As we quickly approach the holidays, if you’re still going strong with your classroom management, well done! The first part of the semester was critical to classroom management success, and now the goal is to maintain that momentum throughout the year.

The student teacher I mentored last year has her own classroom now, and she worked hard to start the year off right. We talked recently about how to keep her classes running smoothly.

I’ve been blessed with so many great mentors and some great professional development over the years, so I’m borrowing from that wealth of experience to identify three central practices that I’m confident will see her through. I call them my smooth-sailing standards.

1. ENGAGE—Hook students in

My first standard comes from my own student-teaching principal. He told me the first day, “Keep them busy!” He was a true believer in the, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” philosophy. He was right, but I’ve adjusted that truism somewhat for myself. I try to keep them engaged. Now I know that it’s a bit Pollyanna to think my students are going to find everything I teach intrinsically motivating, but I continually try to hook them in.

This last week we’ve been working on persuasive writing format using evidence from a specific text. To keep the content interesting I’ve been using Smithsonian's Tween Tribune online. The articles are current, the reading level is controlled, and the content is geared to the age group of my students. Now persuasive writing is challenging, and using someone else’s ideas as evidence is a struggle for my students. To make it more personal I chose an article about a teenager who was saved by Siri, the disembodied voice that lives in today’s iPhone. I had my students do a deep reading of the article. Next they wrote a friendly letter to their parents requesting a new phone, using facts from the article as convincing evidence. They were motivated! I made the general disclaimer that I am not advocating their parents shell out the money to buy a new phone, but I know that a few kids printed out a copy on the outside chance that it just might work! I might be in a bit of trouble with a few parents, but my students were all in. They experienced firsthand the real-life value of persuasive writing. With my students so engaged, classroom management was simply not an issue. It was a win-win for all of us.

2. EMPOWER—Give them the tools to be successful

My next smooth-sailing strategy is to provide the tools. Student frustration is one of the biggest triggers for misbehavior. We all know that if a student has to choose between being stupid and being bad, they’ll go for bad every time. We can defuse many explosions by doing a good job of scaffolding skills so that our kids can be successful. I learned this relatively early on in my career. I was teaching the essay structure to seventh graders, and it was HARD. They didn’t get it, and they didn’t like it. Students were talking instead of writing, and I spent more time patrolling behavior than instructing. We spent two weeks plowing through the process, and when I squandered my weekend reading the resulting writing, I wanted to cry. Most of the essays were below par. I told them what to do; why can’t they do it? I asked myself. After a bit of ranting, I stepped back and looked at their papers again. These kids had worked hard. They wanted to be successful. Somehow I had not communicated to them what a successful essay should look like.

The next time around I started with a rubric and models. Together we walked through each element of good writing and identified it in real student papers. In one class period, my students understood what proficient writing looked like. The next essay writing process was so much easier, and every student completed a proficient paper. These were the same kids, but they knew what I expected them to do and had the tools to do it. What a difference! What’s more, the kids were on task during class time, and I was able to work with struggling individuals rather than shushing and reprimanding. The sails were full, and we were making progress.

3. ENCOURAGE—Build confidence by staying positive

I like to think of my final smooth sailing standard as my Pinocchio principle. Remember when Jiminy Cricket sang to Pinocchio about how if you just believe, it will be so? Well there is a bit of truth in that. I was reminded of Robert Rosenthal’s 1964 educational experiment regarding teacher expectations when I read a recent NPR blog^[1]. In the original study, Rosenthal gave students a standard IQ test, but told teachers that the test could predict which students had an innate potential for dramatic growth in their intelligence. Next the researchers randomly chose average students and told the teachers that these students were destined for great growth. And the teachers believed. The result was that these average students made exceptional gains that year. The effect is not actually dependent on wishing on stars or some sort of mental telepathy. The positive results are tied to behavior—teacher behavior that is guided by expectations.

My mentor teacher taught me a low-tech strategy that helped me develop feedback behaviors that support student success. She put a wide rubber band around her wrist. Every time she made a negative comment to a student or class, she drew a short line on the band. When she made a positive comment, she crossed one of the lines to create a + sign. This method created a kinesthetic and visual reminder for her to maintain a positive ratio for her student interactions. Research studying the effect of feedback shows that a ratio of 3-1 to 5-1 of positive to negative feedback is the most effective for success. Marking a rubber band in real time helped us both stay aware and responsible for our feedback. It’s also important to affirm student effort more than success. If a student believes he’s brilliant, that first failure might derail him. If he believes he’s a hard worker, that failure can become a motivator. Just like Pinocchio, my students want to do well; believing in them can help them do just that.

The result of these three standards is smooth sailing in classroom management. Kids who feel successful and are successful behave better. So adjust your boom in the windward direction and settle in for some smooth sailing this year.

 ^[1] Spiegel, Alix. "Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform." NPR Health Blog (2012).

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