Strategies from Jared Stewart-Ginsburg, an assistant teaching professor of special education and former classroom teacher and family resource coordinator, as they appeared in our Newsletter for K-12 Educators.

A Note from Jared Stewart-Ginsburg: Relationships are the beginning but not the end of supporting student behavior in the classroom. As former NC State College of Education Professor Lee Stiff put it, “Those who care, teach.” Students (and families) need to see how much we as teachers care about them. Taking personal inventories, incorporating students’ interests into the classroom and having conversations about things not related to classwork are great ways to do this. But just because teachers build a relationship with a student doesn’t mean they won’t also need to implement other strategies. “Have you tried building a relationship with them?” is an often-asked question when teachers share concerns about students’ behavior, perhaps much to teachers’ chagrin. That’s a great first question, but it can’t be the last.

Five Tips for Managing Student Behaviors

1. Set, teach and reinforce clear expectations and routines.

All teachers have expectations about how students should and should not act in their classrooms, whether we acknowledge it or not. The best way to support students is to clearly describe these expectations in detail for students at the beginning of the year or the semester. Go through all the steps of how students should enter the classroom and begin their work at the beginning of the period or the day, how to pass in papers and when it is okay and not okay to talk. Practice the routines together. Then, continue to remind students what your expectations are, and be prepared to reteach routines when you notice they get sloppy or take too much time.

2. Focus on the positive and ignore the negative.

Many teachers just expect students will meet their expectations and don’t need to be praised when they do. Meanwhile, they fuss at students who step out of line. Try flipping the script: praise the behaviors that meet your expectations and ignore the behaviors that do not. Two things happen when you do this. First, you give attention to behaviors that facilitate learning. If we gave our all in teaching every day and our principal never noticed, we probably would not feel great about our job. The same goes for our students: it feels good when someone notices your effort, even if it is expected. Second, we deny attention to behaviors that interfere with learning– unless a students’ negative behavior may put themselves or others in danger. Sometimes, students demonstrate behaviors because they want attention, whether “good” or “bad” attention. When we yell, “Sit down!” or “Stop talking!” we might be reinforcing the behavior instead of stopping it.

3. Keep students engaged through opportunities to respond.

Opportunities to respond happen when teachers elicit a student response in some way, such as asking a question or directing students to turn and talk to each other about a specific topic, and then providing feedback on that response. They are sometimes called checks for understanding. Teachers can keep students engaged and participating in lessons by embedding lots of opportunities to respond when they plan lessons (aim for an average of one per minute throughout the lesson). Opportunities to respond can be structured in a bunch of different ways, such as choral responses, where all students answer at the same time. Teachers can also use technology to provide opportunities to respond. The more students participate, the less likely they are to act out.

4. Create and use a visual schedule.

A visual schedule uses icons and words to show an outline of the activities for that period/day in the order they will occur. Teachers can use this to help students anticipate transitions and reduce frustration from unpredictability. Including icons can help reduce cognitive load for students. Try showing the visual schedule at the beginning of the period/day, and then right before every transition to a new activity.

5. Ask why and observe to find out.

Any time a teacher complains about a student’s behavior, I always ask two questions. First, has the teacher implemented the strategies I talked about earlier?

If so, I then ask the teacher to tell me everything they know about the behavior(s) that is/are interfering with learning. When does the behavior occur? What exactly does the student do? What does the teacher do in response? Are there situations where the behavior definitely will or definitely won’t happen? A lot of these answers require consistent observation. Sometimes, teachers are doing too much in the moment to step back and think about the behavior systematically, so you may find it helpful to ask a colleague to observe your classroom for a few days and see if they notice any patterns.

For example, we might realize that a student kicks their chair or starts walking around the classroom only when teacher leads an activity where students read aloud. The teacher thinks the student is being disruptive or disrespectful, but the student is nervous about reading aloud and wants to get out of the activity.