Good Classroom Management Isn't Enough — You Also Need Supportive Administration

Can you be good at classroom management on your own?

Is classroom management something that you can handle as an individual regardless of your organizational context, regardless of your school climate, and whether you have a supportive admin?

I think the answer to that is no.

I think every individual can be more or less effective, right?

People definitely vary in their ability to to manage a classroom and to minimize student behavior issues.

But I don't think anybody is a complete island.

And if you're in a context where students know there are no consequences, it's going to be very difficult to manage your classroom, right?

The same classroom management practices, the same behaviors on your part as a teacher are going to yield very different results.

And I said so on Twitter.

I saw Brian Mendler, the legit behavior expert, Brian Mendler was listing characteristics of teachers who have very few behavior issues in their classrooms.

Things like having a clean slate every day, not taking things personally, talking to students before and after class, all good things.

And one that he asked, what would you add?

And I added supportive admin who follow through with consequences because there are always going to be things that as a teacher are beyond your job to handle, right?

Like there are going to be behaviors that are so severe, so extreme, you need to continue teaching and somebody else needs to deal with that behavior.

And when that's not in place at the school level, word gets out to students, right?

Students realize if I get sent to the office, nothing is going to happen to me.

I might even get a snack.

I might get some You know, break time, I might get to play Xbox.

Like, I've heard all kinds of things that are happening when kids get sent to the office other than consequences.

And I don't know what the case is in your school, but I do know that it matters, right?

If you have good support when you send a kid to the office, it makes a difference.

And it cuts down on the behaviors that you do experience in class.

And the opposite is true as well.

If kids know they're not going to get in trouble, it's just going to be a joke to get sent to the office, then they're going to act up more.

They're going to take their chances.

And I think we've got to just not be naive about that.

We've got to treat...

behavior not just as a responsibility of the individual teacher to work miracles like how could a teacher get kids to behave if there were literally no consequences for anything outside of the classroom we have to support people if we want them to be successful and like as a principal do teachers sometimes send kids to the office inappropriately when when the behavior should have been handled in the classroom Yes, that happens in pretty much every school.

My school did not have a huge problem with that, honestly.

But it is going to happen.

You are going to have kids get sent to the office for kind of nonsense reasons.

Just, you know, somebody's having a bad day, whatever.

But the thing is, when a kid gets sent to the office, the teacher needs support, even if it was not the most...

legit referral in the world the teacher needs support and as an administrator what you have to do is kind of read the situation say okay what's going on here is this teacher having a bad day something going on is this kid you know really doing what the teacher says they're doing to cause trouble you have to kind of read those situations and not just throw the book at every kid who comes your way you do have to to be discerning and be reasonable and fair to the kid and you also have to work with teachers on developing their own classroom management abilities But what I've seen happen in the last couple of years is really gaslighting.

Not that.

It's this idea that the teacher can handle anything, which is not true.

Teachers cannot handle any behavior in the classroom.

Teachers cannot build a relationship to stop a student from throwing furniture.

Like all the good things that good teachers do to have effective classroom management are not enough to deal with the most severe problems.

And we need to stop acting like they are.

Let me know what you think.