The Classroom Behavior Manual

How to Build Relationships with Students, Share Control, and Teach Positive Behaviors

Scott Ervin

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781416630807
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Gestion du comportement

Positive student behaviors are desired outcomes, but this manual concentrates on inputs. How do you respond to difficult behavior in the moment when you know that punitive, compliance-based behavior management is so often ineffectual? What's the best way to prevent students from acting out in the first place? The path to success requires behavioral leadership, in which teachers strategically model and affirm the behaviors they want to see in students.

Behavior expert Scott Ervin calls on his two decades of experience to share the most effective procedures and strategies to foster positive, prosocial student behavior that supports learning, including ways to
* Organize your physical classroom to support positive classroom management.
* Build positive teacher-student relationships.
* Share control with students in a way that best fosters their autonomy.

The Classroom Behavior Manual is a resource you can return to again and again, packed with more than 100 strategies and dozens of procedures and tools. Learn how to respond to negative behaviors in nonpunitive ways so that you can ensure all students' school days are as calm, engaging, and educational as they possibly can be.

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Chapter 1

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A Dramatic Proposition

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Fifteen minutes into my first day of teaching, blood splattered across my face.

The day had started peacefully enough. I arrived to substitute in a 5th grade classroom. School started at 7 a.m., and my students for the day appeared to be sleeping. I began teaching, even though no one was listening. Things were going better than I had anticipated.

Then it happened.

While standing, chalk in hand, next to what we called a "blackboard," I heard a commotion somewhere outside the room. I turned quizzically toward my newly acquired students, and one boy in the front row rolled his eyes, exasperated with my slow comprehension, and explained the situation: "It's a fight."

I sprang into action, sprinting full speed out of the classroom and leaving 25 5th graders to educate themselves. Following the noise, I ran into a small, smelly room. I, a male substitute teacher on his first day, had just run into the girls' bathroom. So far, so good.

I immediately came upon two 6th graders. One girl was fully on her back, her legs furiously attempting to pedal-kick a long-limbed girl who had maneuvered around the kicking action and was enthusiastically beating the snot out of the first girl's face. Blood was flying everywhere, and as I grabbed Punching Girl's shoulders to pull her off Kicking Girl, an inexplicably large amount of blood flew from the fist of Punching Girl, landing on my face and neck.

Once I had separated Punching Girl from Kicking Girl, a female staff member walked into the room and yelled, "What the hell are you doing?!" Looking back, I think she might have been talking to me.

As I remember it, the staff member walked with the girls to the office and I went back to the classroom. I wiped the blood off myself with a dry paper towel and attempted to teach. I was never asked about the incident.

As it turned out, my adventure in the bathroom went only slightly better than the rest of the day. Strangely, my heroics in the girls' restroom did little to impress my newfound class. Mostly asleep before the fight, once I returned from my adventure, they had all woken up. A majority of the students refused to sit in their desks, or work, or be quiet, or be pleasant to each other, or not swear at me. Breaking up another fight in the classroom immediately before dismissal bookended the day nicely.

When I received the 4:30 a.m. robocall for a kindergarten substitute position the next morning, I gladly accepted. Fifth and 6th grade bathroom fight club officiating would have to wait, at least for a day. Kindergarten: how hard could it possibly be? Kindergartners were what, 5 years old?

My second day was going to be so much better than my first.

Like the previous posting, the school for day number two was in a rough part of town. Dilapidated homes and boarded-up storefronts surrounded a sturdy but aging school building. I checked in with an unenthused school secretary.

While the neighborhood and school office staff were less than welcoming, the kindergarten room, my home for the day, was like a scene from a Candy Land board game. It was fantastically colorful and well decorated. The space was perfectly clean and nicely organized. Exhaustive, detailed lesson plans were laid out neatly. They expressly described each moment of the day: how to turn in work, where to sit, how to line up for lunch. The day's materials were arranged at right angles on the teacher's desk and reading tables. Most important, there were clearly stated rules on the board next to a color-coded, card-based behavior chart, with each student's name printed neatly on a transparent plastic pocket holding three cards.

I had hit the substitute teacher jackpot. This was going to be a piece of cake! They had tested me the previous day, but the Gods of Education were smiling down upon me now. With every possible angle and loose end already taken care of by what appeared to be the best teacher in the history of the world, I casually perused the day's lesson plans before confidently leaning back in my chair and waiting for the day to begin.

Things began as I had hoped they would. Three rather timid small souls wandered through the door, wondering who I was and what I was doing there. This was a welcome, healthy reaction to seeing a substitute teacher in the classroom.

It was also the last normal event of the day.

A guttural yell worthy of a battlefield charge rang out as a child with an angry, furrowed brow barreled into Candyland. The complete lack of a reaction from the other students to this feral lunatic should have tipped me off as to what I was dealing with, but I immediately walked into the hallway and asked a teacher, whom I had not yet met, what had happened in the hallway to have triggered this student into exhibiting such rage. The teacher, looking confused, peered into my room and said, "Oh, that's just Robert."

I stared at the teacher, stunned.

"He's always like that."

It felt like the wind had been kicked out of my chest. And it was about to get worse.

"Just wait until you meet David."

You've got to be kidding me.

I didn't meet David right away. We started without him, which was a great relief, since Robert was walking around the room punching people, grabbing things out of their hands and throwing them. At one point, he and another student squared off, prizefighter style, in the corner of the room. I separated them. Keep in mind, I had not yet had time to introduce myself to anyone. I was too busy running around stopping kids from injuring each other or destroying the room. Robert's entry into the room seemed to have caused a switch to be flipped in the minds of the previously inert students. I had heard horror stories about teachers having to run around "putting out fires." I wasn't putting out fires. I was in the middle of a fire … and burning.

One boy kept yelling that he was about to "lose his mind up in here." One girl was crying hysterically for a reason that I could not begin to understand. It is possible that she had been punched in the face. There is a very good chance that I would not have noticed. There was too much going on to be able to know what happened. One boy acted as Robert's sidekick, walking next to him as he whispered excitedly in his ear. Robert was still yelling at the top of his lungs and still throwing things and punches. The well-crafted lesson plans lay neglected as I ran around the room and dove across desks to prevent child-on-child violence and property destruction. The secretary came over the loudspeaker to ask for the attendance that I had "forgotten" to send. I remember thinking, "If I turn to find the attendance paper, one of these kids is going to be killed."

Then David walked in.

Fantastic.

I will never forget how he walked into the room with a bizarre smile on his face, looked at me, then, like a moth to flame, still smiling broadly, went immediately to the only person doing her morning work in the room, took her paper, crumpled it up, and threw it in the garbage.

I began using both of my behavior management skills: screaming and yelling. Neither had any effect. David and Robert wandered around the room. Robert hurt people, and David took their stuff. Kids continued to cry, threaten, bait each other, and run out of the room. I tried pulling kids' cards. No one cared, except for one boy who, when I pulled his final card, quickly evacuated the classroom. Thank goodness, David was kind enough to go looking for him, even though I asked him to please, please God, not do that.

I called the principal to remove students four separate times that day. I could have called 30 times. By the third removal, she was not pleased. Each student would come back a half-hour after they left, and immediately go back to doing whatever it was that got them sent to the office in the first place.

I didn't get to more than 30 minutes of the beautifully crafted lesson plans that had been left by the teacher—a teacher for whom I now had a lot of questions. I believe that 15 of those minutes of instruction occurred during the brief period of time when both Robert and David were in the principal's office.

After seven of the worst hours of my life, the children were gone. I cannot fully express the amount of helplessness that one feels after attempting a job they always wanted to do and failing completely. The profound defeat was overwhelming—and was somehow made worse by the fact that the people who just defeated me were 3 feet tall.

I slowly shuffled out of the classroom and down the hallway. Tired, dehydrated, and done, I turned the corner into the office as the school secretary spoke. "Here's your sub now," she said to a woman with her back to me.

The leader of the class that had just ripped through my soul turned around. My first thought was that she looked like I felt. She was a young, tired-looking woman. I guessed that she was around my age. Her eyes looked sad and anxious as she clutched a water bottle while saying words that I didn't expect: "I'm so sorry."

She wasn't trying to be funny or flippant. She was expressing sincere empathy for what she knew I had just endured.

"What in the world just happened to me?" I exhaled. I put my hands on the counter between myself and the school secretary and slowly collapsed on top of the linoleum, extending my outreached arms across the counter. If I had not still been in shock, I think I might have started crying. "They were completely out of control. How in the world do you control those kids?" I asked.

She laughed a slow, sad laugh. "Who said I can control those kids? Your guess is as good as mine. I took today off for a mental health day. I'm just here for an Intervention Assistance Team meeting."

"How do you stay sane? Is it really like that every day?"

"I wasn't in there with you, but I am guessing it is pretty much the same. I'm sorry you had to deal with them today. I just needed a break. And I don't stay sane. This is my last year teaching. I'm quitting. I'm done. It's my second year. I have no idea how I'm going to make it to the end of the year. I taught 5th grade last year and it was horrible. I thought kindergarten would be easier, but it's not."

I was stunned.

"But your room, it's so perfect … you've got the rules up … and the cards … doesn't that stuff help?"

"It worked great for the first morning on the first day, and then all hell broke loose in the afternoon. I've been in hell ever since."

"What happened? What happened at the end of the morning that made them act like that?"

I got the idea that this question would have offended her if she had any kind of respect for me or my opinion. She let out what could be described as a cross between a sigh and an exasperated chuckle.

"You mean, what did I do to mess them up in my first three hours with them? Look, what you saw today—they came in like that. A lot happens to these kids before they show up on the first day of kindergarten."

I felt bad for asking the question, but I pressed on. I needed help. I wanted answers. "Can you tell me anything that actually works in getting these kids to do what they're supposed to do?"

She picked up a box of files and started walking toward the door as she spoke. "Look, I really am sorry to put you through what you went through today, and I don't want to be this negative. This isn't the person I want to be, which is why I'm getting out. But I have to be honest with you: nothing works."

"Nothing Works"

Those words haunted me, and with every day of the several months that I continued to work as a substitute teacher, they proved to be more and more correct. Every day, I failed to get students to be cooperative, no matter how much or how loudly I yelled. Every day, I saw the teachers and principals around me failing in very much the same way. Even the most experienced educators were often no better off than I was. Even those who were doing all of the right things to elicit positive behaviors—clearly stating rules, using consequences, having good lesson plans, praising positive behaviors, and having routines set up for how to manage the room—even those teachers had rooms that were out of control. It seemed that nothing was working for anyone.

During my master's program observations of different kinds of schools, suburban, rural, and private, I saw a similar dynamic. Students may not have been as difficult to control, but in every class, there always seemed to be at least one, but usually a few, "tougher" students for whom traditional discipline strategies were ineffective, and they often seemed to make the class's general behavior worse. These few students appeared to be able to take over most classrooms, leaving their teachers at a loss as to what to do.

"Nothing works." Even in the face of the mounting affirming evidence, I still wondered, how could this be true? After all, students had been around forever, teachers had been around forever, teachers who teach teachers to teach had been around forever, and the problem of having to get students to use positive, prosocial behaviors had been around forever. How could educators not know exactly how to get students to act in a way that made the classroom better, schools better, society better, and the students themselves better?

During the several months I spent in perhaps 20 different school buildings as a substitute teacher, and then the two years I taught in my own classrooms, I was determined to figure out what worked. To be clear, my open-minded curiosity had no impact on my own behavior management deficits. I continued to yell and attempt to intimidate my students, and every day I drove home defeated, exhausted, and distraught.

"These Kids …"

What made the situation more frustrating was that, almost every day, I was asking for advice for how to manage behaviors, just like I did on that second day of my teaching career. And when actual advice was given—something beyond "nothing works"—it was almost always the same, and it often started with the same two words:

"These kids …"

I was searching for how to manage the behaviors of all kids, but the answers I received to my questions were answers for how to manage a certain kind of student. As I was in a district that served a very high percentage of students who were poor and members of minority groups, what was being communicated was clear, and the advice was almost always similar: "These kids need to be dealt with sternly. … They don't get a lot of love at home, so they won't respond to it well at school. … Show them who is boss. … Get up in their faces. … Don't give them an inch. … They won't take you seriously unless you yell. … They only respect strength. … You have to be tough, or they'll run all over you."

In my interviews for teaching jobs, two years in a row, I was told by two different principals to "never smile in front of students." It was made clear to me that this was a condition of my employment.

Even then, I knew that these instructions on how to deal with "these kids" went directly against what we know about how human brains work. The human brain cannot effectively work, learn, and function when faced with fear and threats. The human brain cannot function until the organism in which it is vested has been able to establish a functional environment whereby the organism can have all safety, control, and love needs met.

Even then, I knew that this advice about "these kids" was classist and racist. I think we all did.

But we took the advice anyway. We took this advice for the same reason someone wandering for days in the desert will eventually drink the sand: there was no alternative. Behavior management advice given in college either didn't exist or was wholly inadequate to the point of being insulting. Write good lesson plans and there won't be any misbehavior? Really? Have consequences for misbehavior? Great. What do those look like? Praise students? Huh. Why do the most difficult students act worse when I praise them? Have routines for classroom tasks and clearly define rules? Great. What do I do when students refuse to follow rules and procedures? What then?

The terrible trick that is played on educators is that this ineffective behavior management advice is not only ineffective with all kids, it is particularly ineffective with "these kids." It is so unsophisticated, and so dismissive of the effects of trauma, that it is least effective with the students who need it the most! Tragically, this often leads educators to feel hopeless about their ability to help "these kids."

The ugly truth is that when this advice causes you to crash and burn over and over and over, most people, in their desperation to do the job that most of us have been dreaming of doing since we were kids—will take any advice offered, especially when everyone around us has that advice reinforced by principals and fellow teachers every day.

The truth is that we were all really good people doing very bad things to students. We had al...