When Your Classroom Management Goes Off the Rails

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Listen to my interview with Claire English (transcript)

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The year started off beautifully: You had your routines in place, made your expectations clear, and for a while, your students were behaving just fine. You were teaching right along, getting things done, and then it started to crumble. Little by little, the kids got noisier and more distracted, the classroom started to get chaotic, you found yourself yelling more, running out of time for planned activities, and generally feeling completely run down. 

It can happen to the best of us — classroom management deteriorating over time. But don’t despair: By figuring out where the problems are, you can turn things back around.

My guest on the podcast is Claire English, who runs an incredible platform called The Unteachables, where she hosts a podcast, courses, and a membership program all in the service of helping teachers manage their classrooms with confidence and calm. (Learn more about these at the end of the post!)

On top of all that, she published a book this year called It’s Never Just About The Behaviour: A Holistic Approach to Classroom Behaviour Management (Amazon | Bookshop). I have been bingeing her fantastic content on Instagram for the last year and was thrilled to finally be sitting down with her for a chat.

In the episode, Claire talked about three reasons why classroom management can fall apart midway through a school year, and what teachers can do to get things heading back in the right direction. You can listen to our conversation in the player above, read the full transcript here, or browse the highlights below.

The Big Picture: Your Classroom Management Has Slipped

“I want to start by saying this is so common,” English says. “I think most people can relate to the whole idea of, oh my gosh, I’ve started the year, I’ve gone gung-ho with my expectation-setting and I’ve got this in the bag for the year. But then the consistency starts to slip and as the year goes on, things can get a little bit more challenging. And there are a few things that I always talk about with teachers when this starts to happen.”

Problem Area 1: Inconsistent Reinforcement of Expectations

“Students are constantly pushing boundaries,” English begins. “At the start of the year, they’re like, I don’t really know, miss or sir, like I don’t really know what they’re all about. I’ve heard their expectations, and they sound like they’re serious, but let’s see how this goes. And then as the year goes on, they start pushing and pushing. And if you aren’t meeting them there at that place, and if we’re not reinforcing those expectations, those boundaries in the day-to-day, then things will little by little start to get more difficult to handle as the year goes on.”

Solution: Re-establish your expectations mid-year and start over with fresh consistency.

Full disclosure — I cut Claire off in our conversation before she had a chance to offer a solution (insert cringe emoji here), so I’m making my best guess based on my own experience. There’s no reason why you can’t treat the 65th day of the school year like it’s the first day. Have a quick meeting with students the way you would on day one, explain and establish the expectations, and then move forward with consistency this time. And be prepared to be tested — students will absolutely try to assess whether you actually mean business this time.

[I emailed Claire after publishing this post and she gave my advice the thumbs-up. She added this: “YOU are steering the ship. No matter what things have been like throughout the year, you are in the position to press that reset button and do things differently! This is the process I use to set (and RESET) expectations at any point in the year.]

The next section should help with that.

Problem Area 2: Being Approachable When We Should be Credible

When we engage with our students, we can come across as credible or approachable. Some teachers lean too far in the approachable direction. Learning how to balance the two — when to embody one or the other — can lead to much better classroom management. English learned this concept from nonverbal communication expert Michael Grinder.

“The credible is when we practice more stillness,” she explains. “It’s not about having a sour face on. It’s not about giving the teacher look out over the glasses. Our pace is slower. We’re weighted evenly on both feet. And the message we’re sending when we’re in this teaching presence is I’m serious, and I’m credible, and I mean business, and we’re going to be learning. This is a place of learning.”

The other presence is approachable. “We’re looser, we’re louder, we’re more casual, we’re faster,” English says. “You know, you might get frazzled, you might say things like Come on, guys. You need to be listening.”

Most teachers have a mix of both; getting the balance right is the real trick, and if you’re leaning more toward approachable at times when credible would be more effective, that can create a chaotic environment.

English has observed that some teachers tend to embody the approachable stance too often because they don’t want to sacrifice relationships. “A lot of teachers will say I feel uncomfortable when I’m, you know, trying to be furious in that part of the lesson, and I feel like I want to be a teacher who’s really kind and compassionate, and I want to build good relationships. So I don’t want to tarnish that. But when you are credible, you are not sacrificing the relationship.”

Solution: Start leaning more into the “credible” stance at times when you need students to take you seriously.

“This is not to say that you need to be 100 percent credible and you have to be this strict, stern person,” English says. “It just means knowing this is a tool, this is a strategy, this is being able to be really cognizant of the messages you’re sending through your body language. And your body language is either saying, Now is the time to have a chit chat and relax a little bit or We need to get down to work.”

Problem Area 3: End-of-Term Unraveling

“At the end of the year, things are going to start getting a little bit more challenging,” English says. “And it’s on both sides of the spectrum. There could be a lot of apathy, so you might get less out of some students, you might have them coming to class late. You might hear a lot of, But why are we still doing this? We’ve done our exams. You know, all that kind of stuff. And then you might have real high energy classes. You might have more of the chatty behaviors. You might have students who are just really hard to get on task, really hard to get that buy-in.”

Solution: Stick even more closely to your routine.

“The first thing is just stay super consistent with your routines until the very end. I’m not saying you can’t watch that movie or whatever task you want to do. I’m just saying, the power is in the predictability. They need to be met with something that’s really consistent and predictable because that’s going to help to mitigate the behaviors that you are seeing a rise in, and across the school they’re seeing unpredictability. They might be doing a fun activity here. They might be doing a sports activity there. So if you can be that consistent, predictable island of safety for your students and still have all those lovely routines, then you can break out something in the middle of the lesson and that’s okay. Do a starter. Do what you’ve always done. And then you can kind of swap up the middle.”

Another Solution: Have energy regulation tools on hand.

Because some students will be apathetic while others will have excessive energy, it helps to be equipped with strategies to up-regulate or down-regulate that energy when needed. “You’re going to be reading the room a lot when it comes to the end of the year,” English says. “Things are super unpredictable, the energy’s unpredictable, and it’s all about having some tools at a pinch to help you get to the end of the year.”

For times when apathy kicks in, “I just have a bunch of classroom games,” she says. “Read the room and just know when to throw in a brain break. Know when to go, You know what, everybody? I can see things aren’t going too well. Stand up. We’re going to do a game. Pick a card out of this bunch and let’s choose what game to do together today. So that helps to refocus, but it also gets students up and moving when needed.”

At other times the energy levels need to be brought down. For these moments, English keeps a collection of mindfulness exercises. “So, you know, guided meditation, a bit of chair yoga. Sometimes when students walk in at the end of the year, I’ll have an ambient sound, like a nature sound video going with like a nice, calming video on the background. Just things that I know are going to help.”

A Final Piece of Advice: Be What You Want to See

When asked for a single piece of go-to advice on classroom management, English has an answer ready immediately.

“Be what you want to see from your students. If you see students in front of you that are chaotic, be the opposite. Be the calm presence. Co-regulate with them through that. If you’re seeing that things aren’t going well, What do I want to see from my students? I’m going to embody that. I think of it as us steering the ship of our classroom energetically. Our own regulation is so paramount to everything we do.”

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Learn More from Claire

If you love Claire’s approach to classroom management as much as I do, you’ll be happy to know you can get a lot more of it! First, you can listen to her podcast.

Next, you can grab a copy of her book:

And finally, if you’re ready to really dive in, consider joining Claire’s membership site, The Behaviour Club, where you’ll find mentorship and training, quality done-for-you resources, and unwavering support to transform your classroom management practice.

The post When Your Classroom Management Goes Off the Rails first appeared on Cult of Pedagogy.