MTT

Today while I was at Meyer Middle School, while the teachers met for their daily team meeting, the big issue that was discussed was a group of 4 students, in this case they happened to be boys, that were consistently being disruptive in class. Not only are they deterring from their own learning, but they have also been distracting and disruptive to other students. All of the core teacher felt strongly that something needed to be done to alter the behavior of these boys. Mark, the assistant principal, who used to be a teacher himself, shared a technique that he used in his classroom. This approach had three steps, the first was to walk over and stand beside the disruptive student, which would be considered the students first warning. The second step was to walk over to the student, stand in their personal space, and calmly and quietly whisper in their ear what they are doing wrong and what will happen if they continue this behavior. The last step would that if the student did not change their behavior, the teacher would point to the door, and the student would know that this gesture meant that they needed to go to the office. The teachers all agreed that this would be an appropriate technique to use with these students, and in fact they even called each of the boys that they were having such difficulties with into the team meeting and explained this new procedure to them, and that their behavior will no longer be tolerated in the classroom. Mark also explained these 3 steps to the students and that he expects that he expects them each to change their behavior because it has gone on for too long, and the teachers have been more that patient with them thus far. Mary also explained, not to the students but to the other teachers, that when she got a report from a substitute that the students were all disruptive and talkative the entire class, that the following day she had her students open their planners to the section on student rights and responsibilities. She had them read out loud the statement that teachers have a right to teach, and each student has the right to learn, and explained to them that by being so disruptive, they took this right away from everyone. I thought that both of these techniques were great classroom management strategies that I would like to implement in my classroom. Has anybody else heard or seen any good classroom management techniques that they find might be useful?