn in work or transition to a new activity or take out their laptops—that have the greatest impact on behavior, success habits, and the like.
Because excellence isn’t something that can be turned on and off like a spigot.
It must be stubbornly pursued from morning bell to dismissal. It must be developed through your insistence on doing everything in a certain way.
“Success is in the details” is as much or more true for teaching as any other profession. Yet, it’s the most underutilized and underappreciated key to effective classroom management and academic improvement.
And make no mistake: It begins and ends with you.
It’s the teacher, after all, who through visualizing exactly how each task, procedure, and nano-moment should look like teaches and models those expectations.
It’s the teacher who lays out, step-by-step, how to successfully and efficiently navigate the ins and outs of the school day. It’s the teacher who knows that small, seemingly inconsequential habits transfer to the big and important matters.
This doesn’t mean that you should treat your students like soldiers. Your expectations can be as relaxed or fun or purposeful as you want to make them.
The key isn’t rigidness.
Visitors to my own classroom are often surprised at my students’ sense of freedom and casualness. In fact, we often walk across campus not in a line, but in one silent but happy herd.
But what these visitors don’t see is the precise teaching of what is and isn’t okay and the backing of fair and consistent accountability.
It’s the details and focus on doing the ordinary, everyday, and mundane in a clearly defined way that groove the habits of careful reading, intentional listening, sustained concentration, cooperative working, and every other important learning skill.
It’s the focus on what most teachers gloss over that is the secret to inspiring pride, boosting morale, improving behavior . . .
Or whatever else that ails you.
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I love this and I know that it’s true, but I really struggle with the balance between rigidity and freedom. I find that I either swing one way or the other. Does anyone have suggestions about how I can work out this balance with my own class?
Hi Katie,
There is a chapter in Dream Class called “Freedom Within Boundaries” that may be helpful.
I certainly agree with this concept by the subject. An example: papers may be placed in a designated location at my time during the class, however, all facing the same directions and in order from page one to the end and stapled together.
Katie, I recently came across a quote that helped me clarify this idea of being “Warm-Strict:”
“We found that the most charismatic people are very, very high in two specific traits, warmth [and] competence. If you wavered a little bit on one more than the other, your charisma disappeared. In other words, if you were just very warm without equal competence, you were seen as a pushover, as sweet and friendly, but not dependable. Or if you were too high on the competence side, you were seen as very smart, very powerful, but intimidating, hard to talk to, not relatable, and not a good team player. Charisma is this perfect balance of these two traits.”
Here’s How You Really Win Friends and Influence People (With Science), interview with Vanessa Van Edwards by Ryan Hawk, heleo.com
Great article, thank you! I have been teaching 30 years, and I still love learning new, fresh ideas from your website! Thank you!
That being said, I agree that keeping a routine is very important and comforting to our students. And when they know Mr or Mrs so and so does this…then they understand quicker and can’t make silly excuses.
Also, the way I handle my wacky, fun loving personality is I joke a lot w/ my kiddos and give them their assignment at the same time. I love to laugh like most of us, and I keep kidding around while I give the assignment unless I see they are not settling down like my 6th period! If they are not mature enough to settle down once I say, okay, time to get serious, then I shut them down strongly and then hopefully they get my point which I think they do.
Mr. Linsin,
I just finished reading Dream Class today, and I learned a lot. I’m a first-year teacher, and classroom management is undoubtedly where I need improvement most. We will be returning from Fall Break on Monday and I look forward to the chance to have a fresh start of sorts. I teach 2nd grade; when you review your management plan with students after a break, what does that look like? Thank you!
Hi Abby,
This is a big topic, but I’ll be sure to cover it in a future article.
I teach a K/1 combo at a small school. I only have 9 students but sometimes it can feel like 50! It’s my very first year teaching this young age and it has taken me these first six weeks to get to know the kids and the curriculum very well. The hardest part is that with the children so young there are many things that happened during the day that can get us off course such as: water bottles that tip and spill, someone didn’t flush the classroom toilet (I’ve gone over the procedure) and the next student loudly announces that fact, another has a hangnail in immediate need of attention, the grade level in centers is too distracting, etc. Our room is VERY small so it’s difficult to find room for centers that isn’t too close to my instructional table. I’m very sure I should have started out with a better idea of what my expectations should be. Now I need to be clear and follow through with consequences. It’s hard to go backwards!
Dear Michael,
Thank you very much for your articles. I find them helpful and clear. You get to the heart of what good teachers do, and give ideas to all of us about how to have a calm, happy, high-achieving classroom.
I have been teaching for 30 years, and still love reading helpful tips for our profession.
Julia , Australia.
I’m so happy to hear it, Julia. It’s my pleasure.
Hi Michael,
I wanted to comment to say thank you SO much for everything you’ve written in your blogs and your books. I’m a second year teacher, and I ordered “Dream Class” last year–that combined with relentlessly stalking your blog has helped me IMMENSELY to become a better teacher. I’m not the teacher I want to be yet, but reading, re-reading, and reflecting on your writing has helped me to understand the mistakes I’m making and forge a clear path ahead. Sorry, I know this is a lot, I’m just so grateful! After a terrible first year, your writing has given me confidence that I can become an excellent teacher… eventually. 🙂
This particular article was timely because it’s something I struggle with. Because I have a relatively small amount of experience in the classroom, I still don’t have all my procedures figured out. I am still in the process of figuring out how I WANT my classroom to run, before I can teach those procedures to students. I guess experience will continue to help me figure out the answer to that question.
Anyway, thank you again for everything you do–for students and for teachers.
Hi Rebecca,
Thank you for your kind comments. I’m so glad the blog has been helpful. It’s truly my pleasure, and privilege, to help teachers any way I can. My best advice is to close your eyes and imagine the most perfect way you’d like your students to enter the classroom or get into groups or sit during independent work, etc. and use that as your basis for how you want your classroom to look and run.
Hi Michael
I am now a retired Grade 2 educator, supervising an English programme on computers in the same school.
Thank you for all the advice and ideas, coping with discipline and how to have a happy, quiet classroom, dealing with 40+ learners in a crammed classroom can be rather challenging!
THANK YOU once again!
Indeed, Christine, very challenging. You’re welcome!
As always your insights are on point!
Thanks Lisa!
Thanks for your post. I enjoy reading each week! You mentioned your class; are you still a classroom teacher? Just curious!
Hi JP,
Yes, I write and run the blog in the morning and teach in the afternoon.
This article reminds me of the quotation, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I’m still working on my vigilance.
I really like this helpful article! I am a substitute teacher in my 15th year and going to different schools/classes I find it helpful to have a foundation for running a class. My age of choice is middle schoolers….so it’s definitely helpful for myself as well as the students to be consistent.
Thank you for your advice each week!