The Heart of Classroom Management

 

Once upon a time there was an island inhabited solely by children. Adults had placed them there to play and grow together, and had built a wall surrounding the island to protect the children from the ocean.  After many years had passed, however, it was forgotten why the wall had been built.

 

Soon one adult asked, “Why can’t we give these children their freedom? Why should they be constrained like this? Let’s tear down these walls and let them be free!”

 

So the walls were torn down. The children immediately ran into the beautifully sparkling ocean and were drowned. One adult remarked to another, “Perhaps we should have taught them to swim before we knocked down the walls.”

 

Rules and procedures are the heart of classroom management. They establish walls, or parameters, describing the appropriate ways in which children are to behave. 

 

Research shows that children do behave to meet expectations, whether they are positive or negative. We should therefore expect the best! Classroom Management describes how this is achieved.

 

Components of a Well Managed Classroom

 

At a recent conference, a group of highly experienced teachers training to be staff development facilitators brainstormed the question, “What are the components of a well-managed classroom?” They defined classroom management as the manner in which a teacher organizes and controls materials, lessons, activities, assessment, space, students, time, and content in order to maximize student learning.

 

The following components were selected as being essential to effective classroom management:

 

• Efficient use of time
• Clear expectations and goals
• Colorful and pleasant environment
• Warm and inviting ambiance
• Respectful and polite behavior
• Organized and sequential tasks
• Achievement focused
• Student participation
• Success oriented
• Predictable yet rewarding
• Teacher knowledge

 

Notice that this list does not include the words discipline or punishment! That is because most educators agree that if the right components are in place in a classroom, off-task behavior will be minimized and in many cases eliminated. It is easier to prevent inappropriate behavior from ever occurring than to deal with it once it has started.

 

If we as parents recall incidents of “misbehavior,” they can usually be traced back to a root cause, and that root cause is often one which could have been avoided. Children rarely misbehave without motive. Too often we focus on the misbehavior and an appropriate punishment, and we fail to seek out the reason for the misbehavior.

 

When you seek a doctor’s aid for a medical condition (such as a rash) she doesn’t spend the visit simply deciding what to do to treat the condition. Instead, a great deal of time is spent asking questions such as:

 

“When did this first begin to bother you?”

“Has it happened to you before? When?”

“Is there a history of this in your family?”

“Have there been any other problems in this general area?”

“Have you recently changed your diet, your exercise routine, your daily schedule?”

“Have you been in contact with someone who had this same condition?”

 

She will then take a closer look at you physically, and perhaps suggest further tests. Even as she scribbles out a prescription, she may remark, “Let’s try this first. It should clear you up. If you’re not feeling better in ten days, we’ll move to something stronger.”

 

There are several lessons to be learned. First, we need to ask a lot of questions about a student’s inappropriate behavior, and several of them are surprisingly similar to those asked by the doctor above. Second, we need to admit that what we’ll try first may not work as a solution, and that additional steps may be required to accomplish what we seek. Third, we need to realize that often, in the context of the classroom, we will only be able to treat symptoms of a problem. Actually “curing” the problem may require additional time and resources.

 

We should also keep in mind that some misbehaviors are more serious than others, and demand more immediate or more involved response from the teacher and school. 

 

 

Positive Behavioral Interventions

 

According to a radio report, a middle school in Oregon was faced with a unique problem. A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints.

 

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the custodian. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked the custodian to clean one of the mirrors.

 

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it into a toilet, and then cleaned off the mirror.

Since then there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

 

For teachers and parents, the good news about behavior management is that the possible solutions are almost endless! And as the above anecdote illustrates, often our toughest problems can be solved in the simplest ways.

 

Positive behavioral interventions, and other ways to positively prevent misbehavior before it ever occurs, are the strategies and structures which are put in place in our classroom day by day and lesson by lesson.

 

While playing chess with a student one day during recess, I captured his rook (a valuable piece). The student immediately slid one of his pieces over to recapture that square, but the resulting vacant square (which his piece had previously occupied) left him wide open to be put into check.

 

We later debriefed the game. I said, “When I captured your rook, the first thing you thought about was getting revenge. You acted out of anger, without reflecting on the consequences. If you do that in life, if you react to situations without thinking ahead, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes that you could have avoided. Next time, check out your options first. I know you would have found a way out if you had looked.”

 

Classroom Expectations

 

Clear expectations for student behavior must come first in a well managed classroom.

 

In our class I begin the school year by saying to students: “My responsibility is to teach. Your responsibility is to learn. Neither one of us can let anything get in the way of our assigned responsibility.” After some discussion about the word responsibility, I present the five classroom expectations:

 

1)     Follow directions the first time they are given.

2)     Raise your hand to ask or answer a question.

3)     Remain seated unless you have permission to be up.

4)     Keep hands, feet, and objects to yourself.

5)     Treat people and objects the way you would like to be treated.

 

I provide these same expectations in writing, with a number of blank lines below each. I ask each group to brainstorm at least two reasons why such an expectation exists. Once this is done, each group presents their ideas, and other students are invited to share additional reasons why the particular expectation might exist.

 

Once all groups have presented their ideas, I then offer to remove any rule which the class feels is unneeded. By this point, of course, they have convinced each other, and themselves, that these rules exist for a very good reason.

 

 

Methods of Intervention

 

During the heat of the space race in the 1960's, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity of space. 

 

After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about $1 million (some of us may recall a Seinfeld episode featuring this pen). The pen worked beautifully and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on Earth.

 

The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, simply used a pencil.

 

This is what we mean by minimal: the simplest, least intrusive way to prevent problems.

 

When misbehavior does occur, I practice several methods of minimal intervention.  These subtly correct misbehavior and allow learning to continue without interruption.  More importantly, these methods teach students to monitor and adjust their own behavior, and avoid embarrassment and hurt feelings.

 

1.     Praising the correct behavior.

When a student or group of students is misbehaving, I will comment upon the correct behavior being demonstrated by another student or group.  Since attention is often what students are seeking, the first group will adjust their behavior in order to likewise receive the teacher’s attention and praise.

 

2.     Proximity.

Often, moving closer to a student will stop misbehavior.  The student realizes that, if the teacher is close, incorrect behavior will not go unnoticed. 

 

3.     The Pause.

Pausing midway through a sentence and glancing at a disruptive student is often enough to stop inappropriate behavior. Students are more likely to misbehave if they feel somewhat “anonymous;” this simple tactic lets them know that they have been noticed.

 

4.     The Practice.

Here, I require that students model (practice) the appropriate behavior if a procedure or task was done improperly.  For example, if a student is talking in the hallway, the students is asked to return to the classroom and then to reenter the hallway.  A smile or thumbs-up confirms for the student that the task was successfully completed.

 

5.     Visual Cues.

A show of fingers quickly informs a student that he/she is breaking a rule.  The second or two that it takes a student to recollect which rule they’ve broken is usually enough time to “break” the misbehavior itself.

 

6.     The Quiet Signal.

The Quiet Signal is used by the teacher to regain silence in order to give further directions, or to continue work at a quieter level.  Students themselves will often give the Quiet Signal if they sense the class is becoming too noisy for productive work.

 

The Home Connection

 

Below are some suggestions for extending the strategies and structures we discuss in school to your interactions with your child at home.

 

• Offer a choice of when or how to do a task. For example, “Clean up your toys each night before getting into bed. Either put them on the bottom shelf or into the toy box.”
• Be specific in what is expected. What does “clean your room” really mean? A list, especially a numbered list that names specific items, would increase the probability that a complete job would get done.
• Redo what is not right. If we take over a responsibility, students will never resume ownership. A simple, “Adam, wrapper,” and a finger aimed at the offending trash still teaches more responsibility than if we picked it up and threw it away ourselves.
• Acknowledge responsible behavior. “The books are shelved, the floor is spotless, and the clothes are all put away. You are awesome.”
• Provide deadlines as well as choices. “Homework needs to get done before TV. You can do it either before you have a snack or after.”
• Allow natural consequences to occur. After a snack, your child complains that she doesn’t want to do homework now because she’ll miss her favorite show. You respond, "You chose to do homework after a snack when you didn’t choose to do it before a snack. Next time, do the homework first, and then you can have a snack while you watch TV.”
• Acknowledge your child’s feelings without backing down. “You’re disappointed that you can't watch your show now. You wish you made a different decision. You can make a different decision tomorrow.”
• Separate yourself from your child’s feelings. Children must learn to deal with consequences of wrong choices. When you make things pleasant for them, you teach them to be thoughtless.
• Resist accepting irresponsible excuses. When one child knocks over a smaller sibling and says, "It was an accident," reply, "I'm glad you didn't do it deliberately. You are responsible for what your body does, accidentally or not. What do you think needs to happen next?"

 

 (Adapted from Encouraging Responsibility by Elizabeth Crary)

 

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