What is Classroom Management, Really?

When you boil classroom management down to its essence, it really is just two things.

1. A set of decisions that a teacher has made in advance.
2. A system for getting students to go along with those decisions.

In a well-managed class, a lot of problems stop before they even start.

Part of the reason is that many of the decisions that come up every day have already been pre-made by the teacher and taught to students.

Here are some examples of decisions that might have been pre-made by a teacher and pre-taught to students in a well-managed classroom.

• When and how students should ask for help with their work.
• What students should do when the teacher is busy and cannot help them.
• How students should show that they want to answer a question and how to act when other students are answering questions.

There are a lot of possible right answers for how you can handle any of the procedures above.

When it comes to students answering questions, for example:

• Maybe you pick a Popsicle stick with different students’ names on it each time to keep everyone on their toes.
• Maybe they write their answers on dry erase boards and hold them up.
• Maybe you just call on them old school, whoever’s raising their hand,
• Maybe they think of the answer silently until the teacher asks the whole class to call out the answer at the same time.

All of those can work as long as they line up with your classroom priorities.

The best way to set up a classroom routine or procedure is to pick an issue that comes up often in your classroom.

Make a decision about it. t

Then find a system that lines up with that decision and adjust through trial and error.

Do you also have to figure out how you’re going to enforce these routines if students refuse to follow them? For sure.

But your first step is to figure out what you want to happen in your classroom.

To improve your classroom management starting tomorrow morning, here are the steps I recommend.

These are the basic steps that I walk teachers through in my free classroom management troubleshooting guide, which you can find linked below.

• First, make a note of an issue that comes up regularly in your classroom.
• Second, make a set decision about how to deal with this issue.
• Third, turn that decision into a rule or routine and teach it to your students.
• And fourth, enforce that rule or routine to the best of your ability.

Then, make thoughtful adjustments as needed over time throughout the rest of your teaching career. (Just because this can be summarized simply doesn’t mean it’s easy.)

You’ll never be perfect.

You will get better.​