Why You Must Have High Behavior Standards For Online Lessons

There is a temptation to just be happy your students are showing up. To accept lying in bed, playing video games on the side, or chatting with siblings as long as they keep logging in.

The idea, after all, is to encourage.

Accept anything and everything short of pandemonium in order to keep students online and in school.

This is the message of many schools and districts. Keep the numbers up. Don’t discourage. Ease up on your expectations.

While I don’t dispute that we should shoot for high attendance rates, lowering behavior standards isn’t the way to do it.

In fact, as the weeks go by, this approach will result in fewer students tuning into online lessons, not more.

Here’s why:

It removes purpose.

When you lower the importance and seriousness—and sacredness—of learning and being in school, you remove from students a sense of purpose.

And where there is no purpose, there is no motivation. There is no determination to succeed. There is no desire to learn new skills and take on new challenges.

Without high behavior standards for students to meet, they’ll soon fall into laziness and indifference. After all, you’ve sent the message that online school isn’t really school, but a weak imitation of it.

It removes pride.

Pride is an under-recognized and underutilized factor in motivating students. By tapping into this potent feeling they all have just waiting and simmering under the surface, you’ll get tenfold back on your investment.

Simply raising behavior standards—or having behavior standards—lends a specialness and exclusivity to your online lessons.

It feels good to meet high standards. It feels good to learn and succeed and be part of something associated with quality, worth, and significance.

A sense of pride causes students to want to experience more and more of this feeling and to look forward to the next lesson. It also transfers to the assignments they do off-line, which take on a similar level of interest and urgency.

It removes personal discipline.

If behavior standards and tough-love discipline aren’t imprinted on you at an early age, and thus you don’t get to experience the value in them, then it’s harder to become personally motivated.

It’s harder to realize the power inside each one of us to change our circumstances through determination and hard work and easier to point fingers and blame others for our predicaments.

Therefore, if we allow a lowering of ideals just because we’ve all been thrown into this CV19 monkey wrench, we don’t do anyone any favors.

We do, however, hurt the ones we’ve been tasked to help.

Project Restoration

Because of time and logistical constraints, the amount of work we ask of our students may need to be adjusted down a notch or two.

But there is zero reason why behavior standards should follow suit.

In fact, doing so will result in less motivation and enthusiasm for learning. It will result in fewer students joining our class meetings and greater drift in performance and skills.

So, if you haven’t yet, create that online classroom management plan.

Build a wall of clearly defined rules and their consequences that protect learning. Reestablish the same high standards of your physical classroom and stick with them.

Restore purpose, pride, and personal discipline, and your online lessons will matter to your students.

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16 thoughts on “Why You Must Have High Behavior Standards For Online Lessons”

  1. Michael,
    How I wish my admin could read this blog. They are asking us to let everything go during remote teaching. My colleagues and I know it will hurt long-term flourishing, but they don’t want to deal with parents. Those of us that are mandating positive and appropriate classroom behaviors are being “talked to.”
    This has shown me a side of my admin that don’t respect, and it will be difficult to finish the year with a positive attitude. I am changing my first and last name for protection which is quite sad. Thanks for being the voice of reason.

    Reply
  2. This is helpful for teachers of students who are able to access online learning. Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately, students without access are facing greater challenges as are we teachers. I’d love tips to connect with, motivate and encourage these same principles among my students with whom I am unable to connect online. Students whose parents have immediate, physical, nonphilosophical challenges to survival; for whom education was a struggle in person and is now relegated to non-emergency activity. My heart breaks but I could use more practical strategies for these students than prayer and good wishes.

    Reply
  3. I have students who have done NOTHING. Parents will not respond to Dojo requests, emails, nothing. The ones who do respond are not staying on schedule that we are doing. I am frustrated. I cannot force students to do work. I saw one in the store and got parent phone numbers; this child has done nothing and I told the parent he needed to work.

    Reply
    • I sent a parent an email that for lack of responding/basic-work-done the student would be graded “incomplete” for the term, which got a pretty immediate reaction 😉
      Of course I ran it by my principal first and got an okay…

      Reply
  4. And what could be the consequences?
    I can not say, stay after school. Neither could I say, I will call your parents and maybe they can help ust with this. (parents have too many other things to worry about. ) or send them to the office.
    So I do wonder what if they really don’t want to participate on all my assignments and projects, just in what is easy and when ever they feel like it.

    Reply
  5. Sometimes it is the parents that do not want the hassle of having to set up a Zoom class for their children on a certain day at a certain time and this is very frustrating.

    Reply
  6. Thank you for addressing this very valuable component to online classes.
    I realized that a high standard was necessary the very first day that I saw a ‘wod’ of gum hanging off my student’s every word. I knew that the time was right to review Online Norms, and student behavioural expectations.

    Reply
  7. Unfortunately, our family does not allow more than 2 hours of “screen time” and we reject educational technology, including anything on/passing through the school district’s computer system. So…. unable to assist the teacher, as touching computers in or out of school is not allowed.

    Reply
  8. Thank you for validating the need for demanding focus and effort from each individual learner so that each may develop competency. I believe that learning skills are developed through rigorous practice and are necessary for success in today’s ever-changing world.

    Reply
  9. Hi Mike,

    My school in China is not using Zoom for their online classes. Can your Zoom online classroom managemnt plan still be of use to me, even though I am using a different app to teach my classes?

    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Hi Gary,

      It’s possible. You can probably get ideas about creating your own. However, it is very specific to Zoom.

      Reply

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