120 hr. TEFL Course Module 9-Classroom Management (Pt.8 "Picking Your Battles Wisely")

Module 9: Classroom management

9.4 Choosing your battles

With everything that we have said about holding students accountable and creating a classroom environment that is based on respect and having control over your classroom, it is still important that you choose your battles. Your goal as a teacher is to help your students find success, and that can’t happen if you are kicking your students out for every little infraction. This is especially true in the case of a volatile student. This does not mean that you should let him or her get away with anything that threatens the environment in your classroom, just that you need to decide what behaviors are worth the fight and what behaviors are not. Here are some things to consider when working with a child who is prone to confrontation:

What is causing this behavior? Many times the answer to this simple question will tell you how you need to act. If the student just has a problem dealing with a confrontation, then you can correct his or her behavior by quietly approaching it in a way that does not make a scene. If the student needs to be able to speak to someone when he or she is having a tough time, it might be smart to have a routine set up so that he or she can go see a counselor or school psychologist when he or she feels an outburst coming.

With volatile students, try to focus your attention on prevention rather than reaction. Get used to seeing the signs of a problem, and try to head them off before it gets to the point where you have to impose a punishment or start a confrontation. Quietly approaching a student when he or she seems to be having a bad day shows that you care and might compel the students to take control of their behavior.

While students do not like it when someone gets different treatment than someone else does, you need to remember that fair and equal are two different things. Just as you need to differentiate your instruction to account for students who struggle with a skill, you need to differentiate your management for students who have difficulty behaving.

Talk to the student. Ask what triggers outbursts and how you can best approach him or her in a time of stress. Often, the student will know what will help. When he or she does not, work together to try to come up with a set of rules and routines that hold the student accountable while still giving him or her some breathing room.

Enlist the help of other students, with the consent of the volatile student of course. Does the student have a friend who can help calm him or her down in stressful situations? If so, you can deflate tensions by giving the friend a signal to step in so that you do not have to start a confrontation every time the volatile student acts out. That being said, the friend is a student also, who does not deserve to bear all of the weight of his or her friend. Use the friend as a resource rather than a crutch to bear the weight of the disciplinary actions you should be imparting.