First, is it one student or a group of students behaving this way? I would be willing to bet that if it is a whole group of students, either they are simply trying to push your buttons and are ganged up together, or one student started it and the others are simply following the same path (in which case, you need to figure out who started it because that’s where the discipline problem started). 

Now, assuming you want to know how to eliminate the problem rather than just responding to the problem, here are some steps to take:

Reflect Before Reacting 

Before addressing an ongoing behavior such as verbal wisecracks, sit down in that student’s seat after class is out and reflect. Survey the classroom from the student’s perspective, know who is sitting where, think about what it is you know about the student’s home life and any other factors that impact the student’s life: subject matter, difficulty level, any special needs, any problems with friends, girl problems, boy problems, puberty, parental issues, poverty level, etc.

Now think about – and write down – the details of the situation in question. What was going on? What happened in the classroom directly prior to the behavior? Many times you can follow the behavior backwards and see a root cause.

Possible Behavior Triggers 

A behavior trigger is something that causes a behavior to occur. This might be emotional stress (parents splitting up, verbal/physical abuse at home, bullying), academic stress (not comprehending the subject, difficulty keeping up in class, special needs) or a more tangible cause (being told an answer was wrong in front of the class, being laughed at for academic efforts by other students).

Identifying the possible behavior triggers for a student who is directing wise cracks at a teacher is an important first step towards eliminating the issue. My guess without knowing more about the situation, is that a student who is talking back to a teacher is either under academic stress (probably having a hard time keeping up) or is under some kind of emotional stress.

Having a better idea of what is triggering the behavior will give you a place to start helping the student.

How To Respond?

Solving the underlying problem is the hard part. Responding to the wisecracks is often the easy part. Initially, simply ignore the comments. They are likely meant to get you riled up, so not responding is likely to help in the long run (although it may also cause them to get worse before better, see ignoring the behavior). 

If the comments include swear words, here is an idea for how to deal with cursing in the classroom.

The bottom line: you are the adult, so use self-control and respond with maturity and restraint. Then, figure out what is causing the behavior and work to fix the underlying problems because all behavior has some sort of trigger. That does not make the behavior correct, but simply disciplining for a behavior will not eliminate the behavior if you are not also working to correct the trigger. 

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1. The Use of Hands in Classroom Management
2. Reflection is the Best Remedy
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The Lesson: Follow up on what you say, always and without fail. This will give you leverage for obedience later in the year.

The Story: (and I apologize, because I will not be able to do it justice as it has been many years since I heard this story).

There was one boy in her class, you know the type, the one who always knew how to push her buttons no matter what. Well, it was almost lunchtime, so she was sending the students to the coat closet to retrieve their lunches 2 at a time. Each time, there was a commotion in the closet and she soon realized it was because this kid was in the closet, waiting for his classmates to open the door, just to scare them.

At this point, most of the class had their lunches, so it was her turn to be the surprise. She walked calmly to the back of the room, opened the closet door and was greeted by the student who assumed he was going to surprise yet another student. Well he was the one who received the surprise as the teacher simply told him to stay in the closet and closed the door. 

The class resumed calm quickly at this point and the young teacher promptly forgot about the student in the closet. She lined an obedient class up for lunch, went down to the lunch room, took the class out for recess afterwards and went back to the classroom for afternoon classes when she suddenly remembered, and was horrified. 

She quickly retrieved her student, who was waiting, scared, in the closet still, got someone to cover her class quick and marched the student down to her principals office. (keep in mind this was probably 20 years ago but still not so long ago that parents wouldn’t be a problem and the teacher was sure her short career in teaching was now over.)

She told the student to wait outside the office while she went in and explained what happened, mortified and apologetic. The principal brought the student in, asked him what he had done to deserve his punishment, got a promise that he would not act up again and then went to the kitchen to find him some lunch.

After school was over for the day, the teacher sat in the coat closet with the door closed and cried. She kept her job and never again forgot about any student. But, as she told us, she knew that if she ever threatened to put a student in the closet for misbehaving, the student would believe her because she had done it once!

By following through on consequences, students will learn to believe you, but please, don’t lock anyone in a closet!

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1. Difficulty with academics.
Students will often act up if they are struggling academically. Whether the student is truly behind the rest of the class or simply feeling stressed by the work load, the result is often disruptive to the teacher and class.
Solution: provide more one-on-one time with this student or provide additional help through peer tutors, partner lessons, additional examples, etc.

2. I’m Bored!!
Many students who are ahead of the pack are bored and will act up. This can often be confused with students who are struggling because bored students will often refuse to do their work or act up while doing their work. 

Solution: provide students with a packet of challenge work that they can do if they complete their work early – make it fun work, not busy work, and allow students to choose activities that inspire them.

3. I am not loved

Students who live in situations where they are unloved or not attended to will often act up because they have learned that acting out provides attention. How sad is it that students will act up for attention? When negative attention is an improvement, we know that this is just a student who needs to be loved. 

Solution: Don’t give up on this student! Love him or her! Find ways to make each individual student feel like he or she is the most important student to you. Make this your goal.

4. I don’t understand the expectations ???

While it should not be common, unfortunately many times the reason students act out is because the expectations (rules/consequences/rewards) are not clear. Stating them, writing them down and correcting students for acting out is not enough to provide clear expectations. 

Solution: Spent time throughout the ENTIRE school year modeling proper behavior and having students practice proper behavior solely for the purpose of learning proper behavior.

Need more ideas? Check out Common Behavior Problems and Solutions for specific ideas.

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I may be out of line here, but in my opinion, it’s time to break free from the expectations that a class will be the same as they were last year, or that they are “all tough” in a certain grade. In fact, students live up to expectations and if you expect them to be bad, they will. If they perceive the expectation, they will fulfill it as well, even if you don’t actually expect it. (this means you’re likely suffering from last year’s teacher’s bad management habits)

So you have the worst class, so the entire grade is a nightmare, ok. Now we move on. If it is 5th grade, you can likely have this conversation with them to elicit change. Otherwise it’s time for a radical shift in your own thoughts/attitudes and methodologies. 

Troubled students may still act out, but it’s time to give them all the opportunity to reign in their behavior – start by spending time each day modeling proper behavior and having students model proper behavior. Review or change classroom expectations and set in place strict consequences for misbehavior and rewards for proper behavior.

Above all, you need to respect your students. If you don’t respect them, how can you expect them to show you any respect?

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When you introduce your classroom expectations to your students, ensure that they understand CLEARLY what is expected and then allow no excuses. If you require students to keep their hands to themselves, do not tolerate hitting even if it was an “accident” or if “he started it!”.

If you start the school year by providing room for excuses, students will continue to push that line all year, just to see how far you’ll bend before you break.

Some veteran teachers claim that you shouldn’t smile before Christmas. The point here isn’t that you shouldn’t physically smile before Christmas, but that you should start as you intend to go on, not allowing excuses if you would like students to simply follow the rules without providing excuses.

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A popular management idea that many teachers use is to hang a pocket chart in the classroom with a card for each student. There should ideally be two or three cards for each student – enough to have a green, yellow and red side. Each morning the students should all start on green – it’s a new day for everyone!

During the day, when a student misbehaves or does not follow classroom expectations, the teacher can “turn a card” and display the yellow, or warning card. If the student does not get the hint and continues to misbehave, the teacher can then turn the card again, displaying the red card, resulting in a consequence. This consequence can be calling the parents, sending a note home, or other predetermined idea.

It would be a good idea to allow students the chance to “redeem” themselves too and return to green. Otherwise a student who quickly moves to yellow or red early in the day has no motivation to finish the day on a positive note.

Have you enjoyed receiving an idea a week this month? I hope that some of you were able to glean some new idea to try in your classrooms! To keep the ideas coming, send in your favorite ideas you’ve tried, even if it didn’t work out well for you, it may just work for someone else! Send in Your Ideas

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Set up a student desk in a separate part of the classroom, much like a hedgehog desk, with a clipboard and pencil for students to reflect upon three questions.

1. What did I do wrong?
2. What could I have done instead?
3. What will I do differently next time?

For question number two, you might require students to list two possibilities, that way they learn there are multiple ways of handling various situations, then in the answer to number three, they must pick one option for the next time the situation comes up.

In order to return to class, the student must turn in the paper with the answers to the reflection questions.

Like the idea a week? To keep getting ideas past the month of April, send in your idea to share!

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Racist Comments are a Form of Bullying

Racism is simply a social term placed on top of a school term. Racism is when one person of one race says something hurtful to another person of another race simply because of race. This is historically seen as Caucasian individuals speaking badly of African American individuals, a hangover from the days of slavery. The sad fact of the matter today is that African American individuals are just as likely to say degrading things about a Caucasian individual. This is also racism. When racist comments are made, it is teachers should not ignore or pass lightly over the incident.

Steps for Handling Racist Comments in the Classroom

1. Stop instruction and address the comment, informing students that this comment and other like it are not funny, and are not appropriate at any time whether in school or not. Some teachers may be surprised with younger students who may not realize what they are saying. Some have heard these comments at home and are simply repeating them without realizing that the comments are inappropriate.

3. The student or students who made the original comment needs to apologize to the student who was hurt. It is important that students know that these comments are hurtful and that an apology is the very minimum that must be done to reconcile the situation.

4. Have students take some time to brainstorm positive things to say about each student in the classroom. This will encourage students to build an atmosphere of encouragement and community.

5. If racist comments are habitual, it may be prudent to teach the background of where some of the common racist comments in America came from and open the instruction to student comments about why people may make derogatory comments about a particular race of people.

The guidance counselor in the school is another great resource for handling racist comments in the classroom.

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The first thing to do is start off the tutoring relationship on a positive note with the parent in the hopes that when discipline issues come up, the parent will be more supportive. The way I handled this as a tutor was to send home a “progress report” each tutoring session. On this paper I would make notes about what we did, what I noticed and what the parent could do at home to further learning.

I always attempted to make a positive note in the “what I noticed” section, as well as any academic observations. Often the academic observations were made in a way to validate the parent’s concerns and reasons for hiring me in the first place. I also attempted to make the “for further study” section as simple and straight forward as possible so that any parent with any amount of involvement could do.

When I had a discipline problem I would note it on the progress report but would make a point to mention the problem to mom or dad in person. Often this gave me a great idea as to how helpful the parent would be in managing the difficult behavior.

Often, behavioral problems stemmed from frustration with the skill we were studying, so when the student would begin to act up, I would often stop and put the blame on myself:

“ok, wait a minute, let’s stop and back up, I don’t think I taught that very well. Let’s look at this part here a little closer.” and I would break the steps down even further or explain it again using different angles. I often employed the use of simple analogies as this seemed to help my students see a complicated problem in a more simple light.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll prompt the student to ask a question so that I can know what to teach.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll try changing the approach, do something new for a bit or adjust the final goal for that moment down a bit. So for example, if the student has to write a paper and I said ok let’s write the first paragraph now, I would say ok wait, lets just talk about the first sentence, how can we grab the reader’s attention?

By addressing behavior problems by drawing the attention back to learning, I kept the focus on the lesson at hand and developed the standard of never giving up and always trying.

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First, attempt to understand the basis for the lie:

Does the child realize that he/she is lying?

Does the child receive some sort of reward for lying? (ie. More free time, less work, the opportunity to leave the classroom, etc.)

Does the child have a psychological need that is not being met? (freedom, love, power, fun, belonging) So for example – is the student lying to gain importance in the classroom, to push the teacher’s buttons and get a rise, to earn a new friend, etc.

Once you have an idea why the lying is occurring, first try to rectify that situation. Remove rewards for lying (stop sending the student out of class, for example). Allow the child needing to gain importance in the classroom the opportunity to clean the blackboards each day. For the child who needs more friends, attempt to incorporate more group activities into the lessons for the day to encourage friendships.

Second, adjust the vocabulary you use during conversations with the child. Words to eliminate: lie, fib, believe, etc. These words will cause the child to throw up defenses and not listen.

Instead, use the word “I”. For example, “I am having trouble understanding what you said because Sallie doesn’t look happy about something. Can you explain it again to me?”

Often pathological liars will not stop at simply being caught and will instead defend themselves to the end of the conversation. Instead of getting caught up in forcing the child to tell the truth, reward those students who tell the truth in difficult circumstances and focus on building truthful relationships between students.

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