1. Patience: Remember, kids are kids.
 
This seems simple enough, but easy to forget. There are real differences in the child’s brain from early years through the teen years. Kids are sometimes irrational, undependable, secretive, distrustful, lazy, and inappropriate. Sometimes when we see this behavior we lose our cool and think they are doing it “on purpose.”
 
This is going to seem politically incorrect, but it’s the best way I can put it—I  see my students as mentally disabled with moments of clarity. On some cognitive level this is true because they are still developing. Would I get angry if a child with Down Syndrome did something wrong? No.

I would take their disability into consideration and moderate my tone and approach.
 
If we see that kids are simply not fully developed people—works in progress—it can take the sting out of poor behavior. Instead of getting angry, think of their disability and react without anger or spite.

2. Consistency: No favoritism.
 
You will like some students more than others. We do not like to say this, but it is obvious. Also, a child you have difficulty with may be the “teacher’s pet” in another room. The point is not to base your classroom management on how you feel about your students but on your classroom rules. If the “good kid” steps out of line, then he or she should receive the same consequences as that kid you have difficulty with so that all can see and understand you are fair and consistent.
 
3. Professionalism: Keep your personal life private.
 
Though it is fine to be friendly to students, it is important that you not cross the line to become a friend. You are the instructor and need to remain the authority figure. There is no need to “dominate” the class, but sharing too much information, certainly personal information, can be problematic, especially in this age of the internet.
 
In many schools, teachers are forbidden to have a Facebook or Twitter page. Other schools encourage it but have strict guideline about the usage. My personal feeling is that you should not connect with students through any means outside of school, via the internet or in person. There are simply too many lawsuits that point to the errors of such behavior. Even innocent communication can be taken out of context and be used against you. EVERYTHING you e-mail or post on the internet is permanently recorded. Though you hit delete, the information is still obtainable by authorities.
 
Students, by their very nature are inconsistent. You can be their best friend one day and the next, they hate you and want to do everything they can to punish you. Imagine a “good student” who rightfully earns a detention, their feelings can change on a dime and you are the one leaving yourself vulnerable.
 
This is not meant to alarm you, but social interactions of any kind put you in a very bad position and open to legal issues far deeper than you would like to explore. You need to care. You need to connect. You need to share, but do so as a professional.
 
4. Organization: Paperwork and the legal things you must do.
 
The paperwork outside the classroom can be overwhelming. Then you add in all the work that pertains to your subject and there is a mountain that needs to be climbed on a daily basis. The documentation escalates and seems to have no end, but if you are organized and do it as it come up, you can stay above the rising waters. Getting behind too can put you in violation of the law.
 
Some students have special accommodations you are legally bound to have available and follow at all times. Never mind that you teach 150 students a day; you have to make concrete accommodations for these students and it is NOT always easy. There could be a spot inspection by state authorities and if that paperwork is not available, you can lose your teaching certificate. It is that serious. It is also difficult to meet all expectations. For example, you may have 5 students who need special seating for fewer distractions. Every classroom only four corners; what are you to do?

5. Communication Dexterity:  Kids, parents, colleagues, administrators…
 
As a teacher you are confronted by diverse populations all with different expectations of your role as a teacher. You must be able to speak clearly to each in the most professional way possible because your interactions can have a dramatic effect on your job and even your working conditions.

• Communicate poorly to students, they don’t succeed, and you are labeled a bad teacher.
• Communicate poorly to parents and you will get complaints to your supervisor.
• Communicate poorly to your colleagues and you are isolated
• Communicate poorly to administrators and it can affect your working conditions or employment.

6. Ability to Ask for Help.
 
Though you should be capable of teaching alone and seek help on your own, collaboration and communication with other teachers can be a huge benefit. If you wait too long to ask for help, you can find yourself too far behind to recover. By seeking out colleagues, you can learn from their successes, empathize about the problems you share, solve problems together, and seek the help of veteran teachers and administrators. NEVER feel that asking for help makes you appear to be a poor teacher. Some of the best teachers I know collaborate often. Ask a colleague to observe your class informally for suggestions; a new point of view can be invaluable!
 
Islands can be pretty, but they can also be very lonely places.
 
7. Think on your feet: Change lessons on the spur of the moment.
 
Though it is important to follow curriculum and be consistent, you are not a robot, and sometimes things come up that are both pertinent and relevant. You may find a way to refocus a lesson that will grab students’ attention. When you do this they see that their input matters.
 
Some tangents can be negative and some positive. Take a moment and think it through. These are golden opportunities, though admittedly some will just be distractions. You need to remain alert to these possibilities and “roll with it” and use that flexibility to excite your students.
 
Another aspect of this is that “S**T happens.” The internet can be down, power outages happen, kids don’t bring in supplies you assigned for homework (like bring in a magazine, etc.) So you must be able to find an alternate path to switch gears and move on. Thinking on your feet is just part of the job. Have a fun lesson stashed away for such an occasion.

8. Emotional Detachment: Don’t take everything personally; think it through.
 
Similar in thought to number one, you need to have a clinical detachment to the emotional drama of school and see it for what it is. This does not mean you need to be cold and detached, but it does mean you need to see the behavior and situation for what it is. Students are under-developed adults. If you attribute adult willfulness to their behavior you will only become frustrated. Students often have a narrow range of reactions to situations. They do not think of the larger implication to their behavior and they lack experiences to teach them these things in a meaningful way.
 
As a teacher, you are often the one to help them understand these things. You need to show them the options and let them choose. And you need to enforce the outcomes. You are the police, judge, jury, lawyer, and policy maker. You need to expect that issues will arise daily. Most will be small, but as these experiences accumulate, the student forms the foundation for their own adult behavior. Arbitrary enforcement only reinforces the idea that consequences are arbitrary as well.
 
One indication that you have an issue here is by calculating how often you feel the need to raise your voice. If it is daily, then you have a problem. Yelling means that you have lost your cool, the students have the upper hand, and you were unable to detach yourself from the behavior. Do you like to be yelled at? I would assume not.
 
Challenge yourself not to yell. I did it for a year and much of what I learned and share with you here is rooted in this one simple yet profound challenge. When students act out, I remind them of my expectation or posted rules. I will issue a warning and follow through if they do not comply. Sometimes it means sending them to the office to “cool off” without a detention, sometimes with. I escalate the consequences little by little until they comply. If you hit them with a sledgehammer for the first infraction, they will see you as arbitrary and an ogre they cannot respect and their behavior will get worse. Later in this book I will share with you my approach to disciplinary problems.

9. Seek Professional Growth: Stay current.
 
I have learned very little from in-school professional growth, though a few things stand out: Information about laws that effect our profession, health issues to be aware of, and suicide prevention, but this is a sliver of the nearly 100 programs I have attended.
 
The most valuable growth comes when I have been able to meet with colleagues within my subject area and participate in collaborative workshops where we share best practices, lesson ideas, share suggestions, and meet the vendors that supply our department. These often happen at conventions, either state or national, and I would encourage teachers to attend these.
 
Professional development need not be confined to these areas; you may consider an evening class or two within or related to your subject. The additional classes may help you accrue credit to ascend faster on your school’s salary guide. Many schools will often reimburse part of your tuition based on the grades you receive.

10. Love Your Subject!
 
Your own feelings of personal well-being have a direct effect on your students. If you teach a subject you do not have a passion about, maybe you should consider a change of subject or career. Students are like little emotional tuning-forks, they can sense if you are “phoning it in” or if your interest is genuine. Your enthusiasm should be contagious.
 
How does one stay interested and not “burn out” For some, taking their subject outside the classroom is beneficial, easily understood when you think of an art teacher painting and exhibiting. A colleague friend of mine teaches math and tells me that the last thing he wants to do is more math when he gets home. Instead he finds that golf and gardening keep him fresh. You may find a woodworking class for a science teacher may simply allow for creative energies to express themselves and make for a happier person.  Some find their bliss in daily work-out routines, quilting, scrapbooking, painting, and exhibiting.
 
It is especially important that teachers stay fresh and refreshed. Teaching is extremely taxing. I would challenge any hedge-fund-millionaire to do one week in a classroom successfully. Teaching is not for everyone, but at a minimum, you must love what you teach.

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How does one not “be real”? By talking down to or at students, by not staying current with their interests, by loosing your cool, or by being too “cold.”
 
This is a real balancing act and at first may seem to conflict with #8 (previous post) to be emotionally detached. If you address students as if they were people like yourself, it may be helpful in letting them sympathize with you and vise-versa.  Ask yourself, how would you like to be spoken to? How would you like your supervisor to react to your mistakes or misunderstandings? How would you expect your colleague to approach you if they had a problem with something you did? By treating students with the same respect you demand of others, you will earn their respect and you will be giving them a living example to help form their own patterns of behavior.
 
If you go into teaching thinking that you are only here to teach your content area, you will be very frustrated and disappointed. Much of what teaching is, is modeling and teaching appropriate behavior. I am often still surprised by student behavior—like at a concert where students continue to chat while others are singing for them. They need to be told what one should and should not do at a concert/theatre. Sometimes you need to make connections for them. You can say, “This is like going to church or a movie, you need to remain quiet for the performer.”  Additionally you should connect with their emotional side by adding something like “Imagine if you were on stage and worked for months to prepare for this presentation but people talked over you. How would that make you feel?”
 
This last part is where you will find the most effective use of communication to change behavior. Children are emotional people. They react often based on their feelings without considering the possible ramifications of that behavior. It’s also why we do not apply the death sentence to smaller children as they have less capacity to understand fully the consequences of their behavior. There is evidence that the human brain does not fully develop these abilities until the age of 25.
 
Understanding this lack of development can help you remain calm when these issues arise. It is simply the nature of children, not a willful negligence or ignorance. It should not surprise you that this behavior does not disappear after one incident. Appropriate behavior needs to be modeled again and again, and if the consequences or reactions to such behavior is consistent, learning takes place.
 
Let’s take the example of my student teacher “C.R.” Two boys in class were having an inappropriate conversation of a sexual nature. She rightly addressed it and told them to stop. She had to do so a few times and noted that the behavior was inappropriate.
 
My advice to her was to take the students into the hallway and personalize their behavior. I told her to say to them, “Guys, I know you’re just joking around, but when you speak like that it makes me feel uncomfortable as a woman. I am sure that was not what you meant to do, but it is how I feel. Also, as a teacher I need to be sure all my students are comfortable too. If I feel this way, I am sure others do too but they can’t really say anything or kids will make fun of them for being uptight. If one of them complained, I’d be called down to the office and asked to explain why I let this behavior continue and they would see me as a bad teacher. Could you guys change the topic? I want you to have fun and enjoy my class, but this really has to stop.”
 
Personalizing the behavior enables your students to understand how you feel. (Even if you have to exaggerate a bit about how you really feel.) Making a concrete example helps them understand the feelings of the situation so it will resonate with them. They will also know you care because you took the time to explain it and didn’t just yell at them and say “knock it off.”  You may argue that this exchange will take too much time out of your class, but consider that this approach may stop this behavior immediately and prevent it from re-occurring. If you add up all your “knock it off” distractions, I think in the long term you will be saving time. Students who see you address these issues privately in the hall will feel more at ease that you care enough to explain things that you did not yell, that you remained calm, and that you can be trusted.
 
This takes practice but works for the behavior you really need to shut down before it can potentially escalate.  Keep in mind too that if you don’t address some behaviors, like teasing, you can be in violation of Title 9 Federal Law.

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One of the great “Truths” about teaching is it is easier to come on strong and loosen up later.  Displaying your rules in the bulletin board can be an effective reminder of your expectations.
 
It is always difficult to crack down on bad behavior that you have let escalate. If you set a tone of control, organization, and consistency from day one, it is easier to nip these bad behaviors early. As the year progresses their behavior will be more controlled. As it does, you can loosen the constraints a bit. This does not mean to become lax; but seating assignments can change, maybe music can be played during individual work-time. It can take the form you feel a more “relaxed” situation should be with you in charge.
 
The beginning of the year is the time to set strict rules and follow through on consequences. It is your time to learn about the individual needs of your students and build relationships. It is your time to find out what
motivates them.

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​There are only 2 issues where I raise my voice.

• Safety issues (Kids playing with a sharp object)
• Bullying

 
About five years into teaching I found myself “burning out” and getting upset with the behavior of my students. I was giving several detentions daily, often raising my voice and was on the verge of cursing on a couple occasions. Though I would never condone a teacher “losing it” in the classroom, I can definitely understand how it can happen.
 
I felt I could not sustain the kind of energy I was expending on a daily basis. Though I am not sure where the idea came from, I know I chose to complete that year by doing all I could to not raise my voice. This was in the fall, so I knew it would be a challenge. I did everything I could to avoid it; that forced me to change my approach and lead to much that is contained herein.
 
One thing I did was I began to sit with my students as they worked and learn a bit about what they were doing and thinking, thereby making some valuable one-on-one connections.
 
Then I remembered the thing about “I” statements from a therapy class I took in college. That an “I” statement helps deflate situations and that “You” statements tend to exacerbate them. For instance: “Why can’t you stay in your seat!” versus “Tommy, I would really appreciate it if you would remain in your seat.” The tonal difference is clear but it is also clear that the “I” statement may feel unnatural or alien. This does take practice.
 
If the behavior continues, then another more detailed connection needs to be made. This will take a bit of thought and practice. “Tommy, I can see you really have a lot of energy and it is difficult to stay in your seat. I know it may seem silly to have to do it, but when you walk around it is distracting to the students and even I have a hard time concentrating because I am worrying about what you are going to do. I also worry that maybe I am not being a good teacher because I can’t seem to help you listen. What can we do together to make this better?” After considering seat changes, and all the normal approaches to this behavior, think about a reward for sitting, maybe a little private extra credit, every day in the seat is an additional point on the next test? You really need to stretch your creative muscles to make this work but it can be done and the result is that the student now sympathizes, their behavior becomes more compliant, and they are more likely to listen to your directions in the future because they feel you care.
 
All students and you will benefit from rewarding good behavior and praise now and again. During your class closure, you can make a statement about the overall behavior when it is good. Pass little notes to students who are usually troublesome that say, “Thank you for staying in your seat, I really appreciate it!” Little notes like these are like little surprises. Maybe stock up on little “thank you” stationary from the dollar store. You can even slip in a little chocolate or some fun stickers.
 
The big idea here is to speak to kids as you would like to be spoken to and reward good behavior as often, or MORE often than you address bad behavior.
 
If you find you are unable to keep your cool, or that a particular student very easily “pushes your buttons,” look within. There is an interesting psychological term called counter-transference. Simply put, it is when you react to others unknowingly because they express feelings and emotions you suppress in yourself. Review your interactions to be sure this is not part of them.
 
If the “needy” kid gets on your nerves, look to your own “neediness” and see if there is some truth to this and possibly the root of your losing your cool. Often identifying the root issue can solve the problem.

​If one of your goals is that you are “liked” by students, you have a long and painful road ahead.
 
If you are fair, consistent, and respectful of your students, students will like you, but it should never be a goal. Your primary goal is to teach your subject matter and manage your room. It is what you are paid to do and there is nobility in this profession of education.
 
Personally, I would much more appreciate that my students respect me than like me.
 
As teachers, we see unmanageable students from time to time, with parents that have no sympathy or respect for what we do. Some joke that “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” but my own experience is that many of these issues stem from “Friendship Parenting.” Most parents do not receive the training we do about behavior modification, positive reinforcement, and enforcing consequences for choices. They may not have come out of good family situations themselves.
 
These are the parents that base their discipline on how their children will feel about their parenting. They are afraid they will come off as mean. They want their kids to be their friends, so they are overly lenient and do not set clear boundaries nor do they follow-through in a consistent way with consequences. This sets up a pattern of confusion as expectations cannot be gauged.
 
These are the parents that agree with their child when a student says, “Mr. So-and-so hates me!” They call, they yell, they assume you are “out to get” their child, when all you are doing is being clear about expectations and holding them to the boundaries you have set. In these cases you should make your supervisor aware of these communications. If they are sent via e-mail, send a copy of all correspondence to your director as well. Do not be an island, especially if you do not have tenure.

​At the same time I decided to try not yelling for a year, I also made up a chart and was deliberate in my attempt to sit with each student for a short time while they worked on projects. I used this time to learn a bit about them and their interests and even how they were feeling about the class. These conversations, still today, give me ideas for projects.
 
Building these mini students-teacher relationships will help lessen the confrontations in your room and help students know, in a real way, that you do care. It is important to see all of them with equal attentiveness. Students are keenly aware if you are “faking it” and that your interest is less than genuine.
 
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making these important connections.

Make sure you follow your school’s procedures for detentions. Every school will be different.
 
I generally give detentions as per issues of breaking school rules. I am supposed to assign them for a student’s fourth tardy to class, if I catch them cutting class, texting on cell phones, if they plagiarize an assignment, etc. For some of these issues I “blame the boss.” I tell my student this: “I am hired by the school to enforce the rules. I may not like all the rules much myself, but that’s part of what they pay me to do. If I do not give you the detention for the fourth tardy, they can see my attendance, and they can look for the detention receipt. If there is no receipt then I am in violation of my contract and I get called to the principal’s office. Just as you have to follow the rules, I do too. There are consequences for me if I do not follow the rules. I could get fired. This is not personal. I do not think you are a bad person; it’s just that I have to assign this detention.”
 
This seems like an awful lot to say but it does deflate the situation. It now becomes a non-emotional issue, you have spoken to the child as an adult, you have outlined the deeper issues behind the detention, and they may understand it is not a personal issue.
 
The other reason I give detentions is the bullying issues or safety in the classroom. Often in these cases I speak to the student in the hallway without their peers. I give them a long “I” statement explanation of the situation and give them some options: Cool off in the office or the nurse station. Separation from the problem, a chance to apologize, or whatever else may fit the issue may be helpful. Sometimes this is enough. Sometimes it is not. The main thing is to be consistent whether the student is a “good” or “problem” child.

If at all possible, I try to engage the most difficult students early in the year. I give them a few additional responsibilities, and give them a bit more positive reinforcement so they may be more likely “on my side.” There is a careful balance here though. You do not want them to be your friends, but you certainly do not want them to be your enemies. If you over do it, others in the room will label it as favoritism. If you give them a bit of lenience, do it on the side and away from others. Be sure they are as responsible as the others to what is expected in your classroom.
 
I think of this as healthy pro-active classroom maintenance. In many instances your classroom can hinge on these few but powerful personalities. They are looked up to for their independence and if they think you are “cool” the rest of the class may follow. I know for certain that when some personalities are absent for sickness the whole tone of the classroom can be completely different. This only illustrates why you may need to get them on
your side if possible.
 
It is however, not always possible and then you are left to just “deal with it.” When this happens, just be very clear about your expectations and very clear about the consequences.
 
Some simple things you can do are find out their interests and see if you can draw parallels to your own life. Share a bit. Consider going to see movies you hear them talk about. It may not be your “thing” but it will educate you about their world and may help you create lessons that connect with their experiences.  Also, by seeing what they see, you will be more clued into their “lingo.” What may be considered a compliment, may, in the context of a popular video, actually be an insult. Do you know what it means if a kid yells “Bob Sagett?” I do and only because I catch up on YouTube quite often.

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