If you’re a teacher, you probably already know that being consistent is very important to classroom management.
And. . . you also probably struggle with being consistent.
In the 20 years that I’ve been working with teachers, I’ve found that the best way to make classroom management advice work is to break it down into three steps.
- First, why it actually is good advice in the first place.
- Second, why it’s sometimes easier said than done.
- And third, how to make it easier to do.
Being consistent, on the most basic level, is just this: if you say you’re going to do something, you do it.
- If you tell a kid that you’re going call their parent if they keep misbehaving, you call the parent.
- If you say, “I don’t call on students unless they’re raising their hands quietly,” you don’t call on a student who’s not raising their hand quietly.
- If you promise students a pizza party if they get a hundred compliments in the hallway and the paper-loop compliment chain” reaches all the way across the classroom wall, they get that pizza party eventually.
Here’s a breakdown of the specific reasons why it’s a good idea to be consistent in your classroom.
Students have a finely-tuned “fairness radar.”
I would argue maybe so do adults.
And there is some evidence that other primates like gorillas even respond to unfairness at a certain level.
But back to the kids: they respond better to rules that apply to everyone, and they like when promises are kept.
Rules Need to Mean Something
Students who are following the rules want to know that you know who’s not following the rules.
And if they’re following the rules, they want to feel like the rules mean something.
On the flip side, there are students who get in trouble a lot. If they see that a student who gets in trouble less often than them also sometimes gets a consequence for not following rules, they have a better chance of knowing that you just haven’t decided you don’t like them—that you are just there to enforce the rules.
There’s something a little bit obvious about why it’s a good idea to do what you say.
In fact, few people would disagree that it is good for all of these things to happen in your classroom
You undoubtedly mean to be the type of teacher who does all of these things.
However, being consistent can be easier said than done.
Why Being Consistent Is Easier Said Than Done
Here are three big reasons.
Students Don’t Have Consistent Needs
Sometimes one student, for whatever reason, takes up way more of your attention and energy than most of the other students in the class.
You may even have students with diagnosed behavioral disorders who have trouble controlling their behavior.
In any case, there can be situations where it’s hard to know if you should hold a specific student to the same standard.
Students Don’t Have Consistent Behavior
Some students behave so well, so much of the time that if they break a rule, there’s a part of you that wants to let it slide.
Especially if you know it’s the first offense.
Maybe they’re having a bad day! It’s so easy to just let them get away with it.
At the same time, you don’t want to seem like you’re favoring anyone.
You may even have moments where you’re tempted to really give a consequence to a normally well-behaved kid just to show the students who get in trouble more often that it’s not just them.
Let’s be honest: You’re Not So Consistent Yourself
You of course want to be fair!
But you’re human.
You get tired. you get distracted. There are a million things happening at once.
Sometimes you can’t respond to everything you see.
And sometimes you don’t see everything that happens.
How to Make Being Consistent Easier to Do
So how do you make it easier to be consistent in your classroom?
First, please notice that I’m not asking how can you be better at being consistent.
New Year’s resolution style promises don’t usually work; Giving yourself an ongoing guilt trip about how important something is will not make you do it in the long term.
We want to make this easier to do because it’s important—but also because you’re going to be just as human tomorrow as you were yesterday.
If you want to keep your promises, one way you can do that is to promise fewer things.
If a student has been misbehaving in class, instead of saying “I’m going to call your parents, I’m going to call your parents, I’m going call your parents. . . ” maybe don’t tell them you’re planning call their parents.
Just call at the end of the day.
Or, if you don’t get to it or the number doesn’t work, or the parent isn’t home, the kid isn’t in your class tomorrow like, “You said you were gonna call my parents and you didn’t.”
On the flip side of that, maybe don’t promise a pizza party if you’re not, in the end going to do a pizza party.
Or in my case: that story about the paper loop compliment chain is very personal because when I taught fourth grade, I promised my students a pizza party if they got enough compliments in the hallway for the paper loop chain to reach across the room.
Then what happened?
It turned out I had to stand on a chair at the end of each day to staple these paper chain loops together, and I just never got around to doing that.
After a few months, I had a shelf with maybe 30 compliment loops on it waiting to be put up, and a sad, sad paper loop chain with maybe five loops on it.
Needless to say, it never reached across the room. And the kids never got a pizza party.
So don’t be that teacher, which is me.
If you haven’t promised or threatened anything in the first place, you didn’t lose credibility. And you didn’t break a promise.
The same thing applies to classroom routines.
Let’s say you tell students you’ll be rearranging their seats every nine-week grading period.
Then, little by little, those intentions fall away and you may stop doing them.
What if you just hadn’t made the announcement?
There’s no reason not to have a note in your own calendar to do this, but the students don’t need to know your intended schedule.
Students need to know the things that is relevant to them day to day.
And even on that, sometimes they’ll follow your lead, so you don’t have to make an announcement every time you change things a little bit.
It’s (Sometimes) Okay to Pretend You Didn’t Notice Misbehavior
Teachers don’t actually have eyes on the backs of their heads.
And because you’re already missing some types of misbehavior, students won’t always know if you’re just pretending not to notice something.
If an offense is not that serious and you just can’t deal with it right now, it might actually better if the kids just think you didn’t notice it.
That way you’re not being inconsistent.
They just think their classmate got away with something and maybe he or she won’t next time.
This is not recommended for every situation, and it can be overused. but it is an option and you should keep that in mind.
Remove Friction from your Classroom Routines
Another way to make things easier to do is just to literally make them easier to do!
If there are extra steps in keeping up with a classroom routine, try to eliminate some of those steps.
My complement chain fail was a good example of this: At least part of the reason I fell so behind on adding loops to that compliment chain was that I had to stand on a chair at the end of the day.
When the time came, I was already tired and already had so many other things to do. Adding those loops was just so far down the priority line, that even though it wasn’t that big of a deal to stand on a chair. . . it kinda was.
After all, when was the last time you got something out of your attic? Or the back of your closet? Or your basement? Or your garage?
When was the last time you left a store to go back to your car to go get a reusable shopping bag you’d left in your trunk?
These little steps of friction really can be the difference between a tired person being consistent or not.
So if you can remove a step from a common classroom routine, remove it.
Turn Follow-Up Into Classroom Jobs
Another thing to try: turn follow-up into classroom jobs.
As a teacher you have countless jobs each day.
But kids often enjoy being helpful, and there are a lot of jobs that a student who’s focused only on that job can actually do better than an overwhelmed teacher who’s adding one more thing to their plate.
A good example of this is the jobs in a kindergarten class.
In kindergarten, there’s often a student whose job it is to just change the date on the classroom calendar. This is obviously a challenge that the typical teacher can handle. But if the teacher has to do this every single day, it’s probably going to say the wrong date on that calendar sometimes.
This is what I wish I’d done with that compliment chain.
I should have moved it down so I didn’t have to stand on a chair.
That would have eliminated friction.
But what I also should have done was start a contest in which, when we got back to the classroom after getting a hallway compliment, whoever remembered that the complement loop needed to go on the complement chain would get to get out of their seat and go staple it.
This would have been a built-in reward for helping me remember this task. And it would be completely off my plate
It would have gotten done consistently without me having to be better at being consistent.
You getting better is technically always possible, but it’s often not the best option.
Getting better at things is hard!
A lot of us are working pretty close to the capacity that we can maintain most of the time.
Get Enough Sleep
Another thing that can help you be more consistent: get enough sleep. A well-rested person doesn’t get as distracted, isn’t as forgetful, and doesn’t overreact as often to frustrations. And all of those things are part of consistency.
And finally, give yourself credit and forgiveness.
Being more consistent is a work in progress.
It’s not something you are or you’re not.
It’s something that you’re always striving for and always falling a little short.
That’s why even aiming to be as consistent as you can every day is a consistent practice.
I break down all of the most common pieces of classroom management advice in my free classroom management troubleshooting guide. I will also be covering some of these topics in upcoming posts, so feel free to subscribe and stick around. And if there is a piece of teaching advice that you’d like me to break down into three parts like this, please answer any email and let me know! I’ll try to address it in a future post, email, or video.