A Secret Strategy That Makes Classroom Management Easier. During the first few weeks of a new school year, I try to identify students with natural leadership ability.
Typically, two or three strong leaders will emerge from a class of thirty. My only criterion is that the other students look up to them. This doesn’t mean that these natural leaders are top students or that they’ve been particularly well behaved in the past (sometimes it’s better if they’re not). They are simply students who hold the most sway with other students. I’ll pull them aside and say: “I’ve noticed that many of the other students look up to you, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in helping me. I’ll have occasional meetings with this small group to role-play ways they can help. I’ll walk next to one of them on the way out to recess and say, “Hey would you do me a favor and ask Sean if he wants to play soccer with your group today?” Eliminate Bullying One year, before the first day of school, I noticed a girl on my roster named Laura. The Classroom Management Mindset. A Classroom Management Plan That Works. In his book, Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys To Creativity, Hugh MacLeod points out that Abraham Lincoln penned the Gettysburg Address on borrowed stationary.
Hemingway wrote with a simple fountain pen. Van Gogh rarely used more than six colors on his palate. And MacLeod, himself an artist, sketches cartoons on the back of business cards. His point is that there is zero correlation between creative talent and the materials and equipment used. The same can be said about an effective classroom management plan. A simple set of rules and consequences hand-printed on ordinary poster board is all you need. Why You’re Tired, Stressed, And Not The Teacher You’d Like To Be. It’s easy to stick with your classroom management plan the first few weeks of the school year.
You’re eager to make a fresh start, and your students are on their best behavior. By week three, you’re cruising. But then… slowly, imperceptively things start becoming routine, more day-to-day, and you become a wee bit complacent. A little voice in the back of your head tells you that you don’t need to be such a stickler. Things are going well, so why not back off some? But as your students are becoming more familiar with you and their surroundings, school starts to feel routine for them too.
And they become restless. Then, subtly at first, they start pushing back. The Perfect Storm You know where I’m going with this. When your ever-so-slight complacency runs headlong into your students’s restlessness, it creates the perfect storm, one that builds slowly and ominously just out of your awareness. Why Straying From Your Classroom Management Plan Is A Gamble You’ll Lose Every Time. If you’re like most teachers, you stray from your classroom management plan.
Oh, your intentions are good. You really do want to follow it to the letter. But ultimately you don’t. Situations keep getting in the way. Like, for example, when one of your best students forgets to raise her hand, and you overlook it because you know she probably won’t make the same mistake again. Or when frustration gets the best of you and you lecture a disrespectful student rather than sending him to time-out. How To Set Up A Simple, Effective Classroom Management Plan. The purpose of a classroom management plan is to hold students accountable for misbehavior—without having to yell, scold, or lecture.
When used correctly, a classroom management plan eliminates the need to use these and other stressful, counterproductive methods. It allows you to demand impeccable behavior without causing friction and resentment, which then frees you to build meaningful and influential relationships with your students. How To Teach Your Classroom Management Plan. Of all the responsibilities you have on the first day of school, teaching your classroom management plan is número uno in importance.
After all, your success as a teacher hinges on your ability to manage your classroom. That’s just the way it is. Teachers who are nonchalant about classroom management, or who see it as a nuisance, won’t be nearly as effective as those who place it at the top of their list. 10 Amazing Benefits Of Following Your Classroom Management Plan. There are times when you just want to give a student a piece of your mind, when your sense of justice causes a welling up of fiery indignation.
Your eyes narrow. Your heart beats faster. Steam billows from your ears. You lock in on the little bugger who decided to brazenly interrupt the lesson you spent an hour preparing. How To Be Consistent With Classroom Management. Ask a hundred teachers if it’s important to be consistent with classroom management and every last one of them will tell you that it is.
But knowing that it’s important is one thing. Actually being consistent is another. Most teachers only kinda-sorta follow their classroom management plan—deciding whether to enforce a consequence not based on what their plan actually says, but on the nuances of the situation, how they feel in the moment, or who is doing the rule breaking. But this becomes the slickest of slippery slopes. And before long they’re routinely ignoring their classroom management plan. It’s only much later, upon experiencing the extreme stress and upside-down chaos of letting things go, that they kick themselves under their desk and resolve not to let it happen again.
But then doubt slowly slithers its way back in, and the cycle repeats.