November 4, 2024 • 16 mins
Nothing gets in the way of learning quite like constant chatter in a classroom. It can be challenging to get students to stop talking so much. Linda shares her strategies for managing a chatty class and reducing disruptions so you can actually teach.
Get notes + links at http://teach4theheart.com/326
00:00 Introduction to Classroom Challenges
01:52 Understanding Chatter and Blurting
04:42 Implementing a Warning System
09:49 Adapting the System for Individual Needs
12:38 Building Confidence and Consistency
14:47 Conclusion and Additional Resources
Classroom Management 101: https://teach4theheart.com/cm101
Free Training: How to Reduce Disruptions so You Can Actually Teach: http://teach4theheart.com/free
If you liked this episode, check out episode 316: How to Be More Consistent with Classroom Behavior Issues at https://teach4theheart.com/316
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
chatter and blurting can be so challenging in the classroom and really wreak havoc withyour ability to teach.
So we're going to tackle that in today's episode.
Welcome back to the Teach for the Heart podcast, where we tackle teaching challenges froma biblical perspective.
Why are we here?
Because we don't believe that our spiritual walk and teaching profession should exist intwo separate domains.
Rather, the hope we have in Christ should change how we approach everything, not just athome, but at school as well.
(00:27):
So join us as we explore both the spiritual and practical sides of key teachingchallenges, integrating them together so we can succeed at teaching, glorify God, and make
a lasting difference in our students' hearts and lives.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
We also want to thank our sponsor, Liberty University.
Do you want to be the next champion for Christ?
(00:48):
At Liberty University School of Education, they empower educators to make an eternalimpact with innovative programs,
experienced faculty, and flexible online options, you can earn your degree on yourtimeline.
Join a community dedicated to excellence and transform your passion into a rewardingcareer.
Visit liberty.edu slash education to learn more.
(01:09):
Liberty University School of Education, where your journey to inspire begins.
Today we're going to talk about what to do if you have a lot of chatter going on in yourclassroom.
And this is kind of
It's kind of funny with all of the issues that we're dealing with today that are so muchworse or crazier than they were five, 10, 20 years ago.
(01:30):
This is an issue that they were dealing with 50 years ago, we're still dealing with today.
It looks a little bit different.
But it's an issue that really can sidetrack and really disrupt your ability to teach.
And so it's something that we really do need to tackle if it's causing your classroom tobe really chaotic and really causing a lot of issues.
(01:52):
So today what we wanna do is give you a plan for dealing with chatter and blurting.
And in particular, what I wanna do is share what worked in my classroom.
And this is just one strategy, but I wanna share with you the strategy that worked for meand that has helped a lot of teachers that we work with in our Classroom Management 101
program.
So what I wanna do is start off by thinking through some of the mistakes we make when itcomes to chatter and blurting.
(02:17):
And I will tell you, this is totally...
what I did when I first started teaching.
And that is one of the mistakes we make is letting little things go, particularly withchatter and blurting.
So I remember when I first started teaching, students were just whispering a little bit toeach other, or just talking a little bit.
And I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna deal with that.
(02:39):
I hadn't figured that out.
I hadn't thought that through.
I was very prepared to teach math.
I wasn't so prepared to deal with that.
I just hadn't.
figured out what I was going to do.
And so I just let it go, partly because I didn't think it was a big deal and partlybecause I didn't know what to do.
But unfortunately, little problems don't stay little, especially when it comes to chatterand blurting in the classroom.
(03:03):
So students are just naturally going to push that talking boundary.
And they're going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until they find where theboundary is.
And a lot of times,
We are way past where we want it to be by the time we're like, okay, I gotta do somethingabout this.
So if we let little things go, it's just gonna keep growing and growing and growing.
And that's what happened to me, particularly my first year.
(03:27):
I soon found myself by, you know, probably by October, definitely by November, where Iwould be trying to start my first period class and I could like barely get their attention
above the noise.
There was just, you know, most of the class was not paying attention to me or justinvolved in their own conversations.
And it was kind of like, there were a few different clients, six different classes, acouple were fine, but most of them, it was a fight kind of to keep attention and it was
(03:51):
just way too much chatter, way too much blurting.
And it was so chaotic.
It was definitely affecting my ability to teach and be effective in the classroom.
So I went to my mentor teacher and said, you know, I need some help.
What am I going to do?
And she gave me an idea that actually came from the first days of school book.
If you guys remember that book, it's about a warning system.
(04:11):
And I'm going to share with you how it works here in a minute.
We've kind of adapted the system and updated it little bit over the years as we've workedwith teachers and heard how they use the system.
But the core of it is really still the same.
And so here's how the warning system works.
What you do is when a student is talking, even if it's just a little bit, if they'redisrupting or basically if they're over the boundary, they get a warning.
(04:42):
Before actually I get to this, I need to back up one step.
And that is you first need to clearly define what the boundary is.
We teach teachers to do this in Classroom Management 101.
You got to start by clarifying your expectation.
So you have to think about what is not acceptable as far as talking in my classroom.
Is it literally no talking ever?
(05:03):
Probably not.
There's probably times when they're allowed to talk and times when they're not.
Think about that with blurring too.
Are there times where you want them to be able to say something and times that they're notor should they always raise a hand?
Basically though, you need to be clear on your mind of basically where exactly is the lineso that you know when a student's crossed it and the student knows that too.
(05:23):
So make sure you step back and ask yourself, am I actually clear on when students can talkand when they can't, when they can blur and when they can't?
You need to be clear that in your head.
Then you need to communicate that with them so that they everyone is on the same page.
By the way, talking levels can sometimes be helpful for this.
might discover, yeah, sometimes I want to absolutely silent.
Sometimes it's okay.
(05:44):
They just need to talk, you know, for, you know, I might allow them to talk, but it needsto be quiet, you know.
So sometimes it's good to have different talking levels so that you can then say we're atlevel one or we're at level two.
That can be a helpful way to clarify expectations.
So.
Before you use the warning system, you need to clarify your expectations.
Then, here's how the warning system works.
(06:05):
When a student is past that boundary, so whatever that boundary is, when they pass it,even if it's just a little bit, they get a warning, okay?
Now, the warning needs to be able to be given in a way that does not interrupt your flowof teaching.
That's really important because you might be giving out, you know, 20 warnings in a givenclass period or more.
So, you need to be able to do it without interrupting your flow of teaching.
(06:28):
So how you're going to give the warning is gonna depend on the age of your students.
The old school way of doing it for any age would have been to put names on the board.
But here's some alternate options.
Once again, these kind of different ones are more appropriate for different ages.
Some teachers use class dojo, especially if they show that where students can see thatright away.
It is important the student can see it.
So if you're putting a class dojo point and they're not gonna see it until tomorrow,that's not gonna work.
(06:50):
But if it's somewhere where they could see it, that could work.
My favorite idea for older kids, but this would work for younger kids too,
is to take little yellow cards and laminate them like a yellow card someone would get insoccer, right, for a foul.
So you can take that, print out a whole bunch of those, laminate them, cut them out, andthen when a student needs to get a warning, you simply walk and just set it on their desk.
(07:15):
So that's how you could give a warning.
I've had elementary teachers, especially lower elementary, have something on students'desks.
So one teacher made laminated three bubbles and that
like lived on the students' desks, and she would take a dry erase marker and just go overand put an X on one of the bubbles to pop the bubble, or maybe wet erase is better so they
(07:36):
can't as easily delete it for you.
So those are some different ways to do warnings.
You can get creative with that.
The key though is you need to be able to give it in a way that you don't have to stopteaching and the student can immediately see it.
Now when you give the warning, this is very key, nothing.
happens.
There is no consequence.
The student is not in trouble and you need to explain that to them ahead of time becausethey need to understand they're not in trouble and you'll have to remind them of that.
(08:01):
And I even use those words.
You're not in trouble if you're kind of getting arguments about warnings.
You don't need to argue with students about warnings because they're not in trouble.
All you're doing is making them aware that they were interrupting the class, that theywere being disruptive.
Okay?
The goal then is that the student sees that warning and says, okay, I need to self-correctbecause if I get
In my class, it was three warnings in one class period.
(08:24):
So if I get three warnings in the same class period, now I'm going to have a consequence.
So I have a warning.
I need to be more careful.
OK, now I have two warnings.
Now I really need to be careful.
If they do get three warnings or whatever number you choose, you do need to be ready tohand out a consequence.
That is an important piece of it.
And I think you'll find with this system, you're probably going to need to give aconsequence out when you first implement it.
(08:48):
You're going to need to do that once or twice so that students see,
they're serious.
They actually are going to give the consequence if we get to this spot.
But after that initial period, you'll probably find that you don't get to that point thatoften.
With over 100 students, I would probably give out consequences like 10 times a year.
It just wasn't that common because the warnings reset fairly often.
(09:10):
You had to get three in one class period.
And set it up that way intentionally because the goal isn't to just give out a ton ofconsequences.
The goal is to teach students to notice
that they're being disruptive because you gave them a warning, and to self-correct.
And this system allows that without needing to give very many consequences at all.
So that's the gist of how the system works.
Now, one thing I want to talk about is what if you have a student that you know is, youknow, if you really gave them a warning every single time they disrupted, you know, and it
(09:41):
was three warnings per class period, they would get consequences within the first fiveminutes of every single class.
Like, they physically don't have that self-control ability.
Well, what you can do is adapt it for that student.
So you might say, you know what, this student gets 10 warnings.
They're going to get more warnings because basically your goal for that student might bedifferent than the rest of the class because it might simply be improvement, right?
(10:04):
So as you're deciding the number of warnings and how often they reset, in high school andmiddle school, it's fairly easy.
They can reset every period.
In elementary, you're probably going to have a few reset periods throughout the day, butit's really up to you how you want to set it up.
But it's important that you feel like this is attainable for my students.
They should be able to get through the class period without this number of warnings.
(10:25):
If you don't feel like it's attainable, increase the number of warnings to start, and youcan always decrease it as the student's self-control improves.
And once again, just to be clear, it is okay if you have some students that are bigbehavioral needs, it is okay to adapt the system for them, to give them additional
warnings.
And it's actually, the system is very easily differentiable in that way, which canactually end up being a really, really big help.
(10:51):
So what did I find when I implemented this system in my classroom?
Well, I found that at first, it's not like it immediately helped the first day.
When I first implemented it, the students kind of were trying to see if I was reallyserious, right?
And they didn't really like the system and I had a lot of arguing.
So you do need to be prepared for that if you've never done anything like this in yourclassroom before.
(11:13):
A couple words of advice, you don't need to argue back.
Okay, use the words, you're not in trouble.
That you don't need to argue with them about whether or not they should have had awarning.
It's okay.
And just realize that students, remember we talked about how students push the boundariesand they're looking to see where they are?
That's what they're gonna do.
You're trying to establish a new boundary.
And honestly, you're trying to push back on habits that are way past where you want themto be, right?
(11:37):
You're pushing back on bad habits.
So don't expect that to happen immediately.
Just hold the line and be consistent.
As you are consistent with the line, that's when students are gonna realize, okay, thisreally is where the line is.
So be prepared for it to take a little bit of time.
Don't give up on it after one day.
Do not.
You gotta give the system at least a week, I recommend two, to really see how it's gonnawork for your classroom.
(12:02):
If you implement it really consistently for two weeks, then you'll be able to see, yes,this helped.
Or if perchance it doesn't, then you'll know I really gave this a good try and I can moveon to try something else.
But in my classroom, this made worlds of a difference.
And the main reason was because I was able to deal with the issue while it was small.
I wasn't waiting until it was like utter chaos to get someone in trouble.
(12:24):
And then it's this arbitrary line of like, you know, why are we in trouble now?
And we weren't a minute ago, you know, and why them?
And so it was, it felt fair.
It helped students.
The biggest thing is it promoted that individual responsibility and helped studentsself-correct.
before they needed to get in trouble.
And it just brought the talking level down dramatically after that initial period.
(12:45):
So it did reduce it dramatically.
And I will say the real magic happened.
This is how the real magic happened in my classroom.
The first year I implemented the system, it helped a ton.
It really brought the talking level down, but it still wasn't quite where I wanted it tobe.
And that's because I was pushing back on that bad habit, bad inertia.
was kind of like still fighting that battle.
(13:05):
They had gotten these bad habits.
So, however, I was getting a lot better at dealing with stuff.
So I was getting used to dealing with warnings.
I was becoming more consistent.
I was becoming more confident in my ability to deal with it.
So when my next school year started, I did a few things differently.
I was ready on day one with the warning system.
(13:27):
And the very first time someone disrupted, I was ready with the warning.
And that made such a difference because at that start of school, even though I had some ofthe same students as the year before, it's that fresh start and they're kind of like,
where's the line?
And I was like, it's right here.
From day one, this is the line.
It was really clear.
And then also, I was confident in my skills.
And that's another piece of this.
(13:49):
If we're confident in what we're doing, that is like this unspoken signal to the students,like, don't mess with me.
I'm confident and I'm competent.
The reverse, though, unfortunately, is also true.
If we are not confident, the students pick up on that too.
And they kind of sense, she's not so sure about this.
And that tends to make them pounce and push that boundary even further.
(14:11):
So bottom line, this system helped me a ton in the year that I implemented it.
And then as my skills grew, as my confidence grew, and as I used it right off the bat thenext year, that was when it was really
really amazing.
And I'm not saying I never had any discipline issues after that.
That should never be, that's never going to be a realistic expectation.
But it brought the levels down to a very reasonable amount and I was able to really teach.
(14:35):
They weren't a big problem in the classroom anymore.
And that made such a big difference.
So I hope that this has given you some ideas for your classroom.
It might be a system for you to try out.
and see how it would work.
If you wanna find out more, and honestly, this is one of the things that's hard about anepisode like this is I'm giving you one system, but there's so many other pieces that tie
in together.
(14:56):
So if you have not yet, watch our free training, How to Reduce Disruptions So You CanActually Teach.
I'm gonna really encourage you to hop over there.
What I share in there is not the same as what I just shared here.
It really talks about the whole system and how you can work things together to reducedisruptions in your classroom.
It's completely free.
Just go to teachfortheheart.com slash free.
(15:17):
to sign up for that.
And then of course, we always have Classroom Management 101, which is our comprehensiveonline course where we walk you through step by step, help you create a plan and implement
it so that you can reduce disruptions in your classroom.
And Classroom Management 101 is always available at teachfortheheart.com slash CM101.
(15:37):
Well, this episode has been brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
All views and opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of the HerzogFoundation.
If you've enjoyed this episode, do hope that you will subscribe to the podcast, leave areview, and share it with your friends.
Well, thank you guys so much.
I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
In the meantime, teacher, remember, God is at work in you and through you, and He's usingyou to make a difference.
(16:01):
Keep your eyes on Him and teach for the heart.
chatter and blurting can be so challenging in the classroom and really wreak havoc withyour ability to teach.
So we're going to tackle that in today's episode.
Welcome back to the Teach for the Heart podcast, where we tackle teaching challenges froma biblical perspective.
Why are we here?
Because we don't believe that our spiritual walk and teaching profession should exist intwo separate domains.
Rather, the hope we have in Christ should change how we approach everything, not just athome, but at school as well.
(00:27):
So join us as we explore both the spiritual and practical sides of key teachingchallenges, integrating them together so we can succeed at teaching, glorify God, and make
a lasting difference in our students' hearts and lives.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
We also want to thank our sponsor, Liberty University.
Do you want to be the next champion for Christ?
(00:48):
At Liberty University School of Education, they empower educators to make an eternalimpact with innovative programs,
experienced faculty, and flexible online options, you can earn your degree on yourtimeline.
Join a community dedicated to excellence and transform your passion into a rewardingcareer.
Visit liberty.edu slash education to learn more.
(01:09):
Liberty University School of Education, where your journey to inspire begins.
Today we're going to talk about what to do if you have a lot of chatter going on in yourclassroom.
And this is kind of
It's kind of funny with all of the issues that we're dealing with today that are so muchworse or crazier than they were five, 10, 20 years ago.
(01:30):
This is an issue that they were dealing with 50 years ago, we're still dealing with today.
It looks a little bit different.
But it's an issue that really can sidetrack and really disrupt your ability to teach.
And so it's something that we really do need to tackle if it's causing your classroom tobe really chaotic and really causing a lot of issues.
(01:52):
So today what we wanna do is give you a plan for dealing with chatter and blurting.
And in particular, what I wanna do is share what worked in my classroom.
And this is just one strategy, but I wanna share with you the strategy that worked for meand that has helped a lot of teachers that we work with in our Classroom Management 101
program.
So what I wanna do is start off by thinking through some of the mistakes we make when itcomes to chatter and blurting.
(02:17):
And I will tell you, this is totally...
what I did when I first started teaching.
And that is one of the mistakes we make is letting little things go, particularly withchatter and blurting.
So I remember when I first started teaching, students were just whispering a little bit toeach other, or just talking a little bit.
And I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna deal with that.
(02:39):
I hadn't figured that out.
I hadn't thought that through.
I was very prepared to teach math.
I wasn't so prepared to deal with that.
I just hadn't.
figured out what I was going to do.
And so I just let it go, partly because I didn't think it was a big deal and partlybecause I didn't know what to do.
But unfortunately, little problems don't stay little, especially when it comes to chatterand blurting in the classroom.
(03:03):
So students are just naturally going to push that talking boundary.
And they're going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing until they find where theboundary is.
And a lot of times,
We are way past where we want it to be by the time we're like, okay, I gotta do somethingabout this.
So if we let little things go, it's just gonna keep growing and growing and growing.
And that's what happened to me, particularly my first year.
(03:27):
I soon found myself by, you know, probably by October, definitely by November, where Iwould be trying to start my first period class and I could like barely get their attention
above the noise.
There was just, you know, most of the class was not paying attention to me or justinvolved in their own conversations.
And it was kind of like, there were a few different clients, six different classes, acouple were fine, but most of them, it was a fight kind of to keep attention and it was
(03:51):
just way too much chatter, way too much blurting.
And it was so chaotic.
It was definitely affecting my ability to teach and be effective in the classroom.
So I went to my mentor teacher and said, you know, I need some help.
What am I going to do?
And she gave me an idea that actually came from the first days of school book.
If you guys remember that book, it's about a warning system.
(04:11):
And I'm going to share with you how it works here in a minute.
We've kind of adapted the system and updated it little bit over the years as we've workedwith teachers and heard how they use the system.
But the core of it is really still the same.
And so here's how the warning system works.
What you do is when a student is talking, even if it's just a little bit, if they'redisrupting or basically if they're over the boundary, they get a warning.
(04:42):
Before actually I get to this, I need to back up one step.
And that is you first need to clearly define what the boundary is.
We teach teachers to do this in Classroom Management 101.
You got to start by clarifying your expectation.
So you have to think about what is not acceptable as far as talking in my classroom.
Is it literally no talking ever?
(05:03):
Probably not.
There's probably times when they're allowed to talk and times when they're not.
Think about that with blurring too.
Are there times where you want them to be able to say something and times that they're notor should they always raise a hand?
Basically though, you need to be clear on your mind of basically where exactly is the lineso that you know when a student's crossed it and the student knows that too.
(05:23):
So make sure you step back and ask yourself, am I actually clear on when students can talkand when they can't, when they can blur and when they can't?
You need to be clear that in your head.
Then you need to communicate that with them so that they everyone is on the same page.
By the way, talking levels can sometimes be helpful for this.
might discover, yeah, sometimes I want to absolutely silent.
Sometimes it's okay.
(05:44):
They just need to talk, you know, for, you know, I might allow them to talk, but it needsto be quiet, you know.
So sometimes it's good to have different talking levels so that you can then say we're atlevel one or we're at level two.
That can be a helpful way to clarify expectations.
So.
Before you use the warning system, you need to clarify your expectations.
Then, here's how the warning system works.
(06:05):
When a student is past that boundary, so whatever that boundary is, when they pass it,even if it's just a little bit, they get a warning, okay?
Now, the warning needs to be able to be given in a way that does not interrupt your flowof teaching.
That's really important because you might be giving out, you know, 20 warnings in a givenclass period or more.
So, you need to be able to do it without interrupting your flow of teaching.
(06:28):
So how you're going to give the warning is gonna depend on the age of your students.
The old school way of doing it for any age would have been to put names on the board.
But here's some alternate options.
Once again, these kind of different ones are more appropriate for different ages.
Some teachers use class dojo, especially if they show that where students can see thatright away.
It is important the student can see it.
So if you're putting a class dojo point and they're not gonna see it until tomorrow,that's not gonna work.
(06:50):
But if it's somewhere where they could see it, that could work.
My favorite idea for older kids, but this would work for younger kids too,
is to take little yellow cards and laminate them like a yellow card someone would get insoccer, right, for a foul.
So you can take that, print out a whole bunch of those, laminate them, cut them out, andthen when a student needs to get a warning, you simply walk and just set it on their desk.
(07:15):
So that's how you could give a warning.
I've had elementary teachers, especially lower elementary, have something on students'desks.
So one teacher made laminated three bubbles and that
like lived on the students' desks, and she would take a dry erase marker and just go overand put an X on one of the bubbles to pop the bubble, or maybe wet erase is better so they
(07:36):
can't as easily delete it for you.
So those are some different ways to do warnings.
You can get creative with that.
The key though is you need to be able to give it in a way that you don't have to stopteaching and the student can immediately see it.
Now when you give the warning, this is very key, nothing.
happens.
There is no consequence.
The student is not in trouble and you need to explain that to them ahead of time becausethey need to understand they're not in trouble and you'll have to remind them of that.
(08:01):
And I even use those words.
You're not in trouble if you're kind of getting arguments about warnings.
You don't need to argue with students about warnings because they're not in trouble.
All you're doing is making them aware that they were interrupting the class, that theywere being disruptive.
Okay?
The goal then is that the student sees that warning and says, okay, I need to self-correctbecause if I get
In my class, it was three warnings in one class period.
(08:24):
So if I get three warnings in the same class period, now I'm going to have a consequence.
So I have a warning.
I need to be more careful.
OK, now I have two warnings.
Now I really need to be careful.
If they do get three warnings or whatever number you choose, you do need to be ready tohand out a consequence.
That is an important piece of it.
And I think you'll find with this system, you're probably going to need to give aconsequence out when you first implement it.
(08:48):
You're going to need to do that once or twice so that students see,
they're serious.
They actually are going to give the consequence if we get to this spot.
But after that initial period, you'll probably find that you don't get to that point thatoften.
With over 100 students, I would probably give out consequences like 10 times a year.
It just wasn't that common because the warnings reset fairly often.
(09:10):
You had to get three in one class period.
And set it up that way intentionally because the goal isn't to just give out a ton ofconsequences.
The goal is to teach students to notice
that they're being disruptive because you gave them a warning, and to self-correct.
And this system allows that without needing to give very many consequences at all.
So that's the gist of how the system works.
Now, one thing I want to talk about is what if you have a student that you know is, youknow, if you really gave them a warning every single time they disrupted, you know, and it
(09:41):
was three warnings per class period, they would get consequences within the first fiveminutes of every single class.
Like, they physically don't have that self-control ability.
Well, what you can do is adapt it for that student.
So you might say, you know what, this student gets 10 warnings.
They're going to get more warnings because basically your goal for that student might bedifferent than the rest of the class because it might simply be improvement, right?
(10:04):
So as you're deciding the number of warnings and how often they reset, in high school andmiddle school, it's fairly easy.
They can reset every period.
In elementary, you're probably going to have a few reset periods throughout the day, butit's really up to you how you want to set it up.
But it's important that you feel like this is attainable for my students.
They should be able to get through the class period without this number of warnings.
(10:25):
If you don't feel like it's attainable, increase the number of warnings to start, and youcan always decrease it as the student's self-control improves.
And once again, just to be clear, it is okay if you have some students that are bigbehavioral needs, it is okay to adapt the system for them, to give them additional
warnings.
And it's actually, the system is very easily differentiable in that way, which canactually end up being a really, really big help.
(10:51):
So what did I find when I implemented this system in my classroom?
Well, I found that at first, it's not like it immediately helped the first day.
When I first implemented it, the students kind of were trying to see if I was reallyserious, right?
And they didn't really like the system and I had a lot of arguing.
So you do need to be prepared for that if you've never done anything like this in yourclassroom before.
(11:13):
A couple words of advice, you don't need to argue back.
Okay, use the words, you're not in trouble.
That you don't need to argue with them about whether or not they should have had awarning.
It's okay.
And just realize that students, remember we talked about how students push the boundariesand they're looking to see where they are?
That's what they're gonna do.
You're trying to establish a new boundary.
And honestly, you're trying to push back on habits that are way past where you want themto be, right?
(11:37):
You're pushing back on bad habits.
So don't expect that to happen immediately.
Just hold the line and be consistent.
As you are consistent with the line, that's when students are gonna realize, okay, thisreally is where the line is.
So be prepared for it to take a little bit of time.
Don't give up on it after one day.
Do not.
You gotta give the system at least a week, I recommend two, to really see how it's gonnawork for your classroom.
(12:02):
If you implement it really consistently for two weeks, then you'll be able to see, yes,this helped.
Or if perchance it doesn't, then you'll know I really gave this a good try and I can moveon to try something else.
But in my classroom, this made worlds of a difference.
And the main reason was because I was able to deal with the issue while it was small.
I wasn't waiting until it was like utter chaos to get someone in trouble.
(12:24):
And then it's this arbitrary line of like, you know, why are we in trouble now?
And we weren't a minute ago, you know, and why them?
And so it was, it felt fair.
It helped students.
The biggest thing is it promoted that individual responsibility and helped studentsself-correct.
before they needed to get in trouble.
And it just brought the talking level down dramatically after that initial period.
(12:45):
So it did reduce it dramatically.
And I will say the real magic happened.
This is how the real magic happened in my classroom.
The first year I implemented the system, it helped a ton.
It really brought the talking level down, but it still wasn't quite where I wanted it tobe.
And that's because I was pushing back on that bad habit, bad inertia.
was kind of like still fighting that battle.
(13:05):
They had gotten these bad habits.
So, however, I was getting a lot better at dealing with stuff.
So I was getting used to dealing with warnings.
I was becoming more consistent.
I was becoming more confident in my ability to deal with it.
So when my next school year started, I did a few things differently.
I was ready on day one with the warning system.
(13:27):
And the very first time someone disrupted, I was ready with the warning.
And that made such a difference because at that start of school, even though I had some ofthe same students as the year before, it's that fresh start and they're kind of like,
where's the line?
And I was like, it's right here.
From day one, this is the line.
It was really clear.
And then also, I was confident in my skills.
And that's another piece of this.
(13:49):
If we're confident in what we're doing, that is like this unspoken signal to the students,like, don't mess with me.
I'm confident and I'm competent.
The reverse, though, unfortunately, is also true.
If we are not confident, the students pick up on that too.
And they kind of sense, she's not so sure about this.
And that tends to make them pounce and push that boundary even further.
(14:11):
So bottom line, this system helped me a ton in the year that I implemented it.
And then as my skills grew, as my confidence grew, and as I used it right off the bat thenext year, that was when it was really
really amazing.
And I'm not saying I never had any discipline issues after that.
That should never be, that's never going to be a realistic expectation.
But it brought the levels down to a very reasonable amount and I was able to really teach.
(14:35):
They weren't a big problem in the classroom anymore.
And that made such a big difference.
So I hope that this has given you some ideas for your classroom.
It might be a system for you to try out.
and see how it would work.
If you wanna find out more, and honestly, this is one of the things that's hard about anepisode like this is I'm giving you one system, but there's so many other pieces that tie
in together.
(14:56):
So if you have not yet, watch our free training, How to Reduce Disruptions So You CanActually Teach.
I'm gonna really encourage you to hop over there.
What I share in there is not the same as what I just shared here.
It really talks about the whole system and how you can work things together to reducedisruptions in your classroom.
It's completely free.
Just go to teachfortheheart.com slash free.
(15:17):
to sign up for that.
And then of course, we always have Classroom Management 101, which is our comprehensiveonline course where we walk you through step by step, help you create a plan and implement
it so that you can reduce disruptions in your classroom.
And Classroom Management 101 is always available at teachfortheheart.com slash CM101.
(15:37):
Well, this episode has been brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
All views and opinions are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of the HerzogFoundation.
If you've enjoyed this episode, do hope that you will subscribe to the podcast, leave areview, and share it with your friends.
Well, thank you guys so much.
I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
In the meantime, teacher, remember, God is at work in you and through you, and He's usingyou to make a difference.
(16:01):
Keep your eyes on Him and teach for the heart.
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