Fifty Reasonable Options You Have When Students Misbehave

 

             If you are like most classroom teachers, there is a great deal that can go right in the course of your school day and there is also a great deal that can go wrong. When the something that can go wrong involves student misbehavior, there are many different approaches that you can take to make sure that the situation is resolved in such a way that the student's dignity is intact and further misbehavior is prevented. Consider a these options the next time a student does not behave in a positive way. While are some geared to help you deal with the immediate situation, you will find that others will help you prevent further problems.

 

        1.        Praise good behavior and ignore as much of the bad as you can.

        2.        Call a parent or guardian to get help.

        3.        Hold a conference with the child.

        4.        Listen to the student’s version of an incident before taking action.

        5.        Determine on a course of planned ignoring to extinguish misbehavior.

        6.        Ask the offending student what the consequences should be.

        7.        Never allow “free time.”

        8.        Ask students to tell you alternative actions they should have taken.

        9.        Move the student to a time-out area to cool off and prevent further trouble.

       10.      Reward, reward, reward.

       11.      Make students feel worthy of trust.

       12.      Post and teach your class rules, routines, and expectations

       13.      Keep your students busy from door to door.

       14.      Discuss class rules periodically—daily at first.

       15.      Smile at a student who is getting ready to misbehave.

       16.      Give a potentially troublesome student a position of leadership in class.

       17.      If a child is perennially fidgety, work out ways to channel that energy in productive ways.

       18.      Consider putting friends close together so that they can help each other (and not talk across the room).

       19.      Always have a backup plan for your backup plan.

       20.      Appeal to as many learning styles as possible.

       21.      If an exciting school event is causing your class to be out of control, go with the flow. Plan assignments that can channel that energy productively.

       22.      Arrange a lending system for those students who do not have materials.

       23.      If an infraction is caused by a student’s minor slip of judgment, offer reassurances that you now it won’t happen again.

       24.      Make sure to build motivation into every lesson.

       25.      Create a reasonable policy for students to leave the room. Enforce it.

       26.      Set behavior goals for the entire group and reward them when they reach their goals.

       27.      Offer tangible rewards for good behavior at unpredictable times.

       28.      Be emotionally accessible to your students. Grouchy teachers have more problems than positive ones.

       29.      Give a child a second chance. Sometimes a warning is all that is needed.

       30.      Remind students of their future goals to help them remain focused on what’s important.

       31.      More closer to a student who is misbehaving.

       32.      Enforce the school rules.

       33.      Model the behavior you want.

       34.      Don’t waste time in debate when an infraction is clearly an infraction. Avoid being manipulated.

       35.      There is nothing wrong with being strict or in having high expectations.

       36.      Time your students.  When you say, “You have two minutes to finish, students will work with purpose.

       37.      Use inspiring messages and mottoes.

       38.      Be so polite that your students would have problems being rude to you.

       39.      Give students as many options as you can.

       40.      After an incident has happened, examine your own actions. What did you do to cause the problem?

       41.      Control the pace of a lesson. Lessons that are too hurried or that drag cause problems.

       42.      Move students to other seats.

       43.      Use seating charts from the first day onward.

       44.      Meet students at the door and greet them. Pass out handouts at this point in the day if you can.

       45.      Stay on your feet and move around. Monitor.

       46.      Make sure your students know the consequences of their good and bad behaviors.

       47.      Accept no excuses for rude behaviors.

       48.      Make sure students understand the criteria for success on an assignment.

       49.      Teach your students the “whys” of an assignment or rule.

       50.      Consider traffic flow issues.   Keep student movement areas safe for everyone.

 

 

DID YOU CREATE YOUR OWN BAD DAY?

The good news is that sometimes we are the problem. Not our students. Us. If we stop to think about the things that go wrong in our classes, lots of times a problem could have been avoided or at least minimized. If we are the ones causing the problems, then we can be the ones to solve the problems. It is much easier for us to control our own behaviors rather than the behaviors of our most unruly students.

To help you with this, here is a little list that you can copy and print out to help you reflect on what you may be doing to cause discipline issues in your classroom and, more importantly, what you can do to solve those issues.

 

Mistake 1

You are unclear in the limits you set for your students, resulting in a constant testing of the boundaries and of your patience.

Mistake 2

You are too vague in giving directions to your students.

Mistake 3

You are inconsistent in enforcing consequences. This will lead students to a steady testing of the limits of good and bad behaviors.

Mistake 4

You go to school each day without the belief you must have in order to help your students succeed: that students can learn and achieve the things you want for them.

Mistake 5

You overreact to a discipline problem by becoming angry and upset.

Mistake 6

You refuse to listen to your students when they are trying to express their feelings about a problem.

Mistake 7

You present yourself in too tentative a fashion—too easily side-tracked, too tentative, too permissive.

Mistake 8

You give too many negative directions. This sets an unpleasant tone for your students.

Mistake 9

You try to solve discipline problems without trying to determine the underlying causes.

 

Mistake 10

You neglect to command attention. Teachers who talk even though students aren’t listening are not productive.

Mistake 11

You have lessons that are poorly paced. Students either have too much work to do and give up or they don’t have enough work. You also make this mistake when you have lectures that are so long that you can’t keep your students’ attention throughout.

Mistake 12

You make mistakes in assigning punishment by doing so without proof or by blaming the wrong student.

 

 

What Parents and Guardians Expect of Their Child’s Teachers

At this point in the school year, parents and guardians can either be valuable allies who work with you to ensure the success of every student in your class or they can be unpleasant and demanding adversaries. As an educator committed to the academic success of your students, it is up to you to make sure that the relationship between home and school is professional and positive.


One of the most important ways to establish this relationship is to make sure that you are aware of the expectations that they may have of you as their child’s teacher. While not all parents or guardians will have the same expectations of their child’s teachers, there are some similarities that you can anticipate and plan for. Your students’ parents or guardians will expect you to:


1. Ensure their child’s safety while in your class

2. Be fair in your treatment of their child

3. Recognize their child’s unique gifts and talents

4. Be reasonable in the amount of homework that you assign

5. Follow school and district rules and policies

6. Focus on positive qualities more than negative ones

7. Contact them quickly if a problem arises

8. Be courteous when you speak to their child

9. Maintain an orderly classroom

10. Be alert to the misbehavior of other students and how it may affect their child

11. Look and act like a confident, skilled, professional educator

12. Keep them apprised of scheduled events such as field trips and due dates for projects and tests

13. Know when to involve other education professionals such as a social worker or counselor

14. Work closely with them for the benefit of the child

15. Be able to meet with them before or after school

16. Return phone calls and emails promptly

17. Be aware of any health issues that their child may have and act accordingly

18. Protect their family’s privacy

19. Make it easy for them to stay in touch with you

20. Stay within the boundaries of your role as teacher

21. Be honest with them

22. Respect the confidentiality of their child’s school records

23. Be willing to listen to their concerns

24. Respect their insights about their child’s needs

25. Talk to them before going to an administrator for help

How to Build Persistence and Confidence

One of the most frustrating situations for any teacher occurs when seemingly capable students won’t finish simple assignments or, even worse, won’t even attempt assignments that appear to be even slightly challenging. Students who stop working at the first moment of perceived difficulty are even more perplexing because their lack of persistence is often confused with laziness. While it may be tempting to just advise students to keep trying, this advice seldom resolves the problem.

There are many reasons for the unwaveringly feeble effort that many students present at the first sign of a challenge. For many students, the fear of their work not being “good enough” is paralyzing. Rather than earn a failing grade from a teacher, they give it to themselves by just not doing the work.

Other students are so accustomed to overly helpful adults who respond to their learned helplessness with so many hints and clues that they do not really have to think for themselves. Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is all too recognizable. These are the students who ask others for the page number rather than check a table of contents, ask dozens of anxious questions rather than read the text for information, of who put their heads down on their desks rather than work independently for any length of time.

Whatever the reason, it is possible to mitigate the patterns of learned helplessness. Below is a list of strategies that you can use to help your students develop into persistent and confident learners.

1. Start a unit of study by activating prior knowledge. Students who can connect new learning with previous knowledge will be far more likely to persist in facing learning challenges than those students for whom each concept in the material is unfamiliar.

2. Begin a unit of study or even smaller assignments within that unit with work that easier than it will be near the end of the unit or assignment. Once students see that they can do the work, they will be less intimidated.

3. Break longer assignments into smaller, more manageable ones so that students won’t be overwhelmed at the thought of a long task.

4. When students work in pairs or triads on even part of an assignment, they tend to do well. Working with a study buddy allows instant support when students are not sure of an answer or a procedure.

5. Nothing succeeds like success. Design activities where your students can shine, and they will want to continue the positive feelings generated by that success. Use differentiation techniques to reach as many learners as you can.

6. Help students see the connection between effort and success. Often less persistent students believe that good students somehow are just smarter or find the work easier than they do. Learning that everyone needs to work hard at times can be an epiphany for some students.

7. Teach students how to accurately estimate the time that it may take them to complete a task. Students who think that it will take them hours and hours to do their homework will be far more prone to quit than those students who realize that a shorter time commitment is required.

8. Offer plenty of rubrics, models, samples, and demonstrations so that students know when they are on the right track.

9. Have students set reasonable goals and work to achieve them. When students work to achieve a personal goal, they have a vested interest in working.

10. When you see students struggling with an assignment, use one of the most powerful questions in your teacher’s toolbox: ask, “How can I help you?”

11. All learning should have a clear and pragmatic purpose. Students who know why they have to complete an assignment will be more willing to do so if they know how it will benefit them now and in the future.

12. Have students write their questions during independent work in a certain area of the board or on the Smartboard. Answer these questions at predictable intervals.

13. Formative assessments serve a dual purpose. They not only let you know what your students do and do not know, but they can be useful tools in making sure that your students know exactly how to proceed to be successful. Frequent small formative assessments can be very useful tools in helping students stay on track.

14. Teach your students that their work does not always have to be perfect to be acceptable. Sometimes “good enough” is really good enough.

15. Harness the power of peer pressure. Having students work together in a class challenge to reach a specific goal can encourage those students who are willing to shortchange themselves, but who don’t want to let their classmates down.

16. Many teachers find that stopping periodically and having peers make brief checks of each others’ work can help students stay on the right track.

17. School success is not a big, flashy event. Rather, academic success lies in a pattern of small accomplishments. Work with your students to help them internalize this idea though brief class discussions, reflections, and other shared conversations.

18. Some students benefit from seeing a visual representation of the sequence of assignments that they are required to do. A bar graph or chart with spaces to be filled in as students complete the various steps of a unit of study will make it easier for students to persist until they complete the big task.

19. Frequent praise and even more frequent encouragement will keep students on task far longer than brusque corrections will.

20. Careful and close monitoring of students as they work will allow you to catch problems when they are manageable. Small problems are not roadblocks to confidence building—big problems are, though.

21. Encourage students who are working independently to signal that they are having a problem and then to keep working until help arrives. Some teachers offer a desk sign that is red on one side to signal for help and green on another to signal that they are on the right track.

22. Some teachers do not answer oral questions when students are working independently except at set intervals. Used correctly, this technique encourages students to keep working because they know that their questions will be answered at a predictable time.

23. Offer students time to reflect at the end of a lesson. Have them write responses first and then encourage them to share what went right and what caused stress during an assignment. Sharing the results of their metacognition can be a powerful way for students to learn how other students overcome their learning problems.

24. Often older students who have mastered the material current students may find difficult can be helpful resources. They can offer quick, informal advice and encouragement from a student’s point of view.

25. Providing opportunities for students to look back on how far they have come in their learning--to review their past success—allows students to see the big picture of what they have already accomplished and encourages them to continue.

26. Be sure to offer a sufficient amount of appropriate practice before moving on to the next topic of study.

27. Offer a variety of different activities to review material. At the end of each class, when you provide a quick review of the day’s lesson, use a variety of different activities that appeal to the various learning styles among your students.

28. Work with your students to focus on their strengths. Once they know what they are doing right, what individual study techniques work well for them, then students will be able to use those techniques and strengths to work quickly and efficiently.

The Self-fulfilling Prophecy and Your Students: "I Knew You Could Do It!"

Although most teachers are aware of their responsibility to serve as role models, counselors, and advocates, we tend to underestimate the effect that we can have on our students. The reasons for this lie in the daily struggles that happen in classrooms everywhere. We work in a formidable flux of constant decisions, difficult demands, and hard-to-manage problems. With all of these facing us as soon as the bell rings, it's not always easy to remember that your attitude about your students can really change everything.

You have enormous power over the lives of your students. In fact, you can make the children in your classroom into successful students or you can make those same children into failures. Your beliefs about your students create this power in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The self-fulfilling prophecy begins with the expectations you have about your students. These expectations are your unconscious as well as your conscious attitudes about your students’ ability to succeed. You constantly communicate those expectations to your students in many subtle ways such as though your body language, the assignments you make, the language you use, and how much time you spend with individual students.

Because humans tend to behave as they are treated, your students will react to the way that you communicate those expectations to them. If you think highly of your students, they will tend to behave better for you than for the teachers who obviously do not enjoy being with them. If you act with a calm assurance that conveys your belief that the students in your class are capable of good behavior and academic accomplishments then your students are highly likely to behave well and strive for success.

If you doubt this power, consider the alternative. Why would students struggle to learn, to behave, to come to school without a caring adult who appears glad to see them succeed? For some students, a teacher is their only lifeline.

How can you use your expectations to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that can create a classroom climate for success? Every day, you can pass along transmit your belief in the abilities of your students in a variety of ways.

• Start with assignments that your students can achieve with ease. Success builds upon itself. When students see that they can accomplish what you ask of them, they will want to continue that success.
• Celebrate often with your students. After all, their successes are your successes.You do not have to dedicate lots of time to formal celebrations. A simple posting or display of good news, a class signal that allows classmates to acknowledge each other in positive way, or a quiet word with individual students will all establish a positive tone.
• Be as consistent and as fair as you possibly can. Students of all ages are quick to react negatively when they detect even a small hint of suspected unfairness. They will shut down quickly when this happens.
• Post motivational signs, mottoes, and other messages to encourage students to give their best effort.
• Reward effort as well as achievement. It is important to make sure your students see the link between success and effort.
• Create an risk-free environment in which students can risk trying new things without fear of failure or ridicule.
• Tell your students about your confidence in their ability to succeed. Tell them this over and over.
•  Teach your students how to set measurable goals and how to achieve them. Model this for students.  Set goals as a class and have students set small daily or weekly goals until it is a habit and part of the culture of your classroom.
• At the end of class ask students to share what they have learned. Often, they are not aware of how much they have really actually achieved until they have the opportunity to reflect.
• We all know that open-ended questions and assignments can serve as sparks to deepen critical thinking skills. They can also serve to motivate students to work hard because of their intrinsic interest and risk-free nature. Open-ended questions and assignments are a respectful way to demonstrate your faith in your students' ability to tackle tough work.
• Teach your students how to handle the failures that everyone experiences from time to time. Help them understand that they can learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes.
• Formative assessments can be helpful tools for those teachers who want to empower their students to believe in themselves. Use a variety of assessments to help students evaluate their progress and determine what they need to accomplish to finish assignments.

  

Three Classroom Problems...Three Solutions

One thing is certain: to be a good teacher, you have to be able to solve porblems quickly and with confidence. While most of us are very good at solving serious problems such as covering  massive amounts of curriculum and convincing a roomful of students that we really do have their best interests at heart, sometimes it's the small problems that can be energy zappers. Perhaps the suggestions offered here can help!

Problem 1: Heavy Backpacks Blocking the Aisles

Your school does not have a policy concerning student backpacks. Your students carry around all of their school belongings in backpacks that sometimes seem to weigh more than they do, and their backpacks block the aisles in your class.

SUGGESTIONS

This is a problem with two parts that you must handle separately. First, deal with the weight of the backpacks. Then, tackle the issue of the obstructions and disruptions in your class.

Backpack Weight

• This situation certainly requires collaboration with other teachers. When you speak with colleagues, suggest that you stagger homework deadlines so that students can leave some of their belongings in their locker, in the classroom, or at home.

• Talk to your students to let them know how concerned you are about their health and their stress level. Ask for their suggestions on how to solve the problem.

• Consider involving parents in finding solutions.

• Find out why students feel the need to carry so much. Do they need more time to go to their locker? Do they need advice on how to manage their materials?

Obstructions and Disruptions in Your Class

• When students have backpacks in class, expect them to place their backpack under their desk or as close to them as possible in order to leave a safe aisle.

• Take a team approach to keeping backpacks stowed safely. If they are involved in creating the solution, students will be able to police themselves and each other. Working together on the problem will increase the chances of successful resolution.

• See if you can provide a safe place for students to keep their backpacks other than near their desks.

• Teach students that it is disruptive to constantly search for materials in their backpack during class. Encourage them to keep their belongings as organized as possible in order to reduce search time.

Problem 2: Lost Papers

 

Problem: You hand back a set of homework papers and notice that some of your students do not have their papers. You tell them that you never received their work. They, in turn, assure you that they did the work, turned it in on time, and you must have lost it.

SUGGESTIONS

• Be very organized about how you manage student papers. By appearing very organized, you will prevent many false accusations because students will not think that they can take advantage of your disorganization.

• Grade papers and hand them back as quickly as you can. The longer you delay in returning papers, the harder it is to keep track of them.

• If you use an in-basket for students to hand in their work as they finish it, be sure to move their papers to a labeled folder before the next class can add theirs to the stack.

• If you are unable to check a set of papers within a day or two, at least check to make sure all students have turned in work. This will preclude any surprises for students who are expecting to receive graded papers.

• Do not be absolute in denying your guilt. Instead, try to solve the problem by first asking students with missing papers to check their own notebooks or lockers to see if they could have taken them from the room accidentally. If the papers do not turn up, then offer the students more time to redo the work and turn it in.

Problem 3: Students Without Supplies or Materials

 

Problem: Some of your students have problems keeping up with their materials. They come to class without pencils, pens, papers, or books. You find yourself growing increasingly frustrated as you wait for students to borrow the necessary tools to do their work, wasting valuable instructional time.

SUGGESTIONS

Off-task behavior and discipline problems are just two of the things that can go wrong when students come to class unprepared. Keeping extra supplies on hand will help you avoid many problems. You should implement a system that works for you and your students—one where students can settle quickly to work without fuss. You can do this without having to spend a fortune of your own.

Try to have extra textbooks on hand to lend to students if they forget theirs. When you lend a book to a student, make sure the student writes his or her name on the board or another safe place so you have a record of where the books are. You could also assign a responsible student to be in charge of issuing and collecting borrowed texts. Other teachers have found that expecting students to provide collateral is also effective.

If missing pens or pencils are a problem, set up a system where students can borrow from a shared bank of supplies. Here’s how:

Step 1: Select one or two students to be in charge of the supplies bank.

Step 2: Ask every student to donate a new pen or pencil.

Step 3: Mark the pens and pencils with a number.

Step 4: When students need to borrow a pen or pencil, the students who are

in charge of the bank can record the number and the name of the student who borrowed it.

Step 5: The students who distribute the supplies are also the ones who should remind the borrowers to return them at the end of class.