Behavior Management Strategies to Try in your Classroom Today

All teachers (and humans for that matter) have varying perceptions of what they deem “problem” or “challenging” behavior. Our own perceptions of behavior are influenced by our values, background(s), cultural standards, and values about what constitutes “normal behavior.” Additionally, the context in which the behavior occurs influences our view of its “appropriateness” (e.g., it’s okay to scream outside but students are expected to use ‘inside’ voices when in the classroom; it’s okay to browse the Internet at home but not during a lecture; etc.).

There are likely an incalculable number of factors influencing the appearance of “challenging” behaviors in the classroom. While by no means an exhaustive list, some commonly identified influences include:

· Management/discipline approaches

· School and home environments

· Social and cultural values of the family

· Social and economic conditions of the community

· Expectations and responses of peers and others

· Emotions and other internal events

Before presenting information on the strategies, two important caveats. First, behavioral events can involve high levels of emotions, anxiety, and/or anger focused on a specific person (maybe even YOU). We face these events with our own emotions; teachers need to display calm, compassion, and support for students in face of excitement, apathy, and refusal to cooperate. Second, behavior change is not easy! Many students have engaged in challenging behaviors for years because the behaviors continue to work (e.g., they want to avoid a math assignment, they curse or rip up the paper, and they get to avoid the assignment by being sent to the office). Given these long histories, teachers’ goals should be small, meaningful changes over time. I’ve often told the pre-service teaches I work with to implement an intervention for a minimum of 2 weeks before assessing its effectiveness through data.

Strategy 1: When Behaviors Occur, Be A Detective

While the occurrence of “challenging” behavior may be districting, disruptive, and annoying for the teacher, some important information can be gleaned from the event to help you plan proactively for the future. Once you’ve had time to address the behavior and have given yourself some space from the emotions associated with the behavior, ask yourself the following questions:

· What was going on around the students? (Did something in the environment change?)

· What happened just before the behavior? (Other student, teacher(s), etc.)

· What happened immediately following the behavior? (What did I do? What did other students do? What happened to the student?)

· Why might the student be engaging in this behavior? (attempting to escape something or someone, attempting to access something or someone, etc.)

Keeping a log of the behavioral events can be an incredible powerful tool to identify consistent patterns in the behavior, triggers, responses, etc. By focusing on before, during, and after the behavior you can gain an idea of what’s happening right now and then try something!

Strategy 2: Increase Your Positive Interactions with Students

The daily, minute-by-minute student interactions play a powerful role in shaping teacher-student dynamics in the classroom. Teachers can choose to engage in generally “negative” or “positive” ways in response to student behavior. Negative interactions could include verbal attention, scolds, reprimands, or removal from the classroom. Additionally, teachers often rely on coercives such as pleading, threatening, or arguing with students. The use of such negative interactions typically gets the challenging behavior to stop, albeit usually just temporarily. These interactions can also cause the student to escalate to more serious or intense behaviors.

Positive interactions, on the other hand, can include general or behavior specific praise, positive teacher attention, tokens, contingent privileges or rewards, etc. By providing a focused positive, teachers hope to increase the likelihood that a desired behavior will be repeated in the future. For example, a teacher hoping to increase their positive interactions with students could consciously work on looking for more students engaging in the correct behavior (e.g., “catch them being good”), and provide a highly-valued object or privilege as a reward.

As demonstrated in that short example, increasing classroom positives focuses staff and students on desired behaviors, fosters positive classroom climates, and reduces the need for engaging in time-consuming disciplinary actions. I tell my pre-service teachers to imagine their attention is like a hundred-dollar bill. You want to make sure you’re providing your attention thoughtfully and carefully, focused on behaviors you want to see occur more often. See the table below for more examples of other positive classroom interactions.

Justin loves talking about classroom management and supporting pre-service and in-the-field professionals. He enjoys delivering targeting professional development in both in-person and virtual settings. Use the Contact page to reach out to Justin about having him talk to your students or teachers today!