There are numerous and endless strategies to managing a classroom in a positive and constructive way. These are the ones learned from books, coaches, professors, and mentors and the ones that work best for me. I'm Jennifer, a five-foot-one, type B, mouse of a teacher, and I've been teaching for eight years with great success. Each year, my students get high scores (dare I say the highest in the school, even in the history of a 100-year-old Catholic school). My students mostly enjoy my class, and even voted me favorite teacher for years in a row by every senior. I know that I value my students, treat them with respect, stay humble, and look for non-confrontational ways to resolve issues and bolster their self-images rather than tearing them down. I hope these strategies help new teachers and open discussions among veterans. 

1. Proximity

Just being near a student is enough to dissuade them from acting up. This tip is also the reason corralling, walking around the classroom, is so effective! The scariest thing for a student is to simply walk up to them.

2. Eye contact

Just keeping your eyes open and wandering is enough to prevent almost any behavioral problem. If you are with a student, just keep glancing up and around as you help the student. I never take my eyes off my classroom.   

3. Corralling

Stay on the perimeter of the class and constantly change your proximity so that no one is left isolated or free to do what they want. This also works as camouflage if you're trying to watch a particular student without them knowing.

4. Hand gestures

Just circling your hands to hurry up and using the stop gesture are free tools to the knowing teacher to signal to the student without ever saying a word.

5. Body language

Body language can be anything from crossing your arms and changing your position to adjusting your facial expression and stance. Students who suffer abuse at home are hyperaware of body language and gestures, so you may want to be careful using this one as it could trigger unpleasant experiences.

6. Tone of voice

Every single student is a kid, and they know that tone when they hear it. I simply lower my voice and speak slowly and firmly with meaning. As a teacher, you always want to avoid yelling, and I mean it. It is beneath you, and it is not necessary. You should always avoid showing extreme emotions as this is a tell for students who want to push your buttons. It is best to appear as if you do not care and this is all part of the job. 

7. Plan 

First, a well-planned and engaging lesson will prevent almost all bad behaviors. Second, you can plan for behavior. When do students exhibit bad behavior in your lessons? Is it when you're transitioning, and they are turning to a new page in their text? Is it when they are finished early and have nothing to do, or, is it when you give them a certain assignment? As teachers, we have that foresight and instinct for trouble, and when we use that in our lesson planning, we can prevent a lot of bad behaviors. 

8. Praise

This is one of my favorites, and it works wonders! Some students like being praised and others are embarrassed by it, so by careful when including a student's name when praising. So the way this work is when you see the first student exhibiting a behavior that is difficult to get out of the class as a whole, compliment them! Walk over to them, and say, "I love...." I love that you came in quietly and started working immediately. The dominoes will begin to fall, and voila! You have a quiet, fast-at-work class, and I am not kidding. This is real stuff, tried and true. Go praise, girl!  (and guys!)

9. Rewards 

This one is tricky because when one student gets a reward, others may get upset, so you never want to be too heavy-handed with rewards or to have an unclear system of rewarding some students and not others. I've had "Student of the Week" back fire, and I did not see that coming and never had anything but good-hearted intentions as this required two hours of writing personal notes and printing these expensive colored half-page cards every single week. Classroom management should never be time-consuming and shouldn't cost you money, either, and I'm not kidding. Please, learn from my mistakes. 

10. Positive attention

Again, some students like attention and some do not, so find what positive means for each student. It may be in front of the class, or it may be more personal. I once cracked a difficult nut just by reading his poem, and I have to say, I was just making conversation. I was also the English teacher, so I knew I had to care. I'm so glad that I did that, and my advice is to know when your heart is slipping and correct that! ASAP! 

By the way, and this could save you in certain situations, I once had a really bad student, and he was bad, and was not with us for very long as he was removed from the school due to safety issues, but when he showed signs of trouble, I would talk to him like he was good and that this was understood and assumed about him. "Hey, thanks for [insert one thing he didn't do wrong]." "I think you're the best question answerer I've ever seen." Etc. Nobody always does bad things, you know. Maybe they're quiet; maybe they like attention and answer questions a lot. Whatever it is, if you can change the way they see themselves or reinforce the good things they do, those things will grow and can become their self-image and their behavior, even if temporarily. As teachers, we should never label students as bad, unless it's for safety, of course, because they haven't finished developing and won't for a long time.

11. Offer a choice

You don't always have to write students up as this looks badly on you rather then the students. Give them a choice instead. You can do this, this, and this (get greedy with it), or we can do this. It's just another step between you and a potentially insane phone call. 

12. Change seating arrangements

While this is not advised, it does make us feel better sometimes. I personally could never find the time to rearrange the whole class; however, Microsoft Teams has a new feature that arranges them for you based on their reading scores which come from another new feature in Teams where students read aloud, AI grades them, and gives them a Lexile score. How cool is that? If you can find a way to seat students by Lexile, in boy/girl groups, that is ideal seating. 

13. Provide a quiet space

If you have an upset student, they may just need some time alone and away from judgmental eyes. If you can catch that before any confrontation between them and you, that would be desirable. I once had an awesome $20 pink hanging tent with a little dream catcher, foe chandelier, and a big fuzzy chair that my students loved. They could see the class, but the class couldn't see them. So, the experience was all-around restorative, I think, to sit out for a second, and rewarded students for reading and reflecting. 

14. Involve the student 

Just keeping a student busy is enough to prevent bad behaviors. Last year, before this student was removed from the school - I would have him click through slides for me. I knew he loved answering questions, and I would always give him a few to answer. It was like he was either a superstar student or outlaw rodeo star, and I had a choice to make. I love displaying a student's Google doc while I give notes for the class to record. The student types what I say, while the class records what they type. I also like to make a student click through my presentations for me, and they love it and take turns and respect each other's turn. 

15. Offer a warning (direct and indirect)

You want to give chances. The warning is ubiquitous; we all do it. However, you want to avoid over warning and empty threats. Also, you can warn verbally and non-verbally. Just looking at a student can be a warning. Dropping your mouth in disdain for a second can be a warning and so can widening your eyes or double blinking. 

16. Check-ins

Instead of writing students up when they're having a bad day, do a check-in. We started doing this during Covid and, for some, it really took on a life of its own. I know my students like doing check-ins, and classroomscreen.com has a poll feature with all the faces already made up for you.

17. One-on-one time

Giving a student special one-on-one time is sometimes really effective. You don't want to reward students for acting out, but meeting with a student and talking to them about what you're seeing can be so personal and almost flattering that the student agrees with you and vows to no longer get on your nerves, essentially. This cannot be done around their friends or anywhere near them or where they are visible, though. We will always lose to the possibility of social extinction. 

18. Active listening

Again, keeping students busy is always a win. Students love to be engaged. They love to be involved. They dream of responsibilities and independence like Americans during British occupation. They long to color code their texts, to jot their thoughts and notes down, and to act like a college student. Using the Cornell Note-taking Strategy and teaching students annotation - what good readers do but visually - is an awesome way to get students involved and less chatty. It will also help them remember what you said.

19. Empathy

First, I don't think anyone who works with students should ever take on the big, bad, bully mentality where you go around acting like your going to beat someone up if they mess with you, and you're just holding yourself back all the time from teaching people a lesson. They're kids, and we're the adults. We're supposed to be strong enough to handle their worst day and be there for them when they aren't making good decisions because that's part of growing up. We should never label them or treat them as if they are "bad." When you've done that, you've lost the fight altogether without even trying. Second, if you are rigid and too strict, this can cause more problems in your class than vice versa. 

20. Retraining

Instead of writing a student up, which comes with parent phone calls and could potentially back fire on you somehow, try retraining. I start every year with fun procedure games. First, for getting attention, I tell everyone to look away and "give me their eyes" when I say the cue. I tell them to look at me like they really mean it, and we make it crisp and look good as a class. They take pride in their whip. Second, I might say everyone wiggle or look at their partner and talk or sing and dance or whatever and to listen for the cue. We go through the process again. Training is fun and kind of silly. You can also make a worksheet or activity they can do for breaking each specific rule. I made a classroom rules self-test for students to see just how well they know the rules and what they mean. 

21. Elevate your procedures

If you have a procedure that isn't working, you can double down, enhance it, or you can change it to a more engaging one. To enhance a procedure, try making it more kinesthetic, more auditory, or more visual. For example, you could change "class, class, class" to "If you hear my voice, clap once...If you hear my voice stomp twice, and if you hear my voice shout, "I'm ready!" to make the procedure more engaging.  To double down, you can add posters to your walls with steps and reminders. You can practice the routine or make it a competition between classes or amongst the students within a class. You can even make behavior a competition between teacher and students. For example, you keep a T-chart on the board with the class having one side and the teacher having the other side. On the teacher's side, you give a check when the class acts up or gets too loud or someone does this or that. On the class's side, you give them a check when they do something good on their own. You can even do a fun chant every time a side gets a mark. 

22. Clear expectations

There's always the challenge of being honest with ourselves when the problem is us. I had an award-winning principal who said if a class was chatty, it was because we hadn't trained them well enough, and he was right. I also had an excellent instructional coach who taught me to think like this: I can make the horse drink the water. This has really helped me to solve a lot of problems that it turns out I was able to solve on my own. We all know there is no one who is going to come and save us from our own classes, either. 

23. Positive classroom culture

Do you have a positive classroom culture or are students constantly making negative jokes, treating each other with disrespect, and are they bickering all the time? Sometimes, going about things in a different way is all it takes. Try doing a happy student or growth mindset challenge for your class. Give rewards to people who complete all of the challenges like pick up someone else's trash or read a book, help a partner, compliment and forgive someone. Check out mine here.

24. Consistent consequences

One year, I was feeling wishy washy about my speak-with-permission rule, and I didn't feel like correcting this sweet, well-mannered student for talking out of turn. From then on out, it was chaos for a while, and I had a lot of backpedaling to do. So the lesson here is, you have to be consistent with your consequences like a machine or a police camera that records people speeding without emotions. Hand those think sheets out, use those signals, but make sure you handle problem behaviors because silence and inaction speak louder than words, especially for teachers. 

25. Use a positive think sheet

I am the queen of think sheets. I love them because they put one more step between me and writing students up. I usually have at least five with varying levels of difficulty and now growth mindset challenges with road maps and bingo. I don't want to just punish students; I want to help them grow and overcome their problems, so they don't have to in the future, on their own. I want to create a classroom culture of voluntary goodwill and cheerfulness. Think sheets make me happy because students record all of the information for me which Google Forms automatically sends to Sheets to be easily sorted for parent-teacher conferences and checked for accuracy by me. Lastly, I use positive think sheets to set the tone for me. We don't always feel so positive when someone breaks a rule, but my think sheets put my best foot forward. 

I hope you found this blog helpful! If I missed anything or you found something useful, I would love to hear your thoughts on my Pinterest or social media as Google Sites does not yet have comment features : ) Stay positive! Stay groovy! 

Books:

Classroom Management: A Guide to Effective Practices by James P. Comer and Carol D. Haynes

Positive Classroom Management by Marilee Hoppock

Teaching with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and Foster Cline

The 55 Essential Rules by Ron Clark

The First Day of School by Harry Wong and Rosemary T. Wong

The Responsive Classroom by Robert W. Fried

Toolkit for Teachers by Fred Jones

What Great Teachers Do Differently 

Websites and Articles:

• The American Psychological Association (APA): https://www.apa.org/

• Education Week: https://www.edweek.org/

• Edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/

• The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP): https://www.naspschools.org/