How will you enforce your classroom expectations?
How will you enforce your classroom expectations when students don’t follow them? What is your plan for your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd tier of interventions you can do before referring students to administration for misbehavior?
While we can clearly state our expectations for student behavior at the start of a school year, we know that it won’t take long for students to start violating these expectations. Maybe, it’s as subtle of a thing as a student being off task and not doing their work when you’ve provided time in class for them to do so. Maybe it’s an “in your face” type of misbehavior like a student bullying another student in class or talking back to you disrespectfully.
Before students come through your door, I encourage you to spend some time visualizing as many situations as you can anticipate in which students are violating your classroom expectations. What will you do the first time a student openly defies you in class? What will you do when a student refuses to work? What will you do when a student talks out of turn in class and interrupts your lesson or activity? Make a plan ahead of time of how you will intervene and try to redirect and refocus your students when misconduct occurs. While you can’t anticipate every situation, you can anticipate many, and planning will increase your ability to respond calmly, consistently, and appropriately.
If you don’t have a clear plan, you’ll most likely react by losing your temper, referring students to administration too hastily, and potentially even giving up addressing the misconduct in your classroom. These reactions demonstrate to students that you lack the power to manage their behavior. They communicate to administrators that you don’t have good classroom management skills. And you are left feeling defeated and powerless.
There will be times when you experience situations where your planned wave of interventions doesn’t seem to make sense, and you’ll have to address those unique situations carefully and after discussion with colleagues and administration. But you don’t want to treat each discipline situation as a “one off”situation. So again, make a plan to address most behaviors before the year begins and if your plan often breaks down, adjust it. But having a plan in place and consistently implementing it to address discipline will simplify your life, and I believe it will allow you to earn credibility with your students AND with your administration.
Here’s an example of the wave of interventions I use:
Intervention #1: As subtle as possible, I try to talk to the student individually. If a student is sleeping at their desk, it’s as simple as tapping them on their shoulder and asking them to sit up and pay attention. If a student is emotionally upset and yelling at another student, it might be having them take a few minutes in the hallway to calm down and calmly talking to them one on one.
Intervention #2: I have 4 sentences that explain my classroom expectations posted in my classroom and I have students copy them onto paper. If I’ve already tried to redirect students and they are refusing to work with me, this is their first consequence I give them. While it is an annoying assignment for students, it really is a minor consequence. It makes my previous verbal warning now “have some teeth to it”, and I can subtly enforce discipline without making a big scene in my class. I’ll usually quietly tell a student or even write on a postcard, “You need to write 10 sentence #1’s for tomorrow” so as to not embarrass a student or highlight the behavior in front of the whole class. If students will agree to do this, the next day when they turn this in, I assure them we move on and that that past issue is done with. No embarrassing moments. No administration needing to be involved. While the writing of sentences won’t reform behavior, writing sentences requires my students to take a few minutes and dwell on the fact that they violated the class expectations and that I as their teacher am serious about my expectations.
Intervention #3: I give students a detention after school to write their sentences and contact home if I haven’t already. Many students won’t take me seriously in that I am requiring them to write their sentences. Some double down on their defiance and state that they WILL NOT write my “stupid” sentences. I usually give my students two days to turn in their sentences, doubling the amount of sentences required if they don’t turn them in after day 1. But ultimately if a student won’t write the sentences, I create a required time for them to write their sentences and issue them a detention. And if I haven’t already, I contact home to notify their parents.
Intervention #4: Refer students to administration for discipline. Now, students will at times skip detention or refuse to serve them. This is typically when I refer them to administration. By now, I’ve tried three previous interventions to address the misconduct, and the student has chosen to bypass each of them.
As you can see, these interventions are simple and minimally disruptive to my class time and the other students who are following my expectations. With these interventions, I can keep the focus on learning and prevent misbehavior stealing the show. Even on the occasions when a misbehaving student may erupt with a big, disruptive reaction, my other students can bounce back on track quickly because of the culture of learning that I regularly maintain in my class.