The Importance of Doubling Down on Your Back-to-School Classroom Management Plan

Are you feeling anxious about controlling student behavior this year? Are you stressed at the thought that your classroom management plan that used to work in the past is no longer stringent enough for today's challenging classroom behaviors? If these feelings resonate, then this week's podcast episode for teachers is going to be perfect for you! 

In this empowering episode, I explore:

• 🚀 Why classroom management is MORE important now than ever before
• 🧠 The mindset shift you need to take responsibility for behavior issues
• 🏫 How recent policy changes are impacting discipline (especially in California!)
• 📚 Must-read books to level up your classroom management skills
• 🤝 Getting student buy-in for rules and procedures (without losing control)
• 👉 The "magic" 3 C's for effective management: Calm, Consistent, Consequences
• 🎭 Role-playing and modeling to set clear expectations
• ⏱️ Why investing time in management NOW saves you stress all year
• 💪 Empowering yourself when admin support falls short

Plus:

• 🔑 The critical difference between rules and procedures
• 👀 A unique strategy for creating classroom standards
• 🖐️ How to use hand signals for subtle redirection

Remember: You've got this! Classroom management is tough, but so are you. Let's double down and feel empowered to handle it all with grace (and some grit).

To access the FREE evidence-driven progressive discipline materials mentioned in the episode, visit: www.principalcenter.com/pd/

➡️ To get your FREE 🎁 PDF Guide The Professional Teacher's Guide to Saying "No" visit: www.gracestevens.com/sayno

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life? Check out the Elevated Teacher Experience here
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
And the #1 new release for educators Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

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Transcript

  Okay, teacher friends, here we are. This is part three of our five part back to school series. The essentials we need to get back to school with the right mindset, the right skills. In this week, I am talking about the, just how critical it is this year. More than most that we double down on our classroom management.

plan on our rules, our procedures, our standards, all those things. Why it's more important this year than ever that we start taking responsibility, feel empowered to take care of the most behavior problems that we can. inside our classroom. We know that we're not getting the support we need outside the classroom for a variety of reasons.

So I'm gonna dive into it and hopefully you will find some empowerment, some strategies, some hope in this episode and I will see you on the internet. Inside, get ready to take notes, get ready to, you know, open your mind. I know, I know the temptation is to say, but you don't understand Grace, you don't understand the students I have, you don't understand how dysregulated they are.

I have chair throwers in my room and nobody does anything about it. I get it, I know it, I have been there, but I promise you, I can help you with at least some of that. Okay, let's get into it. I'll see you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life Podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.

If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. 

Here we are.  And Let me start off by acknowledging, again, I understand this is a really difficult topic. There are no easy solutions. I wish I could give you like, here's the checklist, here's the five things, right? Okay, it's, it's more complicated than that. Everybody's situation is difficult and different.

But there certainly are things that we can be doing. To make sure we, you know, that this is the thing that causes the most stress, right? We all know that. Okay. And how you set off really the beginning of the year with your classroom management plan really sets the tone for the rest of the year, okay?

Now first off, don't panic. If you've already had the first week or first two weeks of school and you don't feel you did a good enough job, you know that is okay. You can go back. People update their terms and conditions all the time. You can just hold your class together and say, Hey, you know what? We didn't spend enough time on this.

Let's look at it. So I understand that the temptation is as soon as, you know, school is in, you have a scope and sequence. You have so much curriculum that you need to cover. You know, that connections and classroom community is important. And so you, you know, want to invest  time in icebreakers and those types of things, but I am telling you, you will never regret the time you invest in  setting up your classroom management plan practicing it getting the students involved and, and, and I'm going to explain all of those things to you.

So the first thing I bet you, I bet you I'm psychic, I bet you no matter how long or how recently you left How long ago or how recently you left teacher training school? I bet you anything you read Harry Wan's The First Days of School. Now I'm going to tell you that was like my, my teaching bible for such a long time.

Every summer for like the first decade that I taught. I re read that book,  like, oh my gosh, like it was highlighted, so I just skimmed through, but,  so that's a good place to start. But if you, I just want to implore you right now, if you're really feeling out of your depth, I don't think that, you know, classroom management, you know, you can read the books, you can, you know, take the class, but So much of it comes from experience.

And if you feel that you have not had enough training in it, I'd really advocate for yourself, okay? Your school, I promise you, has professional development funds. And you've got to take responsibility for it. If you know you're struggling in this area, okay, and for all the reasons I'm going to outline in a minute, more, now more than ever, we're in it alone.

Okay, that's why I'm saying we need to double down. Okay, sorry if you hear a little tinkling sound, that is my cat. I don't know what else to say, I already restarted this twice because the air conditioning came on and it was really loud. So we're just going to learn to live with with Poppy shaking her head for whatever reason she's doing it aggressively.

I'm sure I'm She's not doing it on purpose. But anyway, in case you're wondering what that sound is, you're not imagining things. You don't suddenly have light ringing in your ears. It's legit. It's on the podcast. Anyway, where was I? All right. You need to advocate for yourself. You need to find the classes, find the seminar, whatever, and go to your admin and tell them, I need to do this.

Please. I need you to pay for it and I need you to give me the time off to do it. Okay, advocate for yourself. Don't be a victim. Don't sit there. If you know that your skills are lacking, if this area causes you stress, like it's not going to go away. Kids aren't going to get better behaved. I'm just putting that out there.

Okay, so that's number one. Advocate for yourself. Number two yes, Harry Wong's The First Days of School. The other one that I, you know, because somebody's going to ask, recommend me, tell me a book that I used so many times and it is all highlighted and it really made sense. to me, was Setting Limits in the Classroom.

The subtitle is How to Move Beyond the Dance of Discipline in Today's Classrooms. It's by Robert J. Mackenzie. Mack, M A C K E N Z I E Mackenzie. Okay, so even that book is probably, I don't know, 20 years old at this point. It says revised, but I, he, he spoke common sense to me. Okay. He really spoke a lot about logical consequences, which I'm going to talk about my magic three C's calm, consistent consequences.

I am going to do a different episode on. The seven C's of classroom management. It was a book I was going to write a while ago, and then COVID came along and we were all teaching, you know, out of our kitchens. And the kids were on screens on zoom. So it just didn't seem like a good time, you know, all bets were off, right?

Classroom management was no longer a thing. It was how do you get. engagement with kids. I included, I did write a book teaching in the post COVID classroom, and I included a chapter in there on the seven C's, but  to do the topic justice, I think I'll do a whole episode on it. But here's the really important thing, is what I want to talk about this episode, is why we need to double down right now.

We need to take responsibility for taking care of as many issues as we can inside the classroom. Bye. Because we know we are not getting the support outside the classroom. Now, that is not to be, you know, super critical of administrators. Their, their hands are tied. Let me tell you one thing, if you're in California right now, you are doubly stressed.

Let me tell you what's happening in California. Is that.  And I love living in California, and I, but I just, you know, sometimes you know that the intentions are good, the intentions are good,  but have these people ever been inside a classroom is the question, right? So, a law passed July 1st. on the last of this year that schools Public schools, Public schools.

Public schools can no longer suspend students K through 12 for willful defiance. Right. Willful defiance. So that is, you know, a low level behavior. Is what it says inside the, the law, you can go look it up yourself. But so basically let's say a kid is just being defiant, not turning off their phone, repeatedly breaking dress code, you know something that isn't dangerous, but just isn't.

distracting and defiant and setting an awful example of like how not to, you know, mind the teacher. Like there's nothing a school can do about that anymore. You can suspend them from your classroom.  But you cannot suspend them from school. And you and I both know that if you start suspending kids from your classroom, the school doesn't have capacity to deal with that.

They're just going to send them back. Okay. So that's why I'm saying we need to double down. Also, if you haven't listened to episode 51  of this podcast, go do so. Not only because it is a fantastic episode. If I say so myself, but there you can get all kinds of resources for your school for free. So episode 51 was with Dr.

Justin Bader and it was about progressive discipline.  And how that that was like one of the foundations that we always had was progressive discipline and how with all these new,  you know, emerging, you know, thinking and new initiatives, the trendy, you know, things that people like, yeah, we're all working on this, restorative justice, PBIS, while they all have their place, while they all have good intentions, they were never supposed to replace progressive discipline.

Okay, so that and he goes through the research on, on all of that. He's very well researched. He's very articulate. That was episode 51, student accountability matters, rethinking restorative justice practices in schools.  That's what that episode was. Just remember episode 51. But he did have I'll, I'll repeat it here so that if you, you know, in a rush and hopefully I'll put it in the show notes You could go to www.

principalcentre. com, so principal with an A, right? Principalcentre. com forward slash pd. And in this case, pd does not change. It's not mean professional development, it means progressive discipline. So, www. principalcenter. com forward slash pd and you can get all kinds of free resources for your administrator on progressive discipline.

So there is part of the, the solution right there. Okay. But we know. That many schools, you know, optics matter, and they want to look like they're doing all the newest, the latest, and the greatest, and so really investing in, you know,  PBIS, external kind of rewards and again, restorative justice, all of these things are great, I'm not saying they're not good, but they were never supposed to replace They were Consequences.

Okay? So, being that we all know, we hear it, we see it on social media, experienced it for ourselves. We finally, you know, get to the end of our rope with a kid or, you know, they've gone through all of our steps that we can,  can give 20 minutes later, they're back with, you know.  It's not helpful. Okay. So that's why I'm saying we need to double down.

Okay. So resist. That's the first thing. Take responsibility. We know that we're kind of on our own here.  Okay. What happens in your classroom? You kind of on your own, right? Just got to double down. And the first point is if you don't have the skills, advocate for yourself to get the skills. Right. And number two, don't be in a hurry to succeed.

Get straight to the curriculum. You need to invest time in setting up rules, in practicing rules, in setting up procedures, practicing procedures, getting students buy in. We're going to talk about that. And really just, you know, we're still kind of got this whiplash happening from you know, I was in the classroom till the end of 2022.

So I knew what it was like to have kids who had been home for a year and a half really through some of their most formative, you know, early school experience in to have to invest time in teaching kids. This is how we do school.  This is how we do school. Like, we gotta sit down, be quiet, respect each other, listen to the teacher, do some work.

I mean, it should be obvious.  But kids had a really long time out, and we're still seeing the aftereffects of that, and we gotta invest some time in teaching kids, this is how we do school. Okay, so, now, this  I also want to make one point before kids, I feel like administrators do have their hands tied in a few ways.

One, there are the laws. Two, there are the optics, right? They, they want to look good. There is a lack of resources. There is more and more, you know, severely dysregulated behavior. And I feel that a lot of administrators feel that. And school boards fear lawsuits, they're afraid of parents. There seems to be a very great reluctance to actually just tell a parent, listen, your child needs a level of support beyond the scope of general education that we can offer.

Right? I know it's our job to find a least restrictive environment. A hundred percent support that, right? I don't want anyone coming at me saying, Oh, you don't, you know, you, you, no, absolutely. I believe in the least restrictive environment. Listen, my own child was on a 504 plan. Most of her school career, that really worked.

Okay. It really worked. She's very successful. She's a social worker. I might've mentioned that before. She works in childhood mental health. I mean. was a success story of how just a few accommodations really made a difference for her. But again and again, we are seeing these situations where, you know,  students, you know, every student has a right to learn.

But one student's right to learn should not be more important than the other 32 students in that room. Right? When you are repeatedly having to do room clears and and your ability to teach and overcome Other kids ability to learn is so severely impacted by the uncontrollable behavior of one student, you know, something has to change with the system that we just keep trying to force that kid into a situation that is clearly not working with them.

Okay, I don't know where you are. I do know that, you know, I had a teaching partner who  she had to do room clears at least once a week and they came through my room. So it wasn't just her class that was affected. It was mine and, and the rule, the law at that time, and the parent was not willing to look at a different environment that had been offered to them was that student had to be suspended 10 times before he could do anything about it.

That poor teacher would have had a nervous breakdown. To wait that long for that situation to be resolved. So, you know, administrators hands are tied. Okay. Understand that. Assume best intentions. Okay. That's where I'm always going with this, but double down. Okay. Let's get to the meat of it. How do we do that?

Okay. So point one was advocate for yourself. Get the skills.  Point two was  don't be in a rush.  Invest time.  Point three is have, extend some grace to your admin. I don't, it's not helpful to think they're just lazy. They don't want to deal with it. Like they have pressures from a district level for certain optics.

Okay. I'm trying to be diplomatic here,  but step four is feel empowered. So let's do it right. How do we do it right? Okay. We spend time  making rules. Now that should be obvious. Okay, it should be obvious that how we do school is there are rules we need to follow. Now, do you have your own rules?

Conventional wisdom, you know, in back to school,  the first days of school, like most conventional wisdom was always about, you know, know more than five rules, make sure they're positive. So, You would say stay in your seat as opposed to don't stand up. See what I'm saying?  All right and then try and get some student buy in into the rules.

Maybe if you make the rules, have them. I remember there was a time we all put them on a big, you know, Char, and all the kids signed that they agreed to the rules. I'll tell you a funny story. I was in a car ride with with my partner's nephew. He is in his late 40s, a great guy who's actually a superintendent in schools, but, or assistant superintendent, but he had started his school career, you know, 20 something years ago middle school.

teacher and he was telling me that you know, he'd heard this great idea. You should have the kids participate in the rules. And so he was asking them, what do you think the rules would be? And of course it was middle school. They're like, Oh more recess and, you know, just snarky things, nothing about student learning.

And so he got frustrated. He didn't know how to control the class. And he was like, Oh,  forget it. I'm just going to make the rules. And so I just kind of laughed at that. Yeah. It needs to be in a controlled environment. You need to have an idea of what the rules want to be. So here's what I always did.

And let's see if you think it might be a good idea. So instead of rules, now I know some of you are going to roll your eyes. We certainly had deal breakers that got you to a progressive discipline within the classroom, right? First a warning,  then a call home,  right? So there was a progression first a warning, Then a call home, and then exclusion from the classroom.

Now I ended up having a teaching buddy that I would send them to because I worked in a school for a long time where there was no one ever in the office. Long story. And so I had a reciprocal arrangement with another teacher and it needed to be a place that the kids weren't excited about going.

Some kids are excited to go to the office. The office is a very exciting place. So, so I did have rules, but what I did was set up standards. I had four standards and they were kind of catchalls. Okay,  but what I did was, now I had kids who were a little older, probably wouldn't work for kinder or whatever, but I would get every kid four stick notes.

Kids are always excited, students are always excited when they have stick notes. Okay two of each color. So let's say I had two pale pink and two yellow, whatever. So I would tell the class, okay, I want you to think about your ideal learning environment. What does it look like? What does it sound like?

What is happening in the classroom when you feel you learn the best?  And I would give them, you know, maybe some examples. And then if a kid said  You know, or I don't know, or think about what distracts you. We'll go in there next, but or maybe you want to start with the negative. Sometimes it's easier for kids to come up with stuff, like all of us, stuff we don't want more than stuff that we do want.

Okay, so think about  What, you know, and so kids will come up with, you know, I would suggest like, you know, it's quiet, like my opinion is respected, so I feel I can take risks, right? You give them some examples, okay, so they've got two stick notes about stuff that helps them be successful right?  And then, on the other two stick notes, and you, like I said, you may want to start with what gets in the way of your learning.

It might be easier for students to come up with. Write down two things that gets in the way of your learning. Right, and kids would say, you know, somebody's tapping their pencil, or kids are interrupting, or kids are I have my hand up and somebody else shouts out the answer, right? Just, you know, Give them like some examples, but let them think, give them some wait time.

Okay, and then I would propose. So say here are the four standards that I have in class. And so my standards were show respect.  That's a good catch, all right? Show respect.  Make good decisions.  Solve your own problems.  And take responsibility for your own learning. Okay. That was four standards and I would teach them by touching  the first, it's kind of hard to explain, but like I, we would use hand gestures.

Okay. So if you held your right hand up and the thumb is sticking out and all the fingers are spread apart. So the first, the index finger and the pointer finger, I would touch it to the thumb, show respect. Then I would lift that finger up. Then the middle finger would tap the thumb.  Make good decisions.

Right, then lift the finger up, then the ring finger would touch the thumb. Solve your own problems.  Then lift the finger up and then the pinky would touch the thumb.  Take responsibility for your own learning. Okay. The reason we practice them with our fingers is we would repeatedly do that. And we would get to the point a few weeks into school that if somebody, let's say I was talking and somebody injected, all I would have to do is tap my index finger to my thumb, and that would be a cue, a reminder to them to show respect.

And I got to the point where students would do that to each other.  So I would not have to stop talking or my train of thought, right? And that didn't count as a warning when I said I had progressive discipline. Those were just a little gentle reminders. So show respect, make good decisions, solve your own problem, take responsibility for your own learning.

Example, a student like, I don't know what page we're on. I would tap my pinky, right? That's take responsibility for your own learning. That would be a clue. That they needed to look at the board where I had written the instructions.  Or look at their friend. What page is their friend open?  That's probably where we're at.

Okay, so it just allowed having the standards and the finger signals allowed once they were practiced, repeated, memorized, it would allow for me to redirect students without having to say anything. Okay, so that's why I have the standards. But I would have the standards on the board and what I would say is Okay, now we're going to take turns and you're going to  put your stick notes  if you think they are relevant.

to a certain standard. So let's say a kid had written that, you know, they don't like it when, you know, what gets in the way of them learning is somebody, you know, this was me. I did, if I was a very compliant student, if I was sitting with my hand up and somebody, you know, would blur out the answer, I would be so frustrated that I would kind of shut down afterwards, okay?

So that falls under show respect. So I would have  Okay, so what happens then at the end of the lesson, instead of being like my poor  nephew Alex who just got people saying they wanted extra recess and got annoyed at the whole situation, like you are letting them feel they participated in it, but you are highly guiding them.

Okay. Yes, most things show respect was basically, you know, a catch all. Okay. All right. So that's one way that you can do it. And you could do the same with rules. If you really feel you want to call them rules, not standards, and they need to be very specific, then call them rules.  You need to have an idea of what they are.

Yes, you can have the students sign them, or you need to at least have the discussion. Why is this important? Not just because I said so, but because basically all the rules facilitate, you know, learning and, and ensure safety is basically what it comes down to.  So,  those are rules, okay?  You gotta model it. 

Okay, what does showing respect look like?  What does it sound like? Right? I would, the kids loved it, if I role played, right? I'd say, okay, you're the teacher, I choose a kid, and then I would sit at the student's desk, and I would, you know, yeah, rock my chair, Be loud, blur out, you know, do all the things. Kids will think it was funny, but they got the idea.

Okay. So role play model.  Be prepared to invest time in it.  So there's a difference between roles and procedures. Procedures are how we do stuff, okay? Procedures, you know, oh my word, if you teach below middle school, you know one of the biggest procedures is how do we line up? How do we walk to lunch? 

All those things, so important to practice them. How do we get out our books? How do we put back our stuff? Right, you've got to practice again, and again, and again. And even though it feels really annoying and like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe we're wasting time on this. You are investing time. Let me tell you the biggest one.

What, you know, lining up.  Good Lord. If you think how many times a day your class lines up,  They line up before school.  They line up for first recess. To go out to recess.  I'm assuming you don't let them all charge out the door and trample each other, right? Then they line up to get back in from recess. Then they line up for lunch.

Walk to lunch in a line. Oh my lord. Line back up to get back in from lunch. Maybe an afternoon recess. Maybe dismissal. The whole point is at least six times a day. I don't know. Your class is lining up, right? The same if you teach high school, you probably have six periods that you teach a day. Okay? At some point,  six times a day, it is worth your while to, yes, I know it's so annoying and it upsets people, this is a big thing, right?

Oh, we have to be at lunch at a certain time and when that, you know, what did the teacher do? When the, when the line was rowdy and out of control, what do you do? You turn back, go back to class and try again. Right? And it takes you five minutes. 10 minutes to get to lunch that first week. Okay. And yes, the lunch ladies will be annoyed at you,  but I'm telling you, it is better to invest that time that first week in getting it right  than  six times a day for the next 180  days.

Being really irritated.  Okay, you've just got to get it right and you've got to keep doing it until they get it right. And yes, it takes time. And let's say that it goes well and then what will happen? You'll have a three day weekend. Labor Day is coming up.  Right? And suddenly your bets are off.  Right? Maybe all it takes is for the weekend, like doesn't even need to be a three day weekend or a week off and the kids already forgot how to do it, or they got lazy, or they're testing the boundaries, they want to know if they're what I call aggressive researchers, like they're gonna, oh does she really mean it?

Does she really mean it? Okay, so, sometimes, you know, it goes well for a while, and when it stops going well, you need to stop, and reset, and repractice, and that's just the  The way we need to do it. Okay. So that's the best advice I've gotten that it's know the difference between rules and procedures. 

Set up the rules, get the buy in, model,  practice and procedures. You got to spend more time practicing them and practicing them, practicing them those first weeks of school. That's really very important. Otherwise you're just going to be setting yourself up for failure for the rest of the year. And when they stop working. 

You need to go back and practice them again, but you need to have a plan that is well communicated to your students and to the parents about what happens in your classroom when a rule is broken.  Okay? And then, this is really, you know,  The three C's. Again, I'll do a whole, there's a whole episode coming on the seven C's of Successful Classroom Management, but you just need these three.

These are the three cardinal ones, and these came to me, I had a friend who was a child psychologist and a school counselor, and I had just had my daughter, so this is, you know, 30 years ago, and I was freaked out, oh my gosh, how am I not going to mess this up? What's the best parenting advice can you give me? 

And he said three Cs, calm, consistent, consequences. And that in parenting  and in classroom management has really  done well for me. Okay, so the first part, calm.  You know, this whole episode, this whole podcast is about how you stay calm. Okay. You need to have good emotional regulation. You need to have good self care.

You need all those things, right? If you go back to, let me see here. I did an episode on how to stay calm when your classroom management plan is imploding. Okay. That was back episode 37. How to stay calm when your classroom management.  Okay, so go listen to that if you feel you have a hard time and need some strategies on how to stay calm.

And then you need to be consistent every single time with every single student. You need to be consistent. That's just for fairness. That's for perception, that you don't have favorites. That's to defend yourself. when that parent comes and says, my kid says you don't like them because you did this. No, this is my policy.

It is consistently enforced every single time, regardless of your mood, right? You're not going to stand there coercing children, begging them to work arguing with them, all those things. You are calm, you are consistent, and there is a consequence. And the consequence should be logical. When one kid interrupts, one kid won't put away their, their Chromebook.

Okay, then next time, you know, you need, whatever, put it away 5 minutes earlier. You need 5 minute, um, warning when you need to put keys the thing away, right? It needs to be logical. You're not taking away recess from the whole class because one kid blurted out, right? Do you ever see that episode of Modern Family where Phil Dumpfy says, I'm cancelling Christmas.

Like, you're not, you're not throwing out a consequence that the whole class knows you do not want to do and you're going to give them a chance to earn it back. Oh, you can earn back recess if you do this. Come on now. We all know that teacher. Don't be that teacher that takes away recess. On a whim 'cause you're frustrated and then lets the class on it back, like, what did you turn, what did you teach the children?

You're a teacher. What did you teach that child in that moment? Okay, so calm, consistent consequences and consequences for good behavior as well as consequences for bad behavior. All right.  whatever your, your system is, okay? If you have some kind of token economy, I don't know what your thoughts are on that, you know, you might think that's not a good idea, but your school might have a PBIS program that you are mandated to follow, okay?

So that's a discussion for a different day, but consequences, whether that's praise or whatever, that should be enough for kids. They should be internally motivated,  you know,  in an ideal world, but there needs to be a consistent consequence And a progression in those consequences that everybody is aware of, right?

Because, This is what this whole point is we got a double down on what we're doing in the classroom because administrators hands have been tied  and they've just got into some bad habits of Sending kids back to class and you know have a restorative circle. Nobody has time for that. Okay. All right So that's where we're at Let's summarize it now more than ever you need to double down your classroom management plan If you do not have the skills you need to advocate for yourself to get them  Okay, you need to not feel pressured to rush straight in to  covering curriculum.

You need to invest time. It is better to invest time now in doing things properly than in being frustrated for the rest of the year. Okay, learn how to set rules appropriately and get student buy in and then learn how to model them. Okay, the same with procedures. Practice, practice, practice, and then if kids get lazy about doing them, you need to be so consistent with your procedures, and if you get lazy about it, the kids will get lazy about it, and if they start not to work, then have a reset.

And there's nothing wrong with saying, Hey, you know what, I've noticed that we used to be so great at being in line. Oh my gosh, I used to be so proud of you guys. You were the best at it. You were always the best line going to lunch. I loved that. It was very, you know, it took a lot of stress out of everybody's day.

And I notice we've got into some bad habits.  Let's have a reset. Let's practice. And if we don't have time to practice during class, guess what? We're going to have to practice during recess.  Right, we're going to have to practice during downtime. We can't afford to put more class time towards this. We already spent that class time at the beginning of the year practicing this.

Now if we need to practice it, it's going to have to be during recess. Okay, so give them, you know, that's a consequence right there, is that they're going to be bummed about. They don't want to miss their recess time. Okay, all right. I believe in you. You have got this. This is the foundation of how we do school.

We have rules. We set the rules. The kids need to follow them. You know what? We're not doing kids any favors by not giving them consequences. They're going to learn in life in a hard way. Horrible way that there are consequences to our actions and our behaviors and our choices in the real world. And we're not doing kids any favors by not  teaching them that in class.

Okay. All right. You can do this. We got this. Classroom management is tough, but so are you. So are you. And I know that you can feel empowered to take control of the situation. If you, and, and mind your words, if you are going around, you know, the whole self fulfilling prophecy, if you're going around saying, Oh my gosh, my class is out of control. 

The inmates are running the jail. Like what message are you sending yourself? It might be reflecting poorly on YouTube. There's no shame in saying that. And again, just in saying you need help with more skills, but don't just go around complaining about your class If you have not invested the time in teaching them how to do things properly.

They don't know. I know they should just know, but they really just don't, okay? They don't, and their kids. It's part of their jobs to test limits, right? That's a biological fact. Kids jobs are to, to search for independence and to, you know, learn, You What the limits are, and like I said, some kids are more aggressive researchers than ever.

You're the adult in the room. Take control. All right. I believe in you. I hope back to school is going well, and as always, create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and I look forward to talking to you again next week.