Classroom Management: Techniques

Bill Rogers' positive correction focuses on prevention of undesired behavior through an "establishment phase" for norms (and thus, addressing problems at the source) while offering specific and targeted suggestions for dealing with the disruptions that do occur. This, and the acknowledgement that "8.5 out of 10" means you're doing what can be done (i.e. there's no easy fix-it-all solution) are strengths of his system that I would like to take advantage of.

First, Rogers advocates the "principle of least intrusion" in intervention, which helps prevent escalating problems. A good deal of his advice hinges on ways to avoid confrontation: partial agreement, open (as opposed to closed) questions, offering students choices, and tactical ignoring (choose your battles wisely). This results in responses that are proportionate to the actual issue and helps prevent small incidents or reactions to "secondary behavior," such as talking back or demeanor, from turning the entire class topsy-turvy; it also affords students a chance to save face before their peers. These are all techniques that I hope to incorporate, both because they seem effective most of the time and because they are fair to the students as well as the teacher.

Another strength is Rogers' consistency in even seemingly trivial things, such as body language. While Rogers' particular gestures and signals provoke laughter easily, he notes that gestural systems are individual to the teacher. The idea (if not his execution) is attractive in that gestures and posture are less overt than words and can often convey a lot in a short period of time. A related aspect of this is that he emphasizes "certainty, not severity" since the fact of a sure consequence is more important than its possible severity.

Finally, he focuses on the relationship between students and teachers, which is an easily neglected aspect of behavior management. I find his notion of "repairing and rebuilding" after a consequence is meted out quite useful: after all (if things go well), the teacher will be seeing the same student (and vice versa) during the next class, and the next after that. This is one example of the "four R's": rights, responsibilities, routines, and rules. The first two focus on such relationships while the last two are more concerned with ways to maintain positive relationships. Not only does Rogers provide an ideal to strive toward, he gives concrete, specific advice on how to do so.

My own observation in this area is that if a student is lashing out there's a reason for it. People make decisions and take actions because, from some internal cost-benefit calculation (even if they don't frame it as such), they find those decisions and actions less compelling than the alternatives. Students do not walk into classrooms and say to themselves, "Today I'm going to make the teacher's life hell by throwing spitballs." They might, however, walk into the classroom and say to themselves, "My parents are getting divorced, I'm bored since I don't understand anything we've done for the last week, and spitballs always get me a laugh from my friends." The difficult part for me as a teacher is in developing enough of a relationship with students to find out what internal lens is making their actions seem reasonable. Recently I've been dealing with a student who has attendance issues, and another who was having trouble getting along with others in class; in both cases they were going through personal troubles that led to their behavior.

I am reluctant to use Rogers as my only model of classroom management since, as mentioned above, he deals specifically with tackling behavior issues at a surface rather than root level. Rogers, alas, can't tell me how I might make my curriculum more engaging, challenging and relevant to students while supporting real learning. However, positive correction is flexible enough that it can be combined with other approaches.

Kounin speaks of "withitness," a quality of awareness taken for granted by Rogers but one I plan to cultivate to help prevent discipline problems from arising, and "satiation," which I would address by offering students a varied and challenging curriculum. Dreikurs focuses on student goals, mistaken or otherwise; my goal would be to understand students' existing goals, which might allow me in turn to help students turn toward learning and respect. Glasser's noncoercive discipline examines the interaction between school environment, curriculum, teaching, and learning; by offering a safe and stimulating environment with access to topics of interest and relevance to students, I could lay the groundwork for addressing disciplinary problems at their source in student discomfort or disengagement. (Charles, 1999)

Copyright © 2002 Yoon Ha Lee <requiescat@cityofveils.com>
Last updated on 20 May 2002