Take Control of Your Classroom

One of the constant struggles and complaints of teachers I have worked with and continue to work with is managing challenging behaviors. Nothing seems more frustrating than planning your day and having a child derail those plans with uncontrollable tantrums, outbursts, and aggressive behaviors. Anyone who has worked with children has had at least one child that challenged them. The biggest trouble with challenging behavior is that your focus shifts from setting up your classroom and implementing your activities to “managing behaviors”. No one wants this experience as part of their daily life, and trust me, neither do the parents of children with challenging behaviors.

The key to “managing behaviors” is to do as the authors of Teaching with Love and Logic , Jim Fay and David Funk, suggest: turn your focus more on learning and less on the negative behaviors. They state that if 80% of your attention is on negative behaviors, then you’ll have 80% of your children exhibiting challenging behaviors. Kind of like the domino effect that every teacher fears, “if one child does it, they all will”. I say, if that child is the one getting all of the attention each day, the other children will learn to get your attention by doing as “ Johnny ” does.

I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t “not” focus on the negative behavior. Someone is going to get hurt.” Well, most negative behavior actually serves a purpose for the child. The behavior becomes the way the child gets something they need or want. For example, a child is having a difficult time at home and they’re angry and frustrated. They are feeling out of control because they do not know what to expect. They come to your classroom, which is a safe place for them, and “vent” by throwing toys, hitting, pushing, and having tantrums. This behavior attracts your attention and becomes the child’s way of telling everyone, “I’m not happy!” Every time the teacher stops the classroom’s routines to address the child’s behavior, she actually reinforces the child’s behavior by sending the message that you can get my attention by throwing, hitting, etc. Thus, the teacher and child become caught in a repetitive cycle of acting out, 1-on-1 attention, acting out, 1-on-1 attention.

The key to breaking this cycle is the alternative option proposed by the authors of Teaching with Love and Logic : have 80% of your attention focused on learning. This will help your children focus on learning, as well. This reminds me of the concept of the environment as the “third teacher”. The way to shift your focus from managing behaviors to “learning”, which is the reason why we chose to teach, is to set up your environment so that it manages behaviors for you. We call the environment the teacher because it sends messages to your students that help them know what is expected! We show you how to do this in our training Strategies for Guiding Children’s Behavior . The four elements that help you manage behavior indirectly are Room Arrangement, Schedules/Routines, Identifying and Controlling Emotions, and Resolving Social Conflicts.

The teacher breaks the cycle in our example above by identifying the message the child is trying to send and building positive ways for the child to get what he/she needs into the environment. For example, the child wants a predictable routine (sense of control) and individual attention from the teacher. Thus, the teacher posts a visual schedule with pictures in the meeting area of the classroom. When changes occur, they are added to the schedule and discussed with the children during morning circle time. During choice time, the teacher sits with the child as they play in the water table and talks with him about what he is doing. The teacher’s focus has shifted back to learning as she has set up her environment (schedule/interactions) to meet the child’s needs at the same time that she is teaching the necessary social skills to reduce, if not, eliminate the challenging behavior all together.