Inspiring students to be motivated and engaged in the learning process is an essential part of managing a classroom. Teaching students while calmly and effectively managing disruptive behavior is a vital skill for every educator.

Experimenting with new behavior management methods can help determine what works best for you and your students. Their unique personalities and challenges make every class different; a technique that proves effective for one student may not work well for her classmates.

Here are five tips you can try in your classroom. The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more effective you’ll be at managing a variety of classroom behaviors.

1. Post the Classroom Rules

• Students don’t always know what behavior is or

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I have been asked to participate in the Reform Symposium and will be hosting a session this afternoon called 10 Things I Wish Someone Had Explained Before My First Job. Feel free to join at 4:30EST today. I don’t normally do these online training things, so hopefully this works. Go to the link here.

A lot of these things are topics I’ve covered before, but here is what looks to be the outline for now.

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Ramona writes:

I am a first year teacher struggling with classroom management at the elementary school level. I have some logistical challenges because I don’t have my own classroom and travel between classes and schools with a cart. I also have almost 300 different students I see every week. But mostly my problem is that I don’t like to humiliate children and make them feel bad, which seems to be what most classroom management looks like. Of course a child feels embarrassed if you administer some kind of punishment to him or her in front of the whole class. But it seems like if I don’t do that, the kids will walk all over me and I will quit (sooner…

The following comment was left yesterday and I thought it was worthy of its own article as I have seen numerous things of this type happen over the years:

This is my first year as a professional teacher; I have three (90-minute block scheduled) enthusiastic groups of students who have begun to test their boundaries. I love the students, and I want to keep them secure and in control. Perhaps someone might have some advice on a discipline problem I encountered yesterday:

Yesterday, almost half of my last class left two minutes before the bell rang. The chaotic clean-up process,…

So here’s the situation:

You’ve been teaching for quite a while. You’ve pretty much gotten a handle on classroom management, paperwork, classroom rules, and any number of the other day-to-day tasks we encounter. But how many of these teaching vices do you struggle with? I know I’m not guiltless in these areas. In fact, I’ve had run-ins with most of these. Not all of them, of course.

1. Luxuria (extravagance or lust)
   While most people think of lust in a sexual kind of way, in the original context, it essentially meant excessive love of others. Even so, some teachers take this one quite literally and end up losing their jobs over abusive relationships with their students.
2. Gula (gluttony)

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A former student of mine who is now in his second year of college as a music education majors emailed me some interview questions a couple of weeks ago. Since many of my readers are early or pre-service teachers, I thought the answers might be useful to more than just him.

1. What discipline methods do you use? How do you get the students involved?

One of the most effective discipline techniques I have found is simply to talk less and play more. This prevents most of the misbehaviors that tend to spring up throughout the class period. Additionally, phone calls and parent contact have been invaluable tools. That also is helpful for encouraging student and parent involvement.

2. Was…

When I was struggling to find hope early in my career as a teacher, I came across a few pieces of advice given by King Solomon from the Proverbs:

He who spares his rod hates his son,
But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. — Proverbs 13:24

This one jumped out at me as I realized I overlooked way too much misbehavior. I came to understand that by continually letting the students misbehave because I wanted them to like me was actually counter-productive and instead it made them respect me less. More than that, it showed me that whereas I thought I was being loving, I was actually being hateful.

That helped me a whole lot as it…

If this is your first time visiting this site, or even if you’ve been reading for a while, there are undoubtedly some articles that you’ve missed along the journey. As I have been working a lot on organizing the site lately, it has come to my attention that there are over 400 posts on the site. This can be kind of daunting for a new reader to say the least.

These are some of my favorite articles and series that I’ve written on the site. If you’ve read these, maybe you could check in and respond to a comment or two!

1. Questions That Will Save Your Career
2. Where Have All The Good Teachers Gone?
3. The Best Time To

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The results to my most recent Twitter poll (what is your classroom management secret weapon?) can be seen over at Miss Cal.Q.L8′s blog.

Be sure to go check out 27 Classroom Management Secret Weapons. While you’re at it, subscribe to her blog and leave some comments.

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

As we’re going through the transformation, one of the key things to remember is that you must remain respectful to your students. As I’ve written before, classroom control is essential. Some of us have a naturally abrasive personality, and so when we begin to re-assume control, politeness tends to go out the window.

Don’t take things personally
The thing to remember is that even our worst behaved students actually have a genuine reason for doing the things that they are doing. Most misbehaviors are not personal attacks. They are simply misbehaviors for the sake of themselves.

One of my mentors once told me a…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

When I was a new teacher, I had some really good classroom rules and expectations and consequences all lined up. It was good on paper. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow through consistently at all. If one of the “bad kids” did something out of line, WHAM, I was all over his misbehavior in an instant. If on the other hand, one of the “good kids” did the exact same thing, the one consequence was a smile and warning not to do it again.

Human nature seems to lead us to pick favorites in our classes. These are the kids whose misbehavior we call “cute”. We…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

I took the day off from blogging yesterday because it was Mother’s Day and I play in a mariachi. If you don’t know what that means, I started playing serenatas (Mother’s Day Serenades) at 6pm Saturday afternoon, wrapped up a little after 8am Sunday morning, then played for another 4 hours Sunday afternoon. We played three songs 40 different times, and also had a one-hour gig in somewhere along the way. With a church service thrown in on Sunday morning for good measure, it probably goes without saying that I was exhausted yesterday when we finished up. But now I’m back and ready to go!

Be…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

What a wild week this has been! I’m surprised by how much even going over these classroom management basics on here has impacted my teaching. When I preach this stuff, I sort of have to force myself to follow through. I’ve been discussing this stuff with a couple of friends this week, and just in case one of them walks into my classroom, I want to make sure they see the same stuff!

So if you’ve been following along, you are coming to a realization of just how important classroom management is to your overall effectiveness as a teacher.

I know that the week…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

Yesterday we looked at making phone calls and using parent pressure as a motivator for classroom management. Today, we’re going to go with a slightly more high-brow alternative, and one that tends to be more effective over the long run.

Hopefully by now, you have begun to exercise a little more control in your classroom. I was telling a friend the other day that when I teach, it’s sort of like I’m acting. I assume the roll of Benevolent Dictator of the classroom. I mentally tell myself that I am in control of the classroom, and I make sure that the students know that…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

Let’s play a game
I want you to think about your classes right now. Think about the four biggest trouble-makers on your roll sheet. Now imagine, what it would be like if they all got sent to another school. You wake up tomorrow and those four kids are gone. What a great day!

But you know what?
With them gone, four more kids will step up and strart ruining your life. There is no end to the number of children who will misbehave if given the chance! Even if you only have one kid, they will still act up…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

Today’s lesson is simple, and yet profound.

One of the most difficult concepts for me to grasp was one of the most important in my early days of teaching. It is also the most transformational and pivotal of everything that we’re going to be doing through this process.

Every problem that happens in my classroom is my fault.

Or stated more positively

I am responsible to ensure good things happen in my class.

If we can get over that hurdle, if we can get through that first barrier, we are on…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

Congratulations
First of all, I want to congratulate you on taking the first step of this journey toward becoming a great teacher! I can’t even begin to describe for you the exciting possibilities that await you as you move through these lessons and begin to come over to the other side. If your experiences are anything like mine as I went through this process five years ago, you will not believe that you used to have classes the way you currently do. If you follow the advice here, I can virtually guarantee you a completely different classroom environment before this month is out.

To…

This is an ongoing series. Bookmark this page as a way of navigating your way around the series. By the way, this was my 400th post on the blog.

1. Day 1: Find A Moment
2. Day 2: Find A Mirror
3. Day 3: Find A Mentor
4. Day 4: Find A Mother
5. Day 5: Find A Motivation
6. Day 6: Find A Mentor (Again)
7. Day 7: Week 1 Summary
8. Day 8: Be Prepared
9. Day 9: Be Consistent
10. Day 10: Be Fair
11. Day 11: Be Respectful
12. Day 12: Be Respectable

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

As I suspected when I started this blog, there are a lot of teachers who don’t really have a strong grasp on how to be a great teacher. The number of emails and comments that I have gotten this year are a clear indication of that. When I take into account that only a small percentage of those who visit my site contact me in any way, I can only believe that the problem is far greater than we can imagine.

Is this you? Well, there is hope! Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to start a crash course series on getting control of…

I got a comment on this post yesterday that I wanted to address more in-depth tonight. I posted a teaser this morning to see what kind of responses the community would come up. So far, I have read some incredible (and almost all positive) pointers.

• I’ve written a great deal about classroom management in the past here
• I’ve written about how I changed course and overcame a poor history of teaching in March of my second year of teaching

I suppose this is sort of a follow-up to The Honeymoon Is Over: What Killed My First Teaching Job And 7 Tips For Getting Your Next Job.

In that initial post from April of 2008, I outlined the things…