Teaching Secrets: Students Behave When Teachers Engage

Anthony Cody

· Post a short list of clear, unambiguous rules and
enforce them consistently. This is much harder to do than it sounds, and it took me many years to master.

·  Phone parents early in the year, with positive news if at all possible. Then the first phone call would not be one from me complaining about their child's behavior.

· Balance a negative phone call with a positive one.

·  Keep a record of student behavior, along with any
referrals to the office, so that the problems I had with a few students were clearly documented. I kept a record of phone calls home in the same book.

·   How easy it is to get into entertaining but fruitless
dialogues with students when I was trying to enforce rules. It took me a while, but eventually I learned the best method was to give a warning or consequence clearly, and allow for discussion only after  class.

·   It is important for students to understand that I cared
about their well-being, and that I was on their side. This was done through caring communication and showing an interest in them as  individuals by giving attention to their interests and abilities. And also through developing assignments that gave them more than one way
to demonstrate their knowledge.

·
*   I began to think about the main points I was trying to get across and looked for engaging ways to make those main points stick. Then I made my tests reflect those main points and found the students did much better.

· I also looked for different ways for students to demonstrate their understanding through more creative projects, and I found the students became even more engaged.

The secret to behavior management is really about having the students fully engaged in the learning process, and it involves more than just rules and office referrals. After all, the whole point of getting the class to focus is to do some meaningful work-to reach new understandings, to create new expressions of their knowledge, and to build new skills. But we have to know how to manage our teacher-student relationships in order to get there.