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Entree 4

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Responding to Misbehavior

 

One of the most significant parts of a classroom management plan entails dealing with misbehaviors and giving consequences.  This is a topic that teachers must think through prior to beginning their school year because if misbehaviors are dealt with poorly, then the chance of cultivating a positive classroom community could be in jeopardy.  When managing misbehaviors, I plan to be mindful about not making students feel like their worth is any less and being discrete with them so that other students don’t form any misconceptions about their peers.  I will aim to make my intentions for the consequences clear and I don’t want students to think that I’m ever on a power trip or simply punishing them for the sake of punishing them, but rather I’d like to instill a sense of responsibility for their own actions.  I plan on having strategies that I will use as a preemptive measure to manage misbehavior, a list of strategies to use that will manage minor offences, and a list of strategies for more severe misbehaviors.  I have come up with a hierarchy of classroom consequences that is a general guideline for measures to take when addressing misbehaviors that are either one time offenses or recurring offenses (see below under classroom consequences hierarchy section). I do recognize however that not all misbehaviors are equal and will adjust the consequence hierarchy accordingly.

 

Pre-emptive Strategies:

Taking measures in the beginning and throughout the year to prevent the opportunity for misbehaviors is a large part of behavior management. I plan on designing engaging and interesting curricula that will hopefully get the students intrinsically motivated to participate and manage their own behaviors.  I do realize however, that thinking curricula alone cannot prevent misbehaviors so I plan to employ a few other strategies to try to help preemptively dissuade misbehaviors. From the beginning of the year I plan on giving the students seating charts, outlining explicit expectations early on, and utilizing positive reinforcement and use affirmation often when students are responding to any prompts.

 

Seating charts are important because it not only gives students a sense of comfort and predictability, it can separate groups of students who may potentially become distracted by each other during class time.  While I plan on giving many collaborative activities, some where they can choose their partners even, I don’t think that it is unfair to ask that the students have assigned base group seats.  I plan on changing them a few times throughout the year, but I will always have intention with where I place students.  If students demonstrate that they are able to sit with their friends then I will make the next iteration of assigned seats allow for that.  Also, if students are accustomed to their seats changing every so often, I will be able to change seats in response to misbehaviors without students realizing that it was for any student in particular.

 

Creating expectations early on will set behavioral norms for students to follow throughout the year (see entrée 3). This will also set a baseline for students to know that if their actions are inappropriate and violate any of the expectations then they can anticipate some sort of consequence.  I think that explicitly teaching my expectations to the students will demonstrate that I take them seriously and will be monitoring for violations of them.

 

Another preemptive tactic I plan to carry out is positive reinforcement and affirmation of the student’s ideas and contributions to the class.  I believe that positive reinforcements and affirmation will help build report between students and myself, and in turn will deter them from disrespecting any of my expectations.  If a student volunteers an answer to a question or contributes somehow to the class’s learning, then I plan on using affirming language such as “yes that is absolutely correct,” or “exactly, thank you for answering.”  I don’t want to give too much praise for things that students should be doing any ways so that they come to expect it.   I also intend to, in general, maintain a positive attitude to help cultivate the positive classroom community, as outlined in entrée 3, which will again hopefully make students intrinsically motivated to not misbehave.

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Classroom Consequences Hierarchy:

I have created a hierarchy of consequences outlined below that I will employ if students are to misbehave.  Following the chart is a detailed description of what each level of consequence entails and a rationale for them.   It begins with the least severe management tactic at the bottom and ends with the most severe at the top.  It is a general hierarchy that is meant to address almost any possibly misbehavior that may occur.  The initial consequence of a misbehavior will vary based on the severity of the behavior. Minor misbehaviors that may or may not occur continuously, will start with a consequence that is lower on the hierarchy and if continued will be addressed with more consequential actions.  For more severe misbehaviors like bullying or physical altercations, student’s consequences will probably begin with the more severe penalties like a call or email home and administrative involvement. 

 

I will explicitly teach the classroom consequences hierarchy to my students at the beginning of the year when we are going over expectations.  I will go through each level of consequence and describe in detail what they will entail.  Because I will have the students set up expectations of me as well (see entrée 3), I will let them know that if they feel that I have violated an expectation of theirs then they can request a meeting with me to discuss it.  I will let them know that I am always open to their feedback and that I want to make sure I am doing my best to accommodate their needs.

 

I plan on addressing misbehaviors in a timely fashion and if I can’t interact with the student immediately then I will definitely address the student misbehavior before class is over. The quicker misbehaviors are addressed the less likely the students are to test those misbehaviors in the future and continue them after their initial consequence.  According to Lemov’s technique #53 in Teach like a Champion, using the least invasive intervention for any sort of misbehavior is key in correcting misbehaving students and I couldn’t agree more.

 

Classroom Consequences Hierarchy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Non-verbal Warnings:

  • Proximity – This refers to the general space between a teacher and a student.  If a student is misbehaving, a lot of times if a teacher moves into close proximity to that student, the student will manage their own misbehaviors from there

  • “The Look” – The infamous “look” refers to a look that all teachers have given at one time or another.  It is a look of sternness that says “please redirect your behavior to an appropriate manner” where eye contact is made and the student instantly knows its intention.

  • Use body language or hand signals – This is a tactic where the teacher will either tap on a student’s desk to signal that they need to refocus their attention on the task at hand or it involves eye contact from a distance with some sort of indication that signals a behavior check. This may be used in tandem with “the look.”

Verbal Ques & Warnings:

  • Call on the student to participate – calling on a student to participate lets them know that you are aware of them, while also giving them a chance to prove to you that they were paying attention even though they may have seemed to be off task.

  • Use humor – I will use humor as a tactic to let a student know that I am aware of their behavior and still am willing to excuse it.  Addressing a minor misbehavior with humor is a way to keep a report with students while still redirecting the behavior.  An example of this may sound something like “Hey Alana, I know that you and Micha are planning to enter yourselves into America’s Next Top Model in the future, but I would appreciate it if you would not use class time to apply makeup and do each other’s hair.”  Because I’ll be working with high school students, I believe they can handle a certain level of sarcasm.

Reflection Exercise:

  • Students will be prompted to fill out a reflection slip (below) and they will have to sign it as well as have a teacher sign off.  This may be utilized along with a teacher-student conference if the behavior warrants a formal conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Formal Teacher – Student Conference:

  • This will typically be carried out if a minor misbehavior is recurring or if I deem that the misbehavior needs to be addressed in person.  A lot of times this will happen concurrently with the reflection form.  Along with addressing the reflection form, I plan to revisit the expectations and have the student determine which ones they’ve violated.  Once we have addressed that I will let them know the consequences that will follow if they continue to keep up the misbehavior. Then I will further help the students dissect their misbehavior and try to figure out what may have been driving it and how they can manage their own behavior in the future.  I will also emphasize the fact that I don’t WANT to have to give them any further consequences and that I’m only addressing the misbehavior to look out for their well-being and the well-being of their peers.  I will also mention the fact that I’m there to try and help them succeed and that if there is anything I can do to help them maintain positive and appropriate behavior in the future I will do whatever it takes.

Seat Change:

  • Sometimes a change of environment can help manage a student’s behavior in itself.  Depending on the situation I may move only the student’s seat if I think it will be unobtrusive to the rest of their classmates learning, otherwise I may do an entire rearrangement of student’s seats if I don’t want to bring attention to the situation.  That way I can make it look like it was just time for a seat change for everyone.

Call/Email Home:

  • I have this as a consequence before involving administration or any other staff member, because I believe that the families should be informed of their student’s misbehavior reaches a more systemic consequence.  Family member also may have some advice on how to manage their student’s misbehaviors that may help mitigate the issue before it reaches administration.  I also just never want it to be the case where a student receives a referral or some other sort of massive consequence for a recurring behavior without the parents ever knowing about it when it first began to be a problem.  Sometimes if a misbehavior is severe enough such as bullying or physical altercation then the parents will be informed by me on the first offence.  If the behavior reaches this level, then I would like to inform the parents of any possible further consequences and to possibly elicit their help in a future behavior management plan for their student. (see side dish 2 for a scripted version of how I would address the family in this situation)

Time Out in Another Teacher’s Classroom or ISS:

  • This is a consequence that I hope to never have to use, as I don’t think that assigning a consequence to student’s where they will miss out on further instructional time is helpful to them. For example, if a student is late, or even continually late, then they have already missed out on pertinent class time.  It should never be the case where I assign them more missed class time as a punishment. However, if a student’s behavior has been disruptive and disrespectful enough to the point where it is harming or interfering immensely with other students and their learning, then I may elicit this consequence to maintain a positive learning environment for the rest of the class.  If I ever do resort to this consequence, then I intend to have the student make up their time lost by either joining me for lunch or after or before school to make up any missed instruction.  In the case of sending students to another teacher’s classroom, I plan on having an arrangement set up, hopefully, with a teacher near-by where we can use each other’s classrooms as a last resort and have a space to accommodate the other’s students.

Administrative Involvement:

  • Similar to giving a “time out,” involving administration will be a last resort that I never hope to have to utilize.  If I do however, it will be for a serious offence such as bullying or physical violence.  The reason I would like to steer clear of administrative involvement is because I want students to know that I am invested in their well-being and am willing to do whatever I can to help them be successful in my class.  I also don’t want to defer situations to administrators often because they have a lot of other issues to deal with and I don’t want to be seen as a teacher who can’t control her classroom. In any event, if it does come to this, I will still stay heavily involved and hopefully the administration, myself and the student(s) can work out some sort of behavior management plan to move forward with.

 

Addressing Minor Misbehavior Examples:

When dealing with minor misbehaviors I will ideally not have to move past stages one and two of the consequence hierarchy.  I anticipate minor misbehaviors to happen fairly frequently, as I will be working with adolescents whose attention spans are short and priorities are most likely places other than academics. With that notion in mind, I would like to only address minor misbehaviors that are actually hindering the student’s and class’s performance.  If I ever feel like a student’s behavior warrants a consequence, I am going to step back and ask myself first “is this actually disrupting anyone’s performance in class right now, or is this just something that bothers me on a personal level?”  If I deem the latter to be the case, then I will not end up addressing the misbehavior unless it actually becomes a real issue.  I have outlined some examples of minor misbehaviors below and the order of actions I would implement to deal with them for multiple offenses, if I do in fact deem them to be affecting the class’s performance.   If I give consequences out of the typical hierarchy order I give my reasoning.

 

Tardiness

  1. Verbal Warning/quick conference – I will skip the nonverbal warning for this offense, because I believe it should be addressed and clarified verbally with the student that being tardy is unacceptable.  This will also allow for the student to let me know if their tardiness had a valid reason, in which case I would not have any misconceptions about it like I would if I had let it slide with a non-verbal warning.

  2. Reflection exercise and teacher conference

  3. Call home

 

Small side conversations while teacher or peers are talking

  1. Non-verbal warning – Proximity and/or “the look”

  2. Verbal warning

  3. Reflection exercise

  4. Teacher student conference

  5. Seat Change

  6. Call Home

  7. Time out in another classroom or ISS

 

Failure to turn in assignments on time

  1. Teacher conference – I will skip the non-verbal warning stage because it is possible that a student forgot to hand in their assignment, while they had actually completed it.  I want to be able to conference with the student about why they may not have turned it in.

  2. Reflection – if after the teacher conference the student continues to miss assignment deadlines then I will have them fill out a reflection

  3. Call Home- If turning in assignments late or not at all starts to become a trend and

 

Defiance

  1. Non-verbal warning

  2. Verbal warning

  3. Reflection exercise/Teacher Student Conference

  4. Call/Email Home

  5. Time out in another classroom or ISS

  6. Administrative involvement (only if the behavior becomes physically or emotionally threatening to someone in the classroom)

 

Using phones for texting, social media, other inappropriate things during class

  1. Non-verbal warning

  2. Verbal warning

  3. Second verbal warning – I will only give a second verbal warning if there has been a significant amount of time since the last verbal warning.  By significant time I mean multiple days or weeks between warnings.

  4. Reflection exercise

  5. Teacher-student conference – I will suggest that if the student feels tempted to use their cell phone they may leave it at my desk when they come into class if they think that would be a helpful solution.

  6. Call/email home

 

Dealing with Serious Misbehavior Examples

When dealing with serious misbehaviors, I intend to skip using the first few levels of the hierarchy.  When I teach my consequence hierarchy when setting up expectations in the beginning of the year, I will also explicitly mention the following behaviors and their consequences so that there is no confusion or uncertainty when are assigned their consequences.

 

Bullying

  1. Verbal warning & teacher-student conference – If I hear bullying happening in my classroom and it seems that it was intended to be playful, I will address it with a verbal warning with the student to show that I will not tolerate it. Typically, I will move directly to consequence 2 (below), but there may be rare cases in which I think the situation needs further investigation to confirm that bullying is in fact happening.  If this is the case then I will then ask the student, quietly and out of earshot from any of the other students, who I believe to be exhibiting the bullying behavior to please come see me after class so we can discuss it further.  If I find out that this is a typical behavior for the student, then I will carry out further consequences.  If I find out that this is actually how they interact with the student they were directing the bullying towards, then I will have a conversation with them about using positive language and explain why their words, although intended to be playful, can actually hurt people.  If it seemed a little more serious I will have a private conference with the student who was being bullied and try to find the root and severity of the situation.  From there I will use the information I gather to inform my next move.  This may result in switching seats or involving administration to help further investigate and/or assign more severe consequences.

  2. Call home & involve administration – This will happen if the student continues to exhibit the behavior after I have conferenced with them about their actions.  This may also be the first consequence assigned if the bullying is endangering the physical or emotional wellbeing of another student. This may also be the case if I catch wind of a bullying situation that has been happening either at school, at home, or on the internet.  I will first try to investigate a little to make sure that the allegations are true, but I will always involve administration so that they can not only help with the consequences but help monitor the situation on a more systemic level.

 

Physical violence

  1. Involve Administration & call home – This is already a schoolwide policy at Albemarle High School (as well as most other schools), but I would still explicitly explain it to students anyways. Since it will be out of my hands if physical violence does occur then I will not explain any further consequences related to my classroom.

 

Cheating

  1. Formal conference between teacher and student, reflection exercise & call/email home – I will meet with any students that I suspect of cheating in a private conference.  I will then present my reason why I believe they have cheated and give them a chance to explain themselves.  If I was correct and they did cheat, I am going to work with them to create a further consequence for themselves.  I will let them know that I will be calling home to let their families know the situation, but only after the student and I have come up with a reasonable consequence.  This may be having them re-do the assignment as well as writing an essay on why they cheated, why cheating is harmful to themselves and the educational system, and an apology to their family.  It also may result in giving the student a zero for this assignment. While I want to give them autonomy I will not let them create a plan for moving forward that I don’t also deem to be fair, i.e. I am not going to let them off easy.  Once they have come up with a plan for moving forward I will call their parents and inform them not only of the incident, but of the plan that the student came up with.  I will let the parents and the student know that if it does happen again then the school’s administration will be involved.  The reason I am not involving the administration for the first offence is because I want to give my students a chance to correct their actions, self-reflect and model self-regulation in the future.  If they take that chance for granted and still cheat, then the following consequence will be in place.

  2. Call home/administrative involvement – If they cheat a second time I will contact their families again, if I am sure the physical safety of the student won’t be compromised, and I will involve the administration in the consequence to let the student know that this is an incredibly serious offence.  I will also be sure to remind the student that I gave them a chance to model self-regulation and since they decided not to do that they will have to face the ultimate consequence of dealing with the principal.

 

References

CONTACT ME

© 2017 Created by Mollie Deuel

Mollie Deuel

High School Science Teacher 

(Biology, Ecology, Environmental Science)

 

Email:

md2ph@virginia.edu 

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