Creating a Strong Classroom Culture Teach Like a Champion Creating a Strong Classroom Culture

The Five Principles of Classroom Culture Discipline Management Control Influence Engagement

Discipline Discipline is teaching - teaching students the right and successful way to do things. All too often teachers have not taken the time to teach their students step by step, what successful learning looks like.

Management The process of reinforcing behavior by consequences and rewards. What we typically call “disciplining” is often really management: giving consequences.

Management (con’t) Management cannot sustain itself without the other four elements of positive culture (discipline, control, influence, engagement). Without them, management ultimately suffers from diminishing marginal returns: the more you use it, the less effective it is.

Control The capacity to cause someone to choose to do what you ask, regardless of consequences. Controlling involves asking in a way that makes them more likely to agree to do it.

Control (con’t) Teachers who have strong control succeed because they understand the power of language and relationships: they ask respectfully, firmly, and confidently but also with civility, and often kindness.

Control (con’t) They (teachers) replace vague and judgmental commands like “calm down” with specific and useful ones like, “Please return to your seat and begin writing in your journal.”

Influence Inspiring students to believe, want to succeed, and want to work for it for intrinsic reasons is influencing them. It’s the next step beyond control.

Influence (con’t) Control gets them to do things you suggest; influence gets them to want to internalize the things you suggest.

Engagement Champion teachers keep their students positively engaged not just so that they are too busy to see opportunities to be off task but because after a while, they start to think of themselves as positively engaged people.

Engagement (con’t) Champion teachers give students plenty to say yes to, plenty to get involved in, plenty to lose themselves in. They get students busily engaged in productive, positive work. This gives them little time to think about how to act counterproductively.

The Synergy of the Five Principles A teacher who uses only one or two of the principles will ultimately fail to build a vibrant classroom culture.

The Synergy of the Five Principles (con’t) A teacher who uses only control but not discipline will produce students who never learn to do things on their own and always need firm directives to act.

The Synergy of the Five Principles (con’t) A teacher who engages and influences without control and management will build a vibrant but inefficient culture that allows some students to opt out of learning, and a teacher who does these without teaching discipline will not adequately prepare students once they leave the microcosm of their classroom.

Technique 28 Entry Routine Students should know where to sit. Whatever students need to do with homework, they should do the same way every day without prompting. The objectives for the lesson, the agenda, and the homework for the coming evening should be on the board already, also in the same predictable place every day.

Technique 30 Tight Transitions By the end of the first week of school, every student should know and understand procedures like how to line up and move from place to place without having to be told. In an effective classroom, transitions take less than 30 seconds, and often far less!

Technique 30 (con’t) Your students should follow the same path every time. Then they need to practice under your watchful eye, often multiple times a day. Your instincts will tell you that you are wasting time, but the opposite is true.

Technique 30 (con’t) Messy transitions are an invitation to disruptions and conflicts that continue to undercut the classroom environment even after class has started.

Technique 33 On Your Mark Every student must start class with books and paper out and pen or pencil in hand. This must be the expectation in every class, every day.

How to Ensure Students are on Their Marks When Class Starts Be explicit about what students need to have to start class. Set a time limit. Use a standard consequence. Provide tools without consequence (pencils, paper) to those who recognize the need before class. Include homework. It should be turned in and checked for completeness at the start of class.

Technique 34 Seat Signals Students must be able to signal their request from their seats. Students must be able to signal requests nonverbally. The signals should be specific, but subtle enough to prevent them becoming a distraction.

Seat Signals (con’t) You should be able to manage both their requests and your response without interrupting instruction. You should be explicit and consistent about the signals you expect students to use, posting them on the wall so students can see them and disciplining yourself to require them by responding only when they are used.