Three Questions That Lead To More Effective Classroom Management

My experience teaches me that classroom management is more about the adult's response to situations than it is about the situations themselves.  If we can condition our response to stressful situations in the classroom, I believe we can generally control most any situation that may arise.  However, in order to condition our responses, we must first condition our thoughts.  With this in mind I identified three questions to ask myself prior to responding.

1. Am I about to make this situation better or worse?  Is what I am about to do going to increase the volatility or am I about to deescalate the situation?  When entering into a volatile situation our response will either serve as gasoline and exacerbate the flames or as water and douse the flames.  It is my experience that our first response in these situations is often not the best choice, thus I suggest asking this very simple question prior to any action.

2. What is the context that produced this behavior?  The key to solving a problem is completely understanding the problem.  Many of the challenging situations we deal with at school are not directly related to something that occurred at school.  More often than not the student is dealing with some unresolved issue from outside of school or something happened at school that was simply the catalyst that pushed them over the edge.  It is key to ask the right questions in order to understand the context that produced the undesired behavior.  Only then can we begin addressing the negative behavior and then assist the student in overcoming the challenge they are facing.

3. Is this about me?  Sometimes it is us or something we have done or said, and this presents the greatest challenge.  It is very easy to make it "personal" in this type of situation and this will only serve to make it worse.  Even the most self-aware people have a difficult time objectively examining their behavior when they are in the moment.  Faced with this type of situation I attempt to "shelve" the issue for the moment; that is, I want to give both of us a chance to settle down before delving into what I did to bring about the situation or what I did to make the situation worse.  It is best to utilize the ten-second rule in this type of scenario.  The ten-second rule is as follows: do not engage the student for period of time longer than ten seconds during a redirection in front of the class.  This rule has saved me from making colossal mistakes numerous times.

I believe asking yourself these three questions will save you a great deal of time and trouble in the classroom.  Changing our response to stressful situations is simply changing our habits.  In order to change our habits, we must first change the way we think about a situation and this takes time and practice.  Have a great week!