Chapter 4.2: Classroom Management Part 2

IN PROGRESS - WILL BE EDITED

It is of the utmost importance that you are mentally prepared to execute this series of moves as many times as you need, whenever the smallest disruption occurs, even if you only manage to say two full sentences in an entire class period. You will, if you execute this “walking to the rules” move each and every time you feel students’ attention waning, build a strong foundation for the class’s success this year.

The Importance of the First Days of Class

The first few days and weeks of the new term are a special time, a golden time, and your best shot at cultivating a classroom environment that is conducive to deep, focused listening and comprehension. We don’t get any “do-overs” after the first week of school has gone by. We either establish clear leadership and expectations in those first lessons or, as too many of us have sadly experienced, we will struggle the rest of the term to keep students focused on the discussion and language input.

Thus, as you are engaging in Small Talk and Card Talk, or other activities, just know that the activity itself is not actually the main focus of your instruction. Rather, your main objective is to reinforce the Classroom Rules at every turn, perhaps up to fifty times per class period during those first days.

This sends a powerful message. While certain students in the first days of school are quietly watching their teachers for signs of weakness that they will exploit in the months ahead - and there are kids who do that - we send them the powerful message that in our classes they won’t be doing that.

Classroom management is important in every classroom, but especially in a proficiency-based class because so much of the time is spent in community conversations, and students need to exert a good deal of selfcontrol to keep the discussion on track, particularly when it is conducted in a new language.

Below, you will read a more detailed explanation of a multi-tiered classroom management system to support students in being productive members of the class community. Pointing to the rules over and over until they “stick” in the class’s minds is the first line of defense, or “Plan A.”

There are always students who will test even the most consistent teacher. So, simply standing by the rules will not be enough for all students. If you succeed at disciplining yourself to consistently, with unerring predictability, use “Plan A” each and every blessed time there is a disruption in the Force, you lay the foundation for the whole class to understand the expectations in a concrete and visceral, real way.

Further, if you point to the rules in the calm, silent, and - let’s face it - boring and rather annoying way described above, you remove a good deal of the “payoff” for testing the teacher and the rules. Many students seem to enjoy playing the fun (for students, not for us) game of “Poke the Bear,” the bear being you, the teacher. They take perverse delight in seeing teachers lose their cool, turn red, yell, and become an amusing spectacle. If you train yourself to point to the rules in this very neutral, dispassionate, and calming manner, you have removed this payoff, and many disruptive students will get the message that it is more annoying than amusing to see you react to their hijinks and shenanigans.

You further remove the payoff by being devastatingly, boringly, annoyingly consistent in deploying “Plan A” because you clearly demonstrate, over and over, that is no chance that you will ever react in a novel, fun, or amusing manner. It is extremely important that you train yourself to interrupt the instruction and redirect the class in the light and non-confrontational way described above, each and every time the class’s behavior does not meet the class expectations.

If you do this, your students will soon come to expect that infractions of the rules result in this rather boring and certainly not entertaining routine. Gradually, students’ motivation to play a nice round of “Poke the Bear” in your class will wane. They can save up their “Poke the Bear” aspirations for science class, or Language Arts. Not German class. Not YOUR class, the most important class of the day.

Plan A, walking to the rules and waiting silently, is the go-to. But you will most likely need a backup plan for those students who need to test your leadership, even as the majority of the class develops the ability to follow expectations. For supporting those students, it will be extremely valuable to have your backup plans all lined up and ready to go when you need them in the moment of confrontation or disrespect.

In the actual moment when these students are testing your leadership, you will probably feel stressed, unsure, or even awkward or embarrassed. So you will be very well-served by memorizing and practicing these backup plans until you can deploy them without having to think about your next move. The prepared and confident feeling you will have cannot be overestimated. It allows you to maintain that “aura” of calm, assertive, confident leadership, even in challenging moments when you feel nervous, angry, frustrated, exasperated, upset, confused, or intimidated (or any of the other myriad emotions that we feel when students do what they are programmed to do: vie with us to determine the limits of socially-condoned behavior in a given context).

These “backup plans” are a series of memorized steps that dial down on disruptive students with increasing strength and power. They support us in taking our classroom management to the next level when needed. If

Boring is the goal.

Plan A does not work with a particular student, we move on to Plan B. Plan A generally reaches the majority of students.

If your entire class is violating a rule, such as in the case of a chatty group who simply don’t have the selfcontrol to not bust into side conversations during instruction, you should stick with Plan A, even if you deploy it 52 times in a 54-minute class period. You want to use Plan A until you get to the point where the class as a whole self-monitors and you start to hear students “shushing” or redirecting each other when you begin to walk over to the rules for the umpteen thousandth time that day.

If the class as a whole has internalized the rules, and yet some students continue to test you, they need you to move on to Plan B and C, or D, or even E (as outlined below). If you have prepared, practiced, and memorized these more “personalized” backup plans, you will feel calmer and more confident that you will be able to work with these students to bring them on board with the rest of their peers.

Responding to Disruptions When They Happen in the Moment

The steps below outline a powerful series of escalating responses to disruptions. They are deployed mechanically. It is best to memorize them so that they are there for you when you need them, so that you do not have to think in the moment about what you will do or say next. This keeps your emotions out of it. If one step fails to stop the problem behavior, you can mechanically go to the next level of response.

Each step on the pages below represents an increasingly assertive, powerful, instantaneous response to those in-the-moment transgressions that plague most teachers all year. You can greatly enhance the probability that YOU will not be one of those plague-besotten teachers by getting these classroom management tools solidly in your repertoire.

Plan A is the foundation. It is the first step in establishing yourself as a calm, assertive, no-nonsense leader in the group. It shows your class that you will respond - you will act - each and every time a student breaks one of your classroom rules. But you will not act from emotion. You will never lose your cool, internally or externally. You will act without much fanfare at all.

You will use body language, calmness, silence, and patience to establish your leadership. You will use your Classroom Rules poster to do the talking for you. You will simply notice each and every infraction of the rules, and then in a dispassionate way immediately stop all instruction, and calmly, slowly, and silently walk over to the rules poster, and without speaking, point to the rule that is being broken and regally smile at the class in an unflappable, almost bored way, à la Queen Victoria.

The Classroom Rules 1. Understanding is the number-one goal. 2. One person speaks and the others listen. 3. Support the flow of language.

The Classroom Rules work best when they are prominently displayed so that you can easily walk over to them, and put your hand on them, and comfortably wait with a calm demeanor, without speaking, until they comply with the rule. Thus, it is important to place the rules in a location where you can comfortably stand by them with your hand under the rule you want to enforce, without having to contort yourself into an undignified posture as you wait. It is rather difficult to embody Queen Victoria when one is straining to reach the rule to which one is pointing.

The rule that teachers point to most frequently is Rule #2 - “One person speaks and the others listen”. Do not speak. Rather, you will simply indicate with your body language and your calm, patient, regal little smile that you expect them to correct their behavior. This subtle smile lightens the mood even as you display your strength by unflinchingly addressing every single tiny little problem behavior.

Often, as we wait for compliance, we hear students shushing each other. We might hear things that are a little bit hurtful to us, such as, “Is she gonna stand there all day?” or “There she goes again.” We must not allow our feelings to get the better of us in moments like this, because we are committed to experiencing the great power of running a classroom full of youngsters in a dispassionate, calm way. These remarks from the sassy kids are actually a positive sign. They show that the more rude and outspoken students are ready to be schooled by us. If a student makes a comment by which they intend to undermine our authority (“Doesn’t she have anything better to do than stand there and stare?”), we stay in the moment.

This is actually a dramatic confrontation. Students are testing our leadership, to see if we can be trusted, and to see how amusing it might be to see us respond to their misbehavior. So, we focus on maintaining our composure. We stay the course, continuing to breathe deeply and calmly and to Queen Victoria it up. It helps to tell ourselves that, yes, in fact, we do not have anything better to do than stand there. Or that, yes, there we do go again. It helps to tell ourselves, “This student is articulating my classroom management plan for their peers.”

Those moments of challenging by those few kids are so valuable to us! They reveal the child for what they are - a person who could ruin our entire class for the entire year. So by staying in the moment and not caving, we win the class over to us, to what we want done. Of course, such comments can cross the line into blatant disrespect, for instance, if a child were to refer to us in profane terms or call us a fool, etc. Of course, in that case we immediately move on to the more aggressive plans outlined below.

Let’s be clear about what is happening here. What is going on when students make such comments out loud or even under their breath is of colossal importance. Failure to respond calmly and dispassionately means that all the work we have ever done in learning to teach for proficiency will be for naught.

When you hear comments like, “You all know she’s just going to keep on standing there!” then you know that the more vocal, outspoken students are beginning to feel uncomfortable or concerned that they may be in a class with a teacher who will actually stop them from taking over the classroom. This is your goal, so I strongly urge you to take a deep breath and simply wait it out.

Unless the comments cross the line into profanity or violence or other serious violations of school norms, I simply wait for 100% of the class to comply with the rule, patiently, with good humor, and knowing deep down that an adult is in charge of the classroom. What if I must wait for 30 seconds that feel like an eternity? I do it anyway until we get compliance. Waiting out those 30 seconds could bring my students scores of hours of calm focused listening throughout the rest of the year. On some level, deep down, even the most challenging student will thank you for finally teaching them how to behave in school.

This is a very critical juncture in your relationship with this class. You do not want there to be any entertainment value in breaking the rules. In fact, you want your response to be so automatic that it is identical each time you use it. Even if you are pointing to the rules for the forty-eighth time that day, you want to execute the same calm walk, the same point, the same regal smile, the same calm wait, the same sequence of gestures that you did on your first trip over to the rules.

Watching a teacher lose their cool is a national pastime for students. We must remain cool, every time, so that the entertainment value of watching us discipline the class, the adolescent glee in seeing their teacher lose it, that bedevils so many teachers, is removed from our classrooms.

We thus make listening to the actual instruction more entertaining than breaking the rules. And since our instruction is all about the kids and their ideas, or interesting topics, why shouldn’t our instruction win? Especially when the alternative is to see the same exact, calm, same-old same-old response that they always see, the boringest teacher in the land calmly pointing to the same old boring class rules.

“Ho-hum” is the goal here. “What a snooze!” is the thought we want our students to have.

Establishing the rules in this way builds your personal power in the classroom. It establishes you as the calm, in-charge alpha energy in the room. This energy is ancient, even present in troops of chimpanzees. However, histrionics, exasperated emotional reactions and explanations undermine this energy. So when we simply stroll over to the rules in a calm way, pointing them out to the class with simple body language, waiting for compliance, we build and maintain our alpha status in the group.

The main objective in the first couple of weeks is to use very simple, engaging, personalized activities, and above all SLOW and thus easily understood speech, to train the students in the classroom rules. You will spend a good amount of time over at the rules poster, in the first month. It is a blue-chip investment in your future as a proficiency teacher this year! You might want to install a little shelf for your coffee so you make your time over there at the rules poster more enjoyable...for you, anyway. Not the poor, bored kids.

You will know that you are doing this right when the students begin to tire of your constant, calm, goodnatured smiling, of your steady and silent reinforcement of the rules, and resort to shushing each other when they see you saunter over to the Classroom Rules poster.

You will know that you have built the proper atmosphere in your class when you sense that:

1.your instruction has become slow and effortless, 2.your speech is calm and unhurried, as if you have all the time in the world to speak to your class, 3.your class waits silently and patiently as you frequently clarify your message by writing or walking to a word or visual aid, 4.you are taking time to breathe and think and smile in class, and scan the students’ eyes to check their comprehension and engagement after every new chunk of language, 5.your students demonstrate the desire to wait with you in the few seconds of calm silence that you lovingly insist on after each transgression, and 6.you feel that you are finally teaching in a way that is actually fun and you feel strong and effective!

Such an atmosphere is crucial for authentic communication in the language to thrive in your classroom.

If you are standing, breathing, and regally smiling at the class as a whole, and almost everyone is complying with the rules, but one student is not coming along with the group, you can congratulate yourself that you have laid a strong foundation.

98% of your students have learned to trust your leadership. It might have taken 4,567 trips over to the poster over the course of six class sessions, but saints be praised, your class is finally getting it.

Pat yourself on the back. Your unerring devotion to deploying Plan A has revealed hidden treasure: those several students who need more personalized support. Working through the subsequent steps with those students will strengthen your confidence as a teacher, help those students develop important self-regulation skills, and also demonstrate your warm, caring, no-nonsense approach to helping them join the herd and be a productive member of the class.

Perhaps most importantly, these steps are designed to bond you to these students, by demonstrating your consistency and trustworthiness and also helping the student to maintain their sense of personal autonomy and social standing.

Once we are feeling confident that the class as an overall group has responded to Plan A, yet we notice that one student persists in disruptive behavior, even as their peers have settled back down and are ready to proceed, then we go immediately to Plan B with the outlier.

You will move physically closer to the student who is at ground zero of the disruptions. Dr. Fred Jones, the great classroom management trainer, and the author of the must-read book on classroom management, Tools for Teaching, suggests a specific sequence of movements and actions that use our body language and physical presence to establish our leadership and set firm limits with our students, without spiraling into those

“But I wasn’t doing anything!” or “You’re picking on me!” arguments that end up with someone (usually the teacher) losing face.

Please note that Plan B is for correcting the behavior of students who exhibit garden-variety patterns of misdeeds. It is not designed for students exhibiting seriously dangerous behavior. These suggestions are provided for dealing with commonly overlooked (except in your classroom) behaviors such as side conversations, using a cell phone, talking back, interrupting, calling out, laughing at inappropriate times, making weird random noises, tapping pencils or coins, excessive pencil sharpening, congregating by the trash can, launching projectiles, poking neighbors, general clowning, etc.

The most important aspect of Plan B is silence. Silence is strength. Fred Jones says, “Open your mouth and slit your throat.” This means that when dealing with behavior management, talking is the enemy. You do not want to talk to the student about their behavior; you want the behavior to change. That is the only “win.” The more we speak, the more we diminish our personal power. Therefore, body language, silence, and patience are our best allies in our work with challenging students.

When we have a student (or a group) who reveal themselves as needing some personalized attention to come into alignment with our expectations, and we have found ourselves pointing at the rules several times, just for them, this is when we use Plan B. When we direct our assertive, calm leadership more directly at them, using only our body language to silently redirect them, we are using Plan B correctly.

You will use the Queen Victoria Stare, a stare that says, “Oh you poor fool, I have seen this kind of nonsense before and I will stop it just as I have a thousand times before.” Even if it is your first week of teaching, you can fake this stare. Soon, you will not have to fake it. You will own it.

You will most likely move to Plan B from your perch at the rules poster, as you are implementing Plan A. Generally, the situation is that the class, overall, has corrected their behavior, and yet one student persists in some kind of disruption.

At this point, everyone expects you to just keep standing there pointing to the rules. This “stand, point, and patiently wait” rigamarole has most likely become “old hat” to the class by now. However, since the rest of the class is on board, and you have now identified an outlier who seems impervious to Plan A, you will instead turn your feet to face the student who continues to disrupt. You will plant your feet both facing in the direction of the student. You are still silent; you have not said a word, or even signed in an exasperated manner, or called the student’s name.

Without a sound you will plant your feet facing the student, and then turn your entire body in their direction, still silently. Keep your arms down; do not point at the student. Do not say anything. Do not call their name. Do not say, “Shhh.” Say nothing.

Turn your entire torso and shoulders in the direction that your feet are facing, so that it is abundantly clear that you are stopping instruction to address the distraction. If the student does not notice your attention is directed at them, because they are so deeply distracted, enjoying themselves, simply wait silently until they notice.

Remember, opening your mouth is your last resort. You do not want to invite a conversation. You want to see a different behavior, not have a talk with the student. There is no need to discuss this with a fifteen-year-old. If you cave and allow the student to engage you in a verbal interchange in this moment, you may as well do a happy dance out of the classroom because you will have lost your class for the rest of the year.

Everyone knows the rules by now. You have pointed to them about thirty-five thousand times in the three days of school that have elapsed so far. Now simply wait until the disruptive student notices the energy directed at them. They will notice. 95% of classroom management is energetic and happens in the realm of body language and nonverbal communication. They will sense that you and the class are focused on them. They will eventually look up. It only feels like it took six minutes. In reality, it was probably eighteen seconds.

Once they have noticed you and are looking at you, take a few slow steps in the direction of the disruptive student. Do not get overly close, though. And do not assume a combative posture. Keep your arms at your sides, not on your hips or crossed in front of you. Relax at the shoulders. Relax your jaw. Take a moment to take some deep, calming, centering breaths. Think to yourself, “I am fortunate that I have the tools to exert calm leadership, and I have worked too hard to get to this position professionally to let some rude child ruin it for everyone.”

In moments like this, it can help your outlook if you think, “I’m lucky I’m getting paid to breathe and relax.” You need to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind, and not allow your reptilian brain, your fight-or-flight system, to take over. Deep breaths work wonders to drop you into a calm, centered emotional space.

Do not say a word. Simply make it clear that you are looking at them, so that they - and their peers - know without a doubt that you are dealing with them. Stare at them with a patient, withering, “Been There, Done That” stare. Do not say a word. Breathe. If they say something, perhaps, “What?” or “What’d I do?” then simply respond with what Fred Jones calls a look of boredom. It is not very productive for a student to argue with someone who is just staring at them silently, with a calm look of “I have seen this all before” on their face and no desire to win at anything but compliance with the rules.

Once the student is listening, or has put the cell phone away, or has turned to face you, or has done whatever you need them to do to comply with your expectations, simply take another deep breath, ideally without a sound.

Even a “sigh of relief” subtly undermines your leadership, because it reveals that this situation did, in fact, affect you. This is like ringing the starting bell for the “Poke the Bear” championship round, because it shows that the heretofore unflappable leader has, indeed, finally been “flapped.” The current score is:

Class: One Bear: Zero

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Displaying emotion opens you up to be an unwilling participant in students’ next round of “Poke the Bear.” Better to stay absolutely calm. The students can get their jollies in another class. YOU are not going to be the bear this school year.

Simply take a calm, slow, silent breath and turn back to the rest of the class, and, without further remonstrations, smile as if to say, “Well, back to the fun stuff!” and resume instruction, as if nothing had happened.

It is important to note that Plan B is only the next step in a series of increasingly-pointed interventions. So how do we know when to move on to Plan C with a particular student?

If we sense that a student’s behavior is going to require Plan C and beyond, you might want to put that student at the top of our to-do list for the next several days. It is best to call home immediately after school and then in class, make the student the center of attention for a few days. You might talk about their card during Card Talk, pick their idea just to throw them a positive experience of acceptance, or just make time to check in with them in the hall or during transitions in class, to talk about something that is not their behavior.

You might assign them a job, not in a threatening way but rather in a way that allows them to develop a positive role in class. You can try to learn something that the student is good at (perhaps during Card Talk or Small Talk (aka Calendar and Weather), and tell the class about this student’s accomplishments in glowing terms. Of course, some disruptive students do not like being the center of attention, so if the student appears even a bit uncomfortable, then we immediately drop the Make Susie the Center of Attention campaign.

When the class in general continues breaking the rules, we continue using Plan A. But when a particular student continues on breaking the rules, do not use Plan B more than a couple times on that child. Move to Plans C and D.

News flash: You will use Plan A all year, every day. It is the default setting. It is your cruise control until June. Are you rethinking the suggestion to install a coffee shelf over by the rules? You will by the end of September.

If you have a student (and, most likely, you do!) whom you have

already stared at using your best Queen Victoria Stare a couple of times but who seems to always go right back to their old shenanigans, you will need to move on to Plan C with that child. Plan C is a very powerful, structured conversation that I have used for years, since I learned how to talk to kids this way from my Classroom Management professor, Ken Petersen, at Portland State University in 2004. So, if you like this plan as much as I do, just say, “Thank you, Ken!” I know I do. In this level of intervention, you get in more proximity to the student. It happens this way.

It’s a normal day. You are teaching class. Rocking. Rolling. Like a boss. Wait! You notice a disruption. Land’s sakes, it’s Student X again! Knock me over and butter my biscuits, who would have guessed? But, you don’t let it get to you, at least not visibly. You just think, “OK I have Plan B’d this kid a couple times. Onward and upward!”

You will now execute Plan C. You take a deep, calming breath. You turn and face the student, with your feet, then your torso, then your whole body. You take another deep breath, summoning your Withering Stare, aka the Queen Victoria Stare. You first relax your jaw. Fred Jones teaches you to lick the roof of your mouth to force your jaw to relax, which might not just happen automatically in a stressful moment like this. Then, you relax your shoulders, dropping your hands to your side and releasing tension in your hands. Walk over to the student, calmly, without saying a word. Walk closer to them than you did when you executed Plan B. You stand by their desk, silently, and take a final deep, calming, centering breath.

If the student is giving you backtalk, for example, “What’d I do?” you simply respond with a stony silence, waiting with a calm, non-confrontational posture, arms and hands neutral (not clenched or crossed or reaching out, but just down by your sides). And then you simply wait, summoning a look of extreme boredom and disinterest, until they are all talked out.

Then and only then, once they have said their peace and are most likely rather surprised that you are not talking back to their backtalk, get down on one knee by the student. This posture conveys a powerful message to them: “We are on the same team. I am calm and self-assured enough to lower myself to you, in service to you and our class. I have the self-confidence to not lord my status as teacher over you. I do not need to assume a confrontational stance with you. My power comes from within, not from confronting you in public in front of your peers.”

Everyone will probably be looking at you with great interest, but you want the next part of Plan C to be just between you and the student.

After you have knelt by them, quietly say to them, so that it is not a public announcement, “This happened before, and it is happening again now. And if it happens again, we will have a longer conversation, and we won’t be smiling at the end.” And - this is key - smile at the student (even though it may be sort of a forced smile). Nine times out of ten, they will smile back. It is human nature to smile when smiled at. Page 56

Notice that in this short conversation, you do not name the behavior. You say “THIS” happened. This is purposeful. Naming the behavior invites arguing. You do not want arguing. It is clear to all involved that the student has broken a rule. It is also clear to all involved that you have consistently and fairly applied Plan A to everyone every time a rule was broken. Thus, you are clearly not “picking on” anyone, or playing favorites.

The student, in all likelihood, knows what they are doing wrong. There is no need to have a long conversation about it. It is, however, best to follow up this conversation with a phone call home. Perhaps the student has a family that can support them in processing the issues, which will certainly make your job easier. Perhaps they don’t, which is also valuable information going forward, as you will need to rely on other adults in the student’s life (counselors, coaches, other teachers) to help you hold the kid accountable, in true “it takes a village” style.

As with Plan B, you will then get right back to teaching, with no grudges, and with the mental stance that OF COURSE the behavior will change.

Of course, it might not. You could very well see further disruptions from this student. Maybe immediately. Maybe later in the class period. Maybe later this week. But until then, you’re all in the Clean Slate Club, and bygones will be bygones, as long as the student can hang with the class expectations. Whenever this particular student resumes the disruptive behavior, then you can move on to Plan D. It’s fun! You have now told the student that you will have a longer conversation if they are again disruptive. So if and when that happens, either that same day or the next day, or again in the future, you need to make good on

that promise, which is what Plan D will equip you to do. I learned most of the “ingredients” in Plan D from the one and only Ken Petersen, including the very powerful phrase “we won’t be smiling at the end.” People ask me often about that phrase. I learned it from Ken and YES, I actually say that to kids. No, I don’t say it to every kid. But to most of them, yes, I do. It “humanizes” the interaction in Plan C, and it is very useful.

Plan D is a longer, yet still memorized and structured, conversation in private. This usually means the hall. It is very heart-wrenching to send a student to the hall. So, this is a juncture where you will want to summon all of your positive self-talk.

However, this is a necessary step in forming a relationship with this student based on trust, communication, and follow-through. Many students who persist in breaking the rules are testing you, to see where you will back down. They are experts at this.

Let’s imagine that earlier in the period, or perhaps yesterday or a couple of days ago, you took the time to slowly and calmly speak to that student individually. Now the behavior is still continuing.

Stop instruction and get silent. That’s where your power lies. Take a few calming breaths as you slowly and powerfully walk over to the student, silently channeling your inner 19th century British monarch. You might think to yourself, “I am glad to have an opportunity to support this student and strengthen our relationship in the long run by showing them what kind of leader I am.”

For some classes, the thrill of seeing someone getting in “trouble” is too much, and for those kinds of classes, you will want to provide a distraction. You can use the tried and true strategy of “Turn and Talk” to give everyone something to focus on. You would just stop instruction, as if you planned to do this all along, say to the class, in English, in your normal, unflustered teacher voice, before you get silent and begin walking to the student, “Turn and talk to a partner. Tell them what we learned so far about Shanice’s tournament. Say, ‘This weekend, Shanice will…’ Go!”

However you make your calm way over to the student, you will then get down beside them and ask them to step into the hall so you can speak with them later in private. Then stand up, take a couple steps away from the student, and calmly resume instruction.

Do not make a big production of waiting for the student to get up and exit the room. Act as if you have every confidence that the student will comply with your request of their own accord. Remember, in all discipline, the goal is to de-escalate and remove attention from the situation in the heat of the moment.

There is a chance that the student will not comply. In that case, you will want to go back over to the student again after a few minutes and simply repeat the same sequence of steps that you did the first time you spoke with them. Remain calm and non-confrontational, and keep the interaction quiet and private, from your kneeling position by the student’s seat. Remember that the class is watching you (even if you ask them to Turn and Talk again). This interaction is not just about your relationship with this student but your position as leader for the entire class.

So just remain calm and say to the student, “I asked you to wait in the hall. We can have a quick conversation in the hall during class right now, or we can have a more complicated situation. It is your choice. I will keep teaching and wait to see what choice you make when I get up from your seat here.” Then signal calmly to your Concierge to come help the student to the hall. You have ideally chosen a supportive, calm, and kind student for this job, and you have already prepped them for their duties in a situation like this, so they can help coerce their peer into coming to the hall with them.

Calmly continue teaching, walking away from the student. After a minute, look back in a calm, nonchalant way, to see if the student has indeed chosen to go to the hall with the Concierge. If the student has not done so, you will want to call administration. If they cannot or will not come support you, you really have no choice but to continue teaching.

If you cannot call in support from the office, you now have two options. One, at the end of the period, hold the student back so that you can follow up with them in private. Two, tell the class to turn and talk about something, perhaps simply saying, “Turn and tell a partner what we have learned so far about X” where X is whatever you have been talking about. Then as the class talks, follow up with the student. No matter what,

at this juncture you will want to get in touch with administration, counseling, their coach, if they have one, and the student’s family.

Most students, however, will not put up any resistance and will go on to the hall either of their own accord when you first ask them or with the assistance of the Concierge when you follow up with them.

When you get to a natural pause in the lesson, you can ask students to do some pair work to keep them learning and engaged as you take a few minutes to talk in the hall. You will want to give them an activity that they are familiar with from previous classes, such as Volleyball Reading or Read and Sketch, or an activity that is SO EASY that it is self-explanatory and requires little to no language (especially for classes in their first years).

Two activities that work well for the “so easy” options are:

(1) Partner Interest Interviews: Have a stack of short student surveys in English ready to hand out when an occasion like this presents itself. Any survey with about 10 questions will do, but you don’t want it to be too too long, because you probably don’t want to spend the rest of the period on it. You can find lots of student interest inventories on the internet, or you could make your own sets of questions. You might want to have a few versions so you can return to the same activity next time you need to create a smokescreen for Plan D. You can simply ask students to interview a partner and record their answers. You can use the responses in future lessons or just use them to get to know your students’ interests.

(2) Mysterious Person pictures: Ask students to draw a picture about themselves that you can use later as a fun Guided Oral Input activity - the Mysterious Person Game. You might “angle” the picture you ask them to make, to fit your current or upcoming cycle. For example, for Description, you might ask them to draw a place they love to go to relax, or a picture of their elementary school, or for Narration, you might ask them to draw a picture of a time they learned something new, or a time they were scared. Since the Mysterious

Person game is a guessing game of whose picture are we talking about, they should write their name on the

BACK of their paper. It’s best for the input when you eventually play the Mysterious Person Game if you tell them to include NO WORDS except maybe the names of places, people, and dates, if you think that would enhance the input. With the rest of the class occupied, you can now slip into the hall for that two to three minute chat.

When you approach the student out in the hall, you will want to use your body language to de-escalate and support a productive conversation that truly leads to change. So you will want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the student, not facing them in a confrontational posture. Mirror their body language. Lean on the wall if they are leaning on the wall, sit if they are sitting. Humans respond more positively to others who mirror their body language back to them.

You do not want to make eye contact with the student during this conversation. Look off into the distance, in the direction that the student is looking. You will now ask a memorized sequence of questions. This takes off a great deal of pressure, as you now simply need to focus on remaining calm, using a non-confrontational posture and a calm tone, breathing, modeling calm energy for the student to respond to, while asking them a series of memorized reflection questions. Here they are:

1. “What was happening?”

If the student says “I dunno” then simply ask again. Do not state the behavior. They need to state it. That way they can own it, and describe it from their perspective. If they say something snarky like, “I was just asking what you were saying!” that is OK, just proceed once they have acknowledged the behavior. Say,

“Thank you,” and mean it. The student is helping you, complying with your wishes even though they probably do not feel like it. This is big internal work for a child. Acknowledge it. Do not restate, put into “teacher language”, elaborate or add on or correct their response. Simply accept it, thank them, and move on.

If a student refuses to answer, say, “I will come back in a few minutes to see if you have an answer to this question.” Return to the room, leaving the child outside in the hall to reflect. Take deep breaths and remain as calm as always. Do not feed the student any nervous or anxious or angry energy. You want to simply exude calm, assertive, get-it-done energy. If they refuse to talk to you the second time you return, repeat that you will be back. If the third time you attempt to engage with the student, they still stonewall you, then you know that there is a much bigger problem at play here than just Spanish class. Leave them in the hall and follow up later, with administration and counselors and family involvement, if possible.

The majority of students, however, will answer the first time and we can move on to ask the next questions:

2. “How is that a problem for the class?”

Again, do not give up or accept a non-answer, but do thank them for their response. Do not add on, simply allow them to be correct in whatever they say, as long as it is an honest answer to the question.

3. “How is that a problem for me as your teacher?”

You will repeat the same type of interaction as in the first two questions.

4. “How is this going to be a problem for you if it does not stop?”

At this point the student will generally name the consequence they fear most. Generally, the students name calling parents, detentions, or office referrals. If they say, “We will talk in the hall some more,” tell them that this is the last time we will talk in the hall and inform them of a more appropriate consequence.

This sequence is worth studying and memorizing. Having all the steps ready to deploy is extremely soothing for your mental health and boosts your confidence. It is important that you not have to make those decisions when you are in your reptilian brain, and in fight or flight mode.

You will be so glad that you have invested the time to learn self-soothing mechanisms, such as deep breaths and positive self-talk - ways to get you back into a calm headspace so you can support the student in remaining calmer as well. You will also be glad that you have a memorized script to deploy in a mechanical fashion, taking the guesswork and nervousness out of an already-charged situation, having to confront students and correct their behavior.

By the time a student has pushed our classroom management to Plan E, it is time to reach out to principals and counselors. It’s really and truly time. You have done your due diligence, and now you need support. Many teachers reach out to the office when they should be doing Plans A through D. Working through these steps with your students maintains your leadership, builds relationships, and allows you to use these challenging behaviors as an opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your students. Most people tend to avoid conflict, but when it is unavoidable, working through it together in a respectful, collaborative way often actually strengthens your relationships.

You want to be the one who invests in relationships, not the principal or other staff. Will the principal come down and teach your class for the rest of the year? No. Highly doubtful, So, it is in your best interest to invest YOUR OWN time and emotional energy into Plans A through D, to build your class culture, since you will be living with this group for the rest of the school year. Plan E, getting outside help, is for those rare students who truly need more support than you can give in a classroom setting. These students have not responded to your very tight management plan. If you faithfully

implement Plans A, B, C, and D, paired with home contacts or support from the student’s coaches and other staff with whom the student has a relationship, then you will be able to winnow out the students who do not respond to calm, assertive, consistent leadership. Thus, you will be left with the students who need intense adult support. It is entirely appropriate at this point to call in extra support.

In fact, it is better than appropriate. It is a good thing. You are getting this student support that they really need. You might very well have unearthed those students who are living with so much pain that they need more services than they are getting in school. Thus, your management can be a community service. It helps the school system identify those students who simply cannot, because of the struggle that their lives are, be part of a community with a calm, centered leader.

If your student-centered curriculum, your focus on comprehension and SLOW, and your strong classroom management system do not support a student in being a successful, positive member of the class, then you have most likely identified a student who has substantial social-emotional needs. Getting this student some help is a real service to the student and the school community, and society at large. You will need to seek assistance from family, administration, counselors, coaches, other teachers, or all of the above.

The fortunate thing is that Plans A through D, plus “Sweating the Small Stuff” (below) create a classroom environment wherein only a very few troubled students will need that level of time-consuming intervention.

Routines, Procedures, and “Sweating the Small Stuff”

Jon Cowart, a Spanish teacher, Assistant Principal, and teacher trainer from Memphis, Tennessee, has urged teachers wanting to establish a productive, focused classroom environment to “sweat the small stuff” so that the class follows your leadership with confidence. This means not letting any deviation from the expected routines and procedures slip, ever. This means enforcing your rules, all the time, every time, for every student, all year. Even when it would be more convenient to overlook it. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even when you really, really like the kid. Even when the kid kinda intimidates you.

The magic of this approach is consistency, predictability, and fairness. So when we are establishing routines and expectations, such as how to enter the classroom, get paper, or prepare to be dismissed, we make sure

that we explicitly teach and model the procedure. And then every time a student deviates from the procedure, every time, we sweat it. We make the student re-do the procedure, we make a note of their infraction, and we follow up with discipline that progresses from a re-do to a brief talk after class, to seating change, to a call home, to a team meeting with the office, or whatever system works best for your school system.

Sweating the small stuff minimizes the big stuff. If a student knows that there is a consequence for not having a pencil when it is time to write, then they have less mental energy to focus on other naughtiness. They are too busy thinking, ‘Where’s that pencil I need?’”

For your more challenging classes, it is especially important to sweat the small stuff. The key is to be 100% fair and consistent, all the time, with everyone. Period. If kids think sometimes you might just “not feel like” enforcing the rules, then they will test you. This constant testing will wear you out. Better to invest the energy at the beginning of the year teaching them by example, that you will sweat the small stuff, every time. With everyone. Every day. It is even useful to make up extra-strict rules just for the training benefit of your students. For instance, I expect my students to straighten their chairs, pick up everything from the floor, and have silent voices and still bodies. I will wait, sometimes even with my eyes closed, until I feel deep in my bones that the class is at absolute attention. I then tell them a final message in English or the course language, if the group can handle that, and dismiss them.

I could just dismiss them when their voices were off. But I expect this sense of calm, quiet bodies too. Just for the discipline it provides following a difficult instruction. I also expect my students to always hold onto their written work unless they are pencil or clipboard helpers, and turn it into a turn-in box I am holding as they exit. This gives me a chance to ensure that everyone is turning in their work, and perhaps scan for quality and completeness as they hand it in. So on any day with written work, before I dismiss the class, I always look through the turn-in box to make sure that no unauthorized students have turned in their work early (they like to sneak it in so they can beat a more hasty retreat from class than their peers) and I make those kids come retrieve their o’er-hastily-turned-in work. This sends a message to the class. Don’t try to sneak.

Some of us need to train ourselves to be stricter than we even want to be, with these small things. I know I did. I really do not, personally, care all that much. But I have come to prize the leadership it develops in my teaching, when I choose some routines and procedures to “sweat” and enforce consistently and fairly, to train the class and give them a sense of achievement in controlling their behavior.

Student Engagement is the Best Classroom Management Tool

Really, for the majority of students, simply leading an interesting class is the strongest tool we have to ensure smooth classroom management. When students are engaged, they are easy to manage, as per the saying in sports that “the best defense is a good offense”. One key to engagement is to incorporate students’ lives and interests into the curriculum. Small Talk and Card Talk are superstars at that. One Word Images and personal stories, and Class or Community Surveys are excellent as well. There are many ways to incorporate students’ personalities and passions into the lessons in Stepping Stones; that is what they are, by and large, designed for.