Consistency: the key to classroom management

Where I have been??

I have so many pictures on my iPhone that I took for the purpose of sharing with you all. But the process of editing them all to stick a smiley face sticker over my kids' faces (for privacy purposes) has just seemed too time consuming. Maybe that will be a project over the next couple weeks.

It took most of the year but I recently realized that my class has finally settled into a good routine. Desks are not being thrown. People are not getting bitten. Braids are not being cut off. We've moved past all that. Yesterday, one of my students (she is being evaluated for Oppositional Defiance Disorder) was throwing a temper tantrum. She was knocking chairs over and hiding in the closet. It was then I realized that wow, this hasn't happened in ages.


She is not my only difficult student. Last year I had two. This year I have 10. And by difficult, I mean students that need constant attention regarding their behavior and constant redirection every single day.

Last year in South Carolina I worked in a Title 1 school in my hometown, a suburb of Charlotte. I had few behavior problems and was able to handle the ones that did occur in my classroom with no anxiety or stress. I knew a lot about classroom management from learning about best practices, studying Love and Logic, and hours spent reading The First Days of School by Harry Wong.

This year I've learned you never really know classroom management until you work in an innercity Newark school. A little background - my students are familiar with violence, gangs, and every one of them knows a family member or family friend who has been to prison or at least to jail. The attitudes and disrespect is something I never imagined but it is cultural - a method of survival within a difficult community.

When people ask what I do, I tell them I teach Kindergarten. Their usual response, "Awww." When they ask where and I tell them, they say, "Ooooh." To be honest, when I started my current job I was a little terrified.  Especially since I was coming into a classroom where the previous teacher had quit after only a week. At the beginning of the year, we had two students (one with special needs) who would literally walk out of our classroom whenever they felt like it. Our class has three doors so their are more doors than there are teachers to guard them. We have at least four students who didn't think twice about throwing furniture. Biting or hitting myself or my coteacher was not uncommon. Teeth sucking, eye rolling, and shoulder shrugging was the norm when we would give directions.

We've come a long way. I'm really proud of my students. They've shown SO much growth academically as they prepare to go to first grade. But what is really spectacular is the growth they've shown in behavior.

My co-teacher is awesome and she has a couple years experience working in Urban schools and has really been a role model for me in classroom management. When working with a difficult population you should think long and hard about your procedures at the beginning of the year and make a decision for what your consequences will be when they are not followed. This is important because your procedures need to become the "Bible" of your classroom. They are the law. And there are no exceptions.

This was difficult for me at first because I always believe in giving my students the benefit of the doubt. My class last year and I sat in a community circle and came up with our "class contract" together. And that was that. The consequences were consistent when the rules were broken but that rarely happened. This year, it happens every day.

We use a lot of songs as rituals in our class. We have a song we sing when we're lining up. When its over, the students are expected to be quiet in line. We have a song we sing when we move to circle on the carpet. When its over, the students are expected to be sitting quietly "criss-cross applesauce." These rituals are consistent and the students know the expectations when the song is over.

Whatever you decide what the consequences for poor behavior choices will be, you have to be consistent. If you expect your kids to keep their hands to themselves, there has to be a consequence for every child every single time they refuse to do this. If you expect students to be respectful, there has to be a consequence every single time this doesn't happen. Over the year, I've learned how important this is.

Building relationships with parents and families is key for consistency. If you tell a student you're going to call a parent and their behavior doesn't improve, you have to follow through. Part of consistency means never making a threat you can't keep. This goes hand-in-hand with having a relationship with parents so you have their support. I have a handful of parents that I can send a text to during the day if their child is not following directions or is being disrespectful and within a few minutes they will have taken a break from work so they can call and talk to their child. I've found that telling the parent you will call back at the end of the day to let them know if the behavior has improved is very motivating for the child. They're already in trouble but they know Mom or Dad will be much happier to hear they turned their day around. On more than one occasion, I've videotaped a student throwing a temper tantrum (hiding under tables, kicking chairs, etc.) and texted the videotape to their parents. While this may be extreme, I have learned that extreme time call for extreme measures.

While I'm so proud of how much my students have grown, I'm even more proud of how much I have grown this year. I feel like I can handle any kind of classroom management issues now. Its hard for me to even believe at the beginning of the year I felt a little intimidated by a group of five year olds. Children are strong willed and they can be stubborn. Part of being a consistent teacher is being even more strong-willed. The rules are the rules and everyone is expected to follow them. I'm proud of having these high expectations for behavior and I'm proud for following through on them. Teaching isn't just about academics. Part of teaching, arguably the most important part, is character development. This is especially true for the younger grades. Being consistent in behavior management is teaching skills that will make your children better students later on in school and more successful members of society, no matter how difficult it may be at the time.

What are your thoughts on classroom management?

"He ate my cupcake!"

Source: sweetpeonyblog.blogspot.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

In Kindergarten, we take our cupcakes very seriously.

Birthdays are a cause for celebration, especially when you've only had five or six of them. We had a birthday celebration for a little girl in my class last Wednesday. For birthday celebrations, we give the children a birthday hat to wear and a birthday card and pencil. Then, if parents want to come in and bring in a snack, they can come for the last half hour of the day. I'm glad our school still allows sweet birthday treats. While I'm all on board for making schools healthier, I can't say I'm a fan of limiting birthday treats to granola bars, fresh fruit, or muffins. When I was a child, my mom always brought in freshly baked funfetti cupcakes that we'd iced together the night before when it was my birthday and I loved it!

There are seventeen children in my class and the birthday girl's little brother came in to celebrate with her. That's eighteen children. There were eighteen cupcakes. One for everyone. Perfect!

Well, perfect until I look up from where I'm passing out baby wipes to wipe off sticky icing-covered fingers to see one of my students jump up out of his seat, fists clinched and shaking. Then he started screaming. Total, complete meltdown. And extremely worrysome because I have a number of students who have a difficult time controlling their anger and many of them, including this boy, have a tendency to be very violent.

I rush over, tell him to sit down and take a big breath and tell me what the problem is. Tears are streaming out of this child's eyes and he is shaking because he is so furious. He takes a big breath and then points to the little boy across the table and screams at the top of his lungs, "He ate my cupcake!"

I said, "Excuse me?" My co-teacher said, "Who did?" The little boy screams the name of the boy sitting across from him, his fists still shaking.

Sure enough, the little boy had licked the icing off of his cupcake, then gone to get a squirt of hand sanitizer and when he returned there was no cupcake on his desk. And the little boy sittings across from him was literally licking his lips after devouring another child's cupcake in one, swift bite.

My co-teacher escorted the cupcake-eater out of the classroom across the hall to complete a think sheet - where he draws a picture of what he did wrong, then discusses his behavior with an adult in another classroom and comes to a conclusion about what he should do next time, and then draws a picture of how he could have better handled the situation.

I do think the boy should have been removed from the "party" because of his behavior and that taking a moment to refocus was necessary but I don't feel like it really remedied the situation. This was a classroom management situation that had no truly successful outcome and no solution. Yes, the boy who stole the cupcake was punished. Would he do it again? Absolutely (this is the same child who bit me and drew on my pants with sharpie after all.)

Most importantly, though, the cupcake was gone. The other little boy never did get to eat a cupcake. There were no extras, not even one for me and my co-teacher that we could have given him. I offered him a leftover bite sized snickers bar from our Halloween celebration and that did seem to help a little and at least he got a treat with everyone else. But it was no cupcake. And in Kindergarten, we take our cupcakes very seriously.

Top 5 Most Memorable Moments of the School Year (thus far)

It is only late October so I'm sure I'll have many more memorable moments with my Kindergarteners but I'd like to take this opportunity to write down a few. These aren't necessarily the fun, happy moments that come along with teaching five year olds but they were definitely moments I want to remember.

I'll start out by saying that I love my class. I love them because they are my students and I spend all day every day with them and we do lots of fun things together. However, they are a challenge. They are the biggest challenge I've ever had when working in a classroom setting.

5. When one of my five year olds told another to "Shut the f* up!" after a disagreement over a crayon and a miniature cat fight ensued. Our little girls are so tough. Honestly, I think I could use a lesson or two from them sometimes. Pink crayons in our classroom are in high demand for some reason and two little girls were arguing over using the pink crayon at their table. This escalated to one of the girls making a comment about the others' hair, which caused the other girl to stand up, break the pink crayon in half, and yell, "Who cares? You just shut the f* up!"

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4. When we went outside for a special program that emphasizes the importance of play and one of my little boys lost his pants. They literally fell down and he was running around in his spongebob underpants. Now, these type things happen in Kindergarten. They just do. What made it so funny is that my class has a couple "runners." These are kids that don't come when you call them, run the other direction, and basically always think you're playing a game of tag with them. And this little boy is one of my runners so he was running around for almost five minutes in his underpants trying to make sure none of the teachers or students tried to catch him! What makes in ever more hilarious is that this is an urban school in the middle of a city so there are passersby the play area all the time and everyone who walked by saw a five year old darting around the field with three teachers calling him to put his pants back on!

3. When a student drew a red line down the seat of my pants. In Sharpie. Honestly, this isn't that big of a deal. Clothes get ruined when you work with small children. But I will definitely remember this day. The little boy is generally up out of his seat doing something he's not supposed to. On this day, he was sitting in his seat because the children were doing a math activity where they could use the dry erase boards and they love those! This little boy didn't want to complete the activity so he drew with his marker on the table, on the person sitting next to him's forehead, on the computer screen. Finally, my co-teacher took away his dry erase marker. She literally pried it from his hands. This really upset him so he went over to the desk, found a red sharpie, and waited until I was squatting down talking with another group and until my co-teacher was out of the classroom trying to find one of our runners. Then, he came up behind me and quickly drew a red mark right down the center of my pants. On my butt! By the way, to my knowledge Sharpie does not come out of the khaki editor pant by Express. If you know a remedy, please leave it in a comment. Lessons learned: be more aware of what's going on behind me (I seriously need six sets of eyes so that I can provide individualized instruction to the kids who need it but also monitor the classroom for potential Sharpie marker attacks.

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2. The time a little boy cut a little girl's braid off. This was a very big problem. We were creating a fall craft in response to the fall unit and writing sample we'd just completed. The kids were so into this and loving it and the lesson was going so well! Both my co-teacher and I were busy working with the different groups in our classroom. I had just left the group where the little boy was sitting. He wasn't exactly following directions but he was basically on-task and giving it a good effort. The next thing I know he is chasing another little boy around the room with scissors. This little boy has a history of some pretty violent behavior so this is a serious problem. Both my co teacher and I immediately try to intervene and get the scissors from him before he stabs someone but before we do, he makes a quick snip and a braid falls to the floor. He smiles and sits the scissors down immediately and the little girls is, understandably, in tears.

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1. The most memorable day of my job happened during my first week. It was also the same day my iPhone got stolen and destroyed and when I had a flat tire and waited for two and a half hours for AAA to come. Perhaps the little incident that started my day wouldn't be so memorable if it hadn't been a catastrophic day all around. We'd just had a classroom management workshop the evening before to learn some new techniques specific to urban school environments. What was memorable about that workshop was a.) when the instructor told us we just had to face the fact that some of our students were meant to go to jail and b.) ignoring problem behaviors and praising positive ones yields results. Afterwards, we were encouraged to start using the "ignoring" strategy with one specific student in our class who often caused disruption, and usually for attention seeking puposes. The next morning my co-teacher is teaching literacy and I am preparing for my own lessons and checking homework and parent communication folders. The student was not participating in literacy. He was walking around the room, pretending to call people on the phone, playing on the teachers' computer, dumping math manipulatives on the floor. Basically anything that would usually get him attention and disrupt our who group mini lesson. It was so difficult to ignore these behaviors because I really wanted to redirect him to make a better choice, however I was trying to take the advice of the management specialist. The child climbed under the table where I was working. He reached for children's books in their bins and starting bending the pages. He tried to climb into my lab but my legs were already crossed. None of these things were getting him any attention but he kept trying. About that time I thought maybe, as skeptical as I was, ignoring all these behaviors might be the right thing to do. Maybe it really was learned behavior for the purpose of attention seeking. Then, the little boy bit me!

While things are getting a little more stable in the classroom and we're starting to learn strategies that help  specific students, we still don't have the management down. I've never worked in a classroom that was so difficult to manage. Luckily my co-teacher is phenomenal and she has all kinds of strategies from urban school workshops and seminars that vary slightly from what I learned in school and what has worked for my previous classes. Its a journey and we're still working everything out but it is a struggle at times. Teachers - what are your best classroom management strategies?