A Few Classroom Management Tips for the High Strung Classroom by Lamar Johnson

Introduction

As an international educator who has worked in a few different classroom environments, I find it extremely valuable to document and share some management strategies that work. The day before yesterday I worked in an 8^th grade classroom at a KIPP school in Houston for 2 years. Following that I worked between Cameroon and South Africa for 20 months and today I am in a 4^th grade classroom back at another Charter School. The common thread between all 3 different environments is high administrative and teacher turnover and high strung, disengaged, moody and academically low performing students. To couple with this, these children are often the best their parents have to offer, and for motley of different reasons, the parents are just as - if not more - disengaged in the process of schooling than their children. The question for teachers who have landed in a similar environment, either at the beginning of the year - or worse midyear - is how one gets these students to behave, stay motivated, and work hard on a consistent basis and without the help of their parents? How does one do this when knee deep in a climate rife with inconsistency and change? What are some strategies and systems that a teacher can use to support a culture of behaving, learning and achieving in the classroom? Even more, how can you do it after other teachers and parents, both because of their own personal limitations and not, have created a climate which is not conducive for learning? As an educator there are a few methods I have found which work. The purpose of this short read is to share those methods with the reader. However, before I can do that I would just like to offer a little insight into what these children bring into your classroom before you even get there.

James Baldwin said it best, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” No matter what stage you get a child in, if he/she is a child, with the right sort of environment he/she is able to be conditioned. However, oftentimes when attempting to socialize students you the teacher are at a disadvantage; oftentimes hindrances that you have no control over. Maybe the classroom you are teaching has had two or three different teachers, several failed systems which leaves the class disgruntled, distrusting, and resentful. Even more, each day you are working with students who suffer from lack of sleep, broken promises, malnutrition, temperamental and inconsistent parenting, and other students who tick them off. This of course does not even account for the students who are doped up on, coming down off of, or without meds. When you get to the students and when the students get to you they are usually restless, frustrated, hungry, impulsive, and resistant. In short, chaos meets you at the door and there has to be something tangible and systematic that gets them out of the funk and into the groove each day; both inside and outside the classroom. Every book these days will tell you that classroom culture is the answer, but what does it look like in practice?

When the culture for how to behave in your school is not strong, the consequences, accountability and rewards for hard work must begin and stop with you as an individual teacher. It has worked best for me when it is both incremental and goal oriented. In a way, your classroom is your child’s home and you are the parent. When they bring good academic and conduct grades to the table, there should be acknowledgement and maybe even rewards. Every time they fall short academically and in character, and you are made aware, there needs to be feedback and shared accountability. When the problems persist there should be realistic and productive consequences. How does one do this efficiently, is the subject of the next few paragraphs. In particular, I have found that collaborative learning, coupled with time consciousness and an interesting dose of positive reinforcement gets the job done.

Without collaborative learning, the reality is that a teacher is left to deal with each individual student, each failure to get started and each reaction to disruption. One has to counter each student’s urge to disrupt, clarify each student’s misunderstanding of instruction, and each student’s impulse to get frustrated because of it all. For some this is not a problem, but for me a meticulous person by nature, this is a disaster. With collective work comes collective responsibility. Students when trained to do so, can be just as, if not more, effective in holding one another accountable; especially when they are highly motivated. In my classroom two very important but simple factors serve to facilitate this motivation; daily table points for the collective and a weekly All Star team for each individual. Both table winners and the All Star Team are recipients of student centered rewards and consequences. From the moment students walk in the door, my attempt is to direct their attention away from what they are dealing with and towards what is expected. The reward is simple. Daily table champs are the proud recipients of a jar of Goldfish or Fruit snacks (crack to 4^th graders) which they split. The challengers get to praise and are rewarded for doing so correctly and enthusiastically. Weekly All Stars are the honored heirs of something as simple as a small lunch party with a cup of juice, donuts, music and some calm and mentally challenging board games. In this way organized and structure fun becomes the result of organized and structured behavior. It is important to note that this is easier said than done.

Table Champs, Collective Work and Responsibility and Instructional and Behavioral Expectations

I have to be frank. Having students work in groups can be absolutely frustrating. Students by nature are moody, ill-equipped to deal with each other’s issues and are quick to abandon a fellow student in need. Yet if we think about it, you as a teacher are very much the same way. The only difference is you have been trained and you have learned how to take advantage of teachable moments. Why not choose your groups carefully and delegate this same training to your students in a friendly and relatable way?

The table incentives give them the desire to do it and with your expertise they will have the skills to accomplish this feat together. For instance when Mya has been redirected and is angry and wants to sabotage the group, or D’ Anthony is distracted, or Shelldrix wants to get up and walk around, why not teach the class how to nicely redirect such behaviors and then reward groups when it is done effectively. For example, when D’ Anthony and others are turned around talking, I have taught the class to say verbatim and with the correct tone, “Excuse me D’Anthony we would really appreciate it if you would start with your heading on your paper so we can get some table points.” The majority of the time D’Anthony responds because the redirection is comprehensive. The “excuse me” is polite (when said appropriately and I have had to model this) and the “I would appreciate it if you would” is personal. The “put your heading on your paper” is task oriented, while the “so we can get some table points” is motivating. One not so productive alternative is when the teacher, whom is consumed with an individual issue across the room or a student outside of his group decides to broadcast D’ Anthony’s failure to stay on task. Most times D’Anthony is left feeling attacked, vulnerable and embarrassed. He will then feel apt to respond aggressively, often times loudly, thus sending other students in a downward spiral. Put simply, redirecting sensitive students across the classroom can be counter-productive. However, when done collectively and by his immediate peers each student feels empowered as an individual and when you reward them they feel compensated as a collective. In this way, students learn how to productively assist you and each other in holding one another accountable for the desired academic and behavioral expectations.

In no way is the ideal always the reality. In fact, we learn that in here, it takes consistency, hard work, continuous reflection and at times some rearranging to get things done right. A few students may, depending on the day, need to start outside of the group and you work them slowly back in. The point here is the more energy you put into teaching and training students how to treat each other in their groups in the beginning, the more time you open up for focusing on others issues, like how to get students to complete academic and behavioral expectations in a timely manner.

Time Consciousness, the Bell and Creating a Climate of Urgency

When the beat changes so does the dance is an African proverb that has ring true to me since I entered the door of education. If students are allowed to take their time, or feel no sense of urgency they will, as The Great Somebody poem says, spend time wasting time. This is why time is always a looming factor in each activity.

Timed activities can be detrimental to student learning. When done incorrectly it can decrease self-esteem, promote sloppy rushed work, and force students to shut down and give up immediately. I have found that it is important to discuss time, not as a deadline, but as a reminder. During my first day in front of a class I pose a question about time, how it can be used to hurt them and how it can be used to help them. As they answer we discuss it and I encourage them to respect the timer. After this it is a matter of consistent reinforcement.

I will deliver instructions and after I have checked for understanding, I start the timer and move around the classroom. While moving around the classroom, I give frequent verbal reminders which match the tone of the activity (calm or a shout) and they are always informed by how long the activity is taking in reality. I always give shout outs for those groups who are making progress and encouragement for those who are a little behind. Oftentimes I make my way back to the timer to reduce the time left or to add time before the initial ring. For my students who have to be accommodated I remind them that this is where they stop and this is what they should be doing. No matter where a student is, when the timer goes off, pencils are down, their right fist is in the air and I playfully and boisterously make my way back to the table point board as they track me for further instruction. Those tables that do so are rewarded with a point and because my bell has an extra-long ring function it provides me an opportunity to remind the groups to give me their attention. When I have 100% attention - and I make it an issue to encourage others until I get it - my instruction is often times a correction of some sort, a clarification, more work for those who are done, or even a reluctant “OOOk, I can give you 3 more minutes, but that’s it guys” even when I knew it would take them 10 minutes.

When additional time is not needed, and the activity requires writing I have even asked students to swap and have taught them how to give one another constructive feedback. For my Pre-K students it’s a smiley face and a small picture, for my 3-5^th graders its comments about handwriting, heading or use of space, while for my high school and college students it is about the content and is usually based on a rubric of some sort. As I learn my students I increase the expectations for how long it should take to get something done. We use time during transitions, discussions, placing our heading on our paper, packing, cleaning and lining up. The end result is rigor, continued momentum and a climate of urgency. In this way, your classroom culture sets the tone that in here time is managed, respected and used constructively and when done so it can increase performance.

Character Development, Personal Leadership and the All Stars

Many people have varying definitions of classroom culture. In the lines that follow classroom culture simply means how things work around here. As classroom culture is being set students are learning who they are and why they are in your classroom. They are being briefed on how they should treat and communicate with one another and how they are to going to go about getting what they need. When done effectively it creates the space for rigor, character development and academic excellence in your classroom. When done incorrectly or left to chance, you open the door for the culture of the streets to enter your classroom.

When the streets enters, and it will, every single day you will be consumed with steering aggression, stopping fights and petty arguments. At this rate, your classroom climate will be deduced to a nightmare; a proliferation of shouting, profanity, gossip, “yo mama jokes,” furniture moving, students yelling at one another and my personal favorite, chants to the lyrics of the most inappropriate songs of the day. It is my suggestion that you hit this head on and do it proactively, constructively and you treat it just as, if not more, important than anything else. It is crucial. I have found several approaches that have helped to make my classroom culture a force which works for me, rather than against me; character development lessons, class poems, daily shout outs and the All Star team.

Character development is quintessential to developing your classroom culture. Since our students come from varying home and classroom environments they have been socialized to respond to conflict in varying ways. As alluded to earlier, students enter your classroom each day with varying feelings, ideas, attitudes, impulses, habits which constitute their character. They are, with your help and guidance forming their outlook on their life, their role in it and how to navigate themselves through life. This is a reality not only for inner city schools, but for suburban schools, private schools and international schools alike. It just looks different. Sometimes school culture is ramped for your school, your school could be in its beginning stages or transition because of restructuring, either way school culture is not currently a priority; acquiring and keeping teachers and students is. At this time it becomes your responsibility to establish these norms for your students. Character development lessons are the perfect way to do so.

I have found that a teacher’s attitude toward character lessons works best when it is treated just like any other subject. A mission and vision is written or selected which works to counter the impeding culture and instill the culture you believe to be most important. Next, a yearly plan (or for the rest of the term you are there) and syllabus is deducted from that mission and vision and clear and concise objectives are written which lend to accomplishing each facet of that mission. A week ahead of time, engaging and culturally relevant lessons should be planned, with an agenda, list of needed materials, hook, and intro to new material. The lesson also needs a guided practice, independent practice and an exit ticket or assessment (with rubric) of some sort. The lesson itself should be carefully executed. Afterwards, students should receive feedback and work which includes visual, and at times audio visual products, and those that achieve rubric expectations should be posted for outside observation. Most important there should be post lesson reflections, lessons should be shared and the teacher should seek suggestions both from students and colleagues about how to improve the lesson going forward. These lessons are then updated, shared with others and catalogued for your next class. Also important, when you find that a student has used what you have suggested, I suggest you literally stop mid lesson, call for everyone’s attention, and give that student a shout out and a reward of some sort. This brings everyone’s attention to constructive use of the norm or value taught and helps to keep the climate positive. Unfortunately, character and the forces that shape and mold it are always moving about and so it is important to systematically counter it; using class poems also helps.

Hedonism in the US has opened the door for many interesting outlooks on life and the dissemination of these ideas is the topic of the media which saturates today’s children. For countless reasons many parents today, and in the past, are at a loss for how to compete with the values paraded when they aren’t looking. Consequently, it is downright foolish to think that students are going to come to you with the character traits, habits, ideas and feelings that you believe will make them successful in your classroom and in life generally, let alone expect each student to put them into practice. After all they are children, and children imitate. Another way to communicate the values you want them to imitate is through the class poem, class song or class chant. Students should uniformly recite it at minimum at the beginning and end of each day or period. Students or groups could also recite it for incentive points during moments of transition because when you leave these small moments open sometimes a negative culture will creep in. Currently I use the poem “A Great Somebody,” in the past I have used student created poems, or created some of my own inspired by a hip hop song, or localized song which is currently popular amongst the children. References to the poem are made when students fall short and they are redirected, in a consistent way and with a common language, toward how to become who or what they daily profess to be. The far reaching implications of this approach are many, but more immediately the class poem and its daily use serves to systematically and subversively inculcate the values you believe will make your student successful daily. The question becomes, how do you get students to buy in?

Shout outs is the most immediate way to do this. At the end of each day, during activities, or at the beginning of the following day I spend time giving students credit for promoting the values important to our classroom environment. Each time I take the time to explain 1) what the students did, 2) how it demonstrates growth for and him or her, 3) what they could have or used to do and 4) how their progress is contributing to the learning environment. I find ways to give even my most challenging students an opportunity to get the spotlight. In this way students get in the habit of hearing you say something positive and encouraging daily. Students also volunteer to give each other shout outs and it is shocking to hear a 4^th grader tease out another students work toward bettering his poor choices. At times when I spiral out of control and want to release them, a student will stop and remind me, wait Mr. Johnson “we did not do shout outs” or “don’t forget to announce the table champs.” Positive feedback is something that they are all waiting for and after implementing this in my classroom, I am finding that a day spent, no matter how rough, is always more palatable when it ends on a positive note. When character development and shouts out don’t seem to be enough, the All Star Team also works to promote great behavior.

Paychecks, the point card, and the pyramid are a few names that have been given to the system used by the school’s I have worked for which systematically tracks student behaviors. No matter the name, it is a daily tracker for homework, and several behavioral and academic expectations. At the end of the week teachers crank out a weekly percentage of how well the student has been doing and that weekly percentage is cashed in somehow. One school went as far as developing a store full of goods and the students would get an opportunity to visit it to purchase them with the credit they built up over several weeks of good behavior. My grade level went as far as taking our students to the movies, to the park and even linked it directly to who could attend the End of Year trip to Washington D.C. We also used it to deliver consequences as well. Students were made to reflect on their previous behaviors, write apology letters, and apply their shortcoming to a list of quotes about personal leadership. It was also important, we found, to give the students an opportunity to earn extra points.

This opportunity was called the Akoma, a notion based in the West African Adinkra tradition. The Akoma stands for patience and tolerance, and it is an extra point that a student may earn for demonstrating empathy and forbearance. Students file papers, clean littered classrooms, kindly assist with redirecting other students, make suggestions to lessons and give really genuine shout outs; all to earn Akoma. What begins for some students as an attempt to get back onto the All Star team becomes a lifestyle for students. They learn to control themselves, and work towards something they want. In short amounts of time, some of the most challenging students learn various ways to productively show leadership and focus on desired behaviors. Before long each student has learned a set of behaviors which steers them toward success in each individual teacher’s classroom. It is important to note that promises to children are sacred and that it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that constructive choices are always rewarded as promised. No excuses. My All Star celebrations have been as small as a walk around the block and a cup of juice during lunch. It has been as elaborate as a pizza, ice cream float field day. Also important, All Stars are physically separated somehow, each activity is structured organized fun and comes with a small speech to tie in why they are where they are and what could be needed going forward to keep them here. If not, the door is left for students to branch off and circulate silliness. In short, the All Star celebration is a moment of awakening for infrequent students and a moment of payment for those who work hard and are oftentimes overlooked.

At the end of the day, developing character should never be left to chance and character development lessons and incentives like shout outs and the All Star team is a great way help students make good choices a lifestyle. Each method is an attempt to focus students, teachers, grade levels or school wide attention on the competencies needed to reinforce the culture they support. If I was the school leader, I would put my school bus drivers through character development training and help them to design a way to ensure that students traveled to and from school with the values our school professed to be important.