One of the biggest challenges plaguing teachers in the classroom today is developing (and implementing) classroom management strategies that actually WORK. The amount of inappropriate behavior and classroom management issues that we are currently seeing is at an all-time high. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that 87% of schools reported that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected classroom behaviors, student learning, and social-emotional development.
This disruptive behavior is making us crazy. It’s so hard to keep a positive attitude when it feels like your entire class is struggling with previous best practices. Effective teachers are questioning their careers and first-year teachers feel like they are drowning. Classroom rules feel useless and lesson plans are constantly getting derailed by student behavior.
This is leading everyone struggling to find classroom management techniques that encourage good behavior and a positive classroom culture, yet also setting boundaries within the learning environment to see student achievement skyrocket.
Easier said than done?
The best classroom management strategies that worked just a few years ago are null and void with students today. We simply have a different student in front of us now. It’s important to find an effective way to meet them where they are, but it’s like no one is talking about what that looks like.
Build positive relationships!
Keep them engaged bell to bell!
Use a class reward!
Sound familiar?
These overused suggestions do not help set expectations for successful classroom management…they merely shame even veteran teachers into (falsely) thinking they cannot control their classrooms like successful teachers are.
And THIS, friends, is what is chasing people out of our profession.
The classroom has brought us challenges every year since there’s been public education. However, the support you receive to overcome these challenges is what matters. Having someone help walk you through effective classroom management strategies (AND be willing to troubleshoot with you) is the best way to grow.
Why are most of us missing this piece?!
The classroom setting for individual students
It’s no secret that struggling students are also missing the social skills we have seen in students past. The learning process is different, students’ attention is different, even effective positive reinforcement is different. We know we want a positive classroom environment, but when we’re seemingly struggling for students’ respect because they know that the authority figure of your school won’t follow through with effective discipline, it feels like our classroom expectations are just thrown out the window.
It doesn’t matter if you teach younger students, middle school, or are a high school teacher: having a classroom management strategy that is intertwined with effective classroom management systems THAT WORK for this generation of students is an absolute necessity in this climate for new teachers and seasoned teachers alike.
Subject areas don’t matter. Focusing on students’ hard work and effective classroom procedures and different strategies, sprinkled with the powerful tool of teacher-student relationships is the only way you will have great success nipping such behavior and making class time effective again (just like it used to be).
The L.E.A.R.N. Method
The last thing any teacher needs is one more thing to do.
It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place: you don’t have time to do something new, but what you’re doing isn’t working.
The L.E.A.R.N. Method helps you to employ different classroom management strategies to promote positive behavior, elevate student success, and align your teaching style for social-emotional learning. It focuses on 5 areas of student effectiveness:
➡️ Lifestyle
➡️ Education
➡️ Attitude
➡️ Response
➡️ Natural
By pinpointing each of these areas through the appropriate lenses, the students will respond. The teachers who are using this method are reporting fewer class disruptions, better behavior, and a new outlook on teaching that is beneficial to everyone (that means you, too).
The best part? It won’t take hours of professional development or weeks of planning to implement.
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