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The greatest incorrect assumption teachers often make is believing that students "already/should already know how to behave".  Often, teachers operate on the assumption that previous teachers (and surely the parents) would have taught classroom & socially acceptable behaviors. Unfortunately, in our fast-pace diverse society, this false assumption is a disservice to all students since it allows misbehavior to continue to disrupt the entire learning environement.
To add to this, teachers believe that since they reviewed & posted classroom rules at the beginning of the year, they do not need to remind or reteach acceptable behavior.
Time to Teach with Refocus is a systematic approach that not only teaches students appropriate behavior, but also shows teachers how to: deal with misbehavior and use classroom ecology to promote learning while emphasizing the importance of building positive relationships with students.

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Teachers are not holding the students accountable for inappropriate behaviors. and/or disruptions to the learning environment. Often teachers will not give the student a consequence for talking/disrupting the learning of others. Instead, they keep asking the students "to stop talking, turn around, do your work, etc." In this case, the teacher, unknowingly, sent the message that "I'm not going to stop your inappropriate behavior".
When expectations are NOT posted or practiced or retaught as needed, the teacher is sending the message that the expectations are a priority. Just like any personal space, you hang/display the items of importance to yourself. When students see that some teachers hang expectations and others don't, they also believe that those who don't post expectations do not value what they expect the students to follow.
The lack of teacher consistency sends the message to students "I don't care what you do...nor will I take the time to help you to improve."

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Identify the behavioral standards and expectations that we want our students to  demonstrate.
Ex: How to line up? How to enter/leave a classroom? How to talk to adults/other students? How to work in a group? How to behave in a testing environment?

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Students are highly perceptive and are fully aware of what the teacher will allow. As a result, they behave in the manner they feel will "match" the teachers expectations and/or level of investment in the students.
It is essential for teachers to explicitly teach, model, and reteach students the "how to's" of the classroom's procedures and behavioral expectations. Teach students exactly how to line up, how to work in groups, where to turn in assignments, where to collect missing work, what to do when teacher is giving instructions, testing expectations, etc. It is essential for teachers to spend time establishing high classroom standards and expectations. When students feel accepted and respected, they are more willing to comply with the teacher's requests. "One & done" will not work! Spending an hour or two at the start of the school year and expecting the students to then behave for the rest of the school year is not realistic.

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The full-day Classroom Management Training:
Each staff member receives explicit training on:
--Five Core Components/Essential Beliefs to promote school success.
--Proactive Strategies to prevent misbehavior.
--Reactive Strategies to address minor, serious, and chronic problems.
--Staff attending the PD also receive participants' copy of the training manual.
--Participants may also receive university credit and re-certification PD hours.
The  systemically taught strategies can be implemented immediately into any classroom.
As an option, "Teach-To's" book is  also available which has  100 pre-developed systematic lesson plans to guide teachers in developing high behavioral expectations in their classrooms.

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Teachers spend time at the beginning of the school year modeling appropriate behavior for every procedure. Each student is expected to demonstrate the desired behavior.
As an option:
Lesson plans are developed and ready to explicitly teach students "how to behave". Each behavior taught, has a separate lesson plan.

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When a student misbehaves, the teacher will make a "startup or shut down" request. Student will either comply with request or moved to the refocus area (in the classroom or buddy room).
It is essential that teachers do not allow misbehavior or inappropriate behavior to "go unnoticed". Ignoring misbehavior does not result in the inappropriate behavior stopping. The majority of students see this as an opportunity to magnify the behavior until the teacher "notices/says something", especially since the student is often seeking attention (either positive or negative).

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Teacher Not Willing to Teach to the Expectations

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Teacher Not Willing to Teach to the Expectations

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Whenever teachers are asked to do another task, the resistors of change are reluctant to try something else. Let's face it, teachers have been asked to so much with so little for so long. It is little wonder that a handful will dig they heals in with an adamant "I'm not gong to do this. It'll take too much way from teaching the curriculum".  Often teachers have not taken the opportunity to reflect upon the amount of time they lose every day/class period. However, once they "add it up", they often come to the realization that they had lost more time over the course of the school year trying to stop disruptions or getting students to do their work than the amount of time it would have taken to explicitly teach appropriate classroom behavior. The majority of the resistant teachers will begin to see that they "have not left to loose so I may as well try" something new.
As for the teachers still unwilling to teach behavioral expectation or follow the Classroom Management with Refocus approach for inappropriate behaviors will begin to hear the success stories of their colleagues. There is nothing more powerful than to have another teacher tell them that it was so easy to implement and now their class runs so much more smoothly. Other options to help teachers who are either unsure of how or unwilling to teach the expectations:
1) Provide them the opportunity to observe another teacher and/or their students in classroom following the Refocus Approach.
2) Provide an opportunity to have "Teaching the Expectations" modeled for them with the help of a co-teacher.
3) Provide additional support through one-on-one coaching on how to teach the appropriate behaviors if the teacher is still unsure of what to do.
4) As a last resort, a conversation with administration regarding professional responsibilities may be necessary.

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When you set high behavioral expectations, children will naturally want to rise to meet those expectations providing they feel that the teacher cares about them.

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When teachers do not take the time to get to know their students or attempt to relate or understand their point of view, students often feel "the teacher don't care about me, so why should I care about them and their rules".

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One the the five essential elements to a successful classroom is having unconditional positive regard for all your students. It is important to treat all students with compassion and respect.

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"Kids don't care about how much you know UNTIL they know how much you care."

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"Kids don't care about how much you know UNTIL they know how much you care."

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......Madeline Hunter
Students are more likely to want to work for a teacher they like and respect.

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I always had high academic and behavior standards and expectations for all of my students. I believe that all students can learn and it's the teacher's job to establish an environment so that students achieve high levels of learning success. At the beginning of the school year, I established my classroom procedures and expectations for everything I expected my students to do while representing our classroom.
I would operate my classroom management and discipline on two warnings and then a consequence. Since my students were involved establishing the expectations, I believed this was both fair and reasonable; and it worked amazingly in the elementary grades with about 90% effectiveness at the middle school level (6-8).
Because this system was working well, I never considered I had been allowing every student in my class the opportunity to disrupt the learning environment twice before I did something about it. Because I was consistent with consequences,  the majority of the students never reached the consequence stage of discipline. What could three opportunities per student to be disruptive look like? If there were 10 students causing minor disruptions--talking, not working, off task? I would have to stop the teaching/learning process 30+ times per class.

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The year I found Time to Teach was perhaps the worst student academic & behavioral year in my teaching career.  I accepted a job at a new school and quickly realized there will be little to no support from administration or other staff members with regards to increasing our academic & behavioral standards.  The staff "we shouldn't expect much from our students because they are poor/low income". Worst of all, the students knew that nothing was expected of them and they were not about to start listening or doing work. Up to this point, their former teachers allowed them to "play all day as long as they didn't scream or hit one another".
It was no surprise then that only 23% of the students were proficient in reading and 21% proficient in writing.  Without a doubt a change was needed if these students were going to experience  success.
However, this group of students were not about to give up " an all-day play time" without a fight.
Naturally, I used my 2 warnings and then a consequence procedure. With approximately 95% of the students disrupting the learning environment daily, it didn't take long to realize just how much instructional time I was losing every class period.  I continually  searched for a better way to handle minor disruptions. With time to build relationships and every strategy, I began to see an improvement. However, the Holy Grail of classroom management, strong positive relationships, and student success for this particular group of students still alluded me.
By the end of Q1, more than half the class settled down.  They begun to realize that I truly cared about them and wanted them to grow into strong independent critical thinkers. Unfortunately, that still meant about upwards of 12-15 students were given multiple warning/class, 5-6 students per week were receiving a lunch detention, and 2-3 students were receiving an office referral per week. While these weekly numbers can be jaw dropping, at the beginning of the year, those stats were occurring daily in my classroom. While these numbers are an improvement, my class had a long way to go if I/they were ever to achieve the academic success.

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After Implementing Time to Teach Strategies

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After Implementing Time to Teach Strategies

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Upon returning from the Classroom Management Training, I had a new insight, a new perspective, and new strategies I could use immediately.
First thing Monday morning, I reviewed my classroom expectations with my entire class until they could all demonstrate and repeat what appropriate behavior looks like.   In all honesty, they already knew what was acceptable and appropriate classroom behavior.  Unfortunately, they had been permitted to do whatever" for so long they made the choice not to behavior appropriately, listen. follow directions, complete assignments, etc. After the "appropriate behvior lessons", I told my students that will no longer be repeating directions or request. They will be asked only once to stop talking/do their work/turn to page 5/turn in their homework/etc. They were told that if they did not make the choice to change their behavior, they will first complete a reflection sheet in the assigned location (completely away from everyone else) and YES, they were even taught what this process will look like. I left nothing to chance. I went on the explain the progression of misbehavior (per class period) will include a lunch detention with a parent email and finally an office referral.
Of course, there were some who wanted to "test me" to see if I was serious about not repeating request/directions. They already know I would follow through on the detention and office referral portion of the progression of consequences. The students realized they will be held immediately accountable for their actions. As an immediate result, 95% of classroom disruptions were eliminated.  Since the students already knew I believed in them, the classroom rigor were magnified, and we could get down to the business of increasing their academic success.
Within one month of implementing Time to Teach strategies & beliefs in my classroom, I never issued another lunch detention or office referral. Best of all, my students started to believe what I knew all along...they are intelligent independent thinkers who are capable of great things. Their drive and determination increased.
I pushed them to analyse and evaluate social injustice, current events, historical events, and texts. They began to hold in-depth discussions and debates on hot topic issues & world events. They learnt how to enhance their writing by evaluating and citing sources, using transitional words and phrases, and extending the length of their responses by building upon/elaborating their sentences and ideas. They went from barely writing three paragraphs with 2-3 sentences each to writing a minimum of 5 paragraphs with 5-7 sentence per paragraph.
While they started of school year with assessment scores (less than 25% achieving) which was also lower than the district average, we ended the school year with 63% in reading & 55% in writing being proficient and 13% in reading and 10% in writing now being highly proficient on district assessments. Similarly, their AzMerit assessment scores also increased from 26% (both proficient & high proficient) to 56% in reading and 48% in writing. While I have no doubt my students would have shown a level of increase achievement on district and state testing, I do believe adding the Time to Teach approach was like adding the whipped cream and cherry to a sundae. It enhanced everything I wanted to accomplished in order to see my students experience academic success, increase their self-esteem/self-confidence, and to build positive relationships with peers and adults while having compassion for all.