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Anxiety is a huge barrier to learning and very difficult for educators to identify. "When anxiety is fueling the behavior, it's the most confusing and complicated to figure out," Minahan said. That's because a student isn't always anxious; it tends to come and go based on events in their lives, so their difficulties aren't consistent. When we are anxious our working memory tanks, making it very difficult to recall any salient information.

Researchers surveyed a group of first graders none of whom had any reading or math disabilities. Those who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder were eight times more likely to be in the lowest achieving group in reading, and two-point-five times more likely to be in the lowest quartile in math achievement by the spring.

"Anxiety is a learning disability; it inhibits your ability to learn," Minahan said. But it isn't usually recognized as a learning disability and there is almost never a plan for how to address it in the classroom. "For kids with anxiety, the 'can'ts fluctuate," Minahan said. "When they're calm they can. When they're anxious they can't. And that's very deceiving."

Anxiety isn't about ability, it's about interference, which means that traditional rewards and consequences don't often work with this group of learners.

"Rewards and consequences are super helpful to increase motivation for something I'm able to do," Minahan said. But an anxious person's brain has shut down and they aren't able in that moment to complete the task being asked of them. The best way to combat this tricky problem is to try to prevent anxiety triggers and build up students' social and emotional skills to cope with the moments when anxiety sets in.

When kids are in the throes of bad behavior they have poor self-regulation skills, often get into negative thinking cycles that they can't stop, have poor executive functioning, become inflexible thinkers and lose social skills like the ability to think about another person's perspective. That's why kids can seem so unempathetic when teachers ask, "how do you think that made Sam feel?" At that moment, the student acting out has no ability to take Sam's perspective, but a few hours later or the next day, he might be able to show the remorse educators want to see.

ALL BEHAVIOR HAS A FUNCTION

Bad behavior is often connected to seeking attention, and when kids act out, they can see the results.* "Negative attention is way easier to get and hands down easier to understand," Minahan said. "It's much more efficient." Adults tend to be unpredictable with attention when a student is doing what she is supposed to do, but as soon as there's a dramatic, obvious tantrum, the student has the teacher's attention. And negative attention is powerful -- one student can hijack a whole classroom.

A common teacher response to low-level negative attention seeking is to ignore the student. The teacher doesn't want to reward bad behavior. "I want to caution you about ignoring someone with anxiety because their anxiety goes up," Minahan said. Ignoring an already anxious student can accidentally convey the message that the teacher doesn't care about the student, and worse might escalate the situation. Perhaps a teacher can ignore a student tapping his pencil or banging on his desk, but threatening behavior can't be ignored. And the student learns exactly what level of behavior he must exhibit to get attention.

TIP 1: Instead, "what you need to do is make positive attention compete better," Minahan said. She often suggests that teachers actively engage the most difficult student at the beginning of class saying something like, "I can't wait to see what you think of this assignment. I'm going to check on you in 5 minutes." When the teacher actually comes back in five minutes, validates the student's progress, and tells her another check-in is coming in ten minutes it sets up a pattern of predictable attention for positive behavior. And while it might seem unfair to take that extra time and care with one student, it ultimately saves instruction time when a teacher doesn't have to deal with a tantrum that sends the student out of the room.

TIP 2: Often in an attempt to form a positive relationship with a student teachers will publicly praise positive behavior. That can backfire, especially with anxious kids who don't want any extra attention from peers. Private or non-verbal praise is often better. Minahan recommends pulling students aside at the beginning of the year to ask how teachers can best tell them they're proud. "It's a gift to your February self if you can figure out a system now, otherwise you'll get stuck on the negative attention scale," Minahan said.

Tip 2.1: She also recommends fact-based praise as opposed to general praise. Vague praise is easy to dismiss.
ANTECEDENTS TO BAD BEHAVIOR
Many kids have predictable anxiety triggers like unstructured time, transitions, writing tasks, social demands or any unexpected change. Similarly the antecedents of negative behavior are fairly predictable: unfacilitated social interactions, interaction with an authoritative adult, being asked to wait, when demands are placed, being told no, writing, and transitions.**

Tip 3: "Teach waiting now," Minahan said. "When you are anxious, despite your age, it's very hard to wait." She was asked to observe a boy who constantly disrupted class. Minahan soon noticed the boy often did his work, but if he finished early or there was downtime in the class, he would start causing trouble. When Minahan pointed this out to him he had no idea what "wait time" was. She had to spell out to him that when he finished a task he should apply a strategy, like turning over the paper and doodling appropriately on the back. After this small intervention the student's behavior was so improved that his teacher thought he'd gone on medication.

'You can have really bright, able children whose anxiety is interfering so much.'

For kids with anxiety, there are a number of strategies teachers can employ. The first is not to take any student behavior personally. The student isn't trying to manipulate or torture the teacher, his behavior is reflecting something going on internally. Often a short movement break can help relieve anxiety, but not the way they are commonly given.

Minahan described a seventh grade girl who was recovering from an eating disorder. The girl was scraping her arms so badly they would bleed. After lunch, predictably, the behavior was worse, so her teachers were letting her color and draw to relieve her anxiety. Another common break is to tell a student to go get a drink of water down the hall. The coloring break wasn't working for this seventh grader and Minahan soon figured out why. "We accidentally left her alone to fester in her anxious thoughts," she said.

Tip 4: Leaving class doesn't give the student a break from internal negative thoughts like "I'm fat," or "I'm not smart enough," which paralyze thinking. But a break paired with a cognitive distraction does offer respite from the "all or nothing" thinking that's so common with anxious students. An older student might take a break and record herself reading a book out loud for a younger student with dyslexia. It's impossible to read out loud and think another thought. Other distractions could include sports trivia, sudoku or crossword puzzles. Little kids might do a Where's Waldo or look through a Highlight magazine for the hidden picture.

Tip 5: When teachers want to wrap up a task they often use a countdown. "Silent reading time is going to be over in five minutes." But counting down doesn't support a high achieving anxious child who feels she must finish. And it takes a lot of executive function skills and cognitive flexibility to fight the urge to keep going after the time is up. So instead of counting down, a teacher might walk over to that student and say, let's find a good stopping point. She may stop a minute later than the rest of the class when she reaches the designated point, but it won't escalate into a tug-of-war.

Transitions are another common time for kids to act out. Younger students often don't want to come in from recess, for example. But when a teacher says, "Line up. Recess is over. It's time for your spelling quiz," it's no wonder the student doesn't want to go from something he loves to something he hates.

Tip 6: The teacher can give students an in-between step to make the transition more palatable. Go from recess, to two minutes of coloring, to the spelling quiz. The intermediary step gives that non-compliant student behavioral momentum. He's already sitting down, quiet, with pen in hand, so the jump to spelling isn't as jarring.

For middle and high school students, school is all about being social, but the only times students get to see their friends are in the two to five minute passing periods between classes. Again, the transition is from something they love to something they hate, so don't make that transition extra hard by collecting homework as they come in the door. The toughest kids are probably already not doing well in the class, and a reminder of the homework exacerbates feelings of inadequacy.

Tip 7: One high school geometry teacher started playing two minute YouTube videos about geometry as students came into class. It got students from the hallway into the classroom without thinking negatively and her class started to run more smoothly. She didn't have the same interruptions she used to, which made the lost two minutes seem worth it.

Tip 8: Minahan also likes some of the biofeedback tools that are now available, like the EmWave. A wound up student puts a sensor on his finger and calming down becomes a game. He might start out with a picture of a black and white forest, but as he calms down (and the sensor monitors his heart rate) the colors start to pop in. It can take as little as two to five minutes to completely calm a kid down when they can see the feedback so clearly.

"I like it because it's so concrete," Minahan said. A student with high functioning autism might not even know what a teacher means by "calm down," but with the biofeedback device she can see what it means.

WORK AVOIDANCE

Minahan says it's very common for students to have trouble initiating work, persisting through work and asking for help, but there are strategies to help kids build the skills to get better in these areas.

"You can have really bright, able children whose anxiety is interfering so much," Minahan said. The anxiety isn't coming from nowhere; it's coming from prior experiences of feeling frozen and stupid. In that moment the child's working memory isn't working, so teachers need to find ways to bypass it until the anxiety passes.

Tip 9: One way is to let students preview the work for the day. In the morning, an elementary school teacher might work on the first few problems with the anxious child so she knows she can do it. Then, when it's time for that work later in the day, that child receives the sheet she's already started and can go from there.

Tip 9.1: In high school, teachers can give students with trouble initiating the preview as homework. Students can start at home without any pressure and continue at school. "Fight or flight is the worst when they first see it," Minahan said, so try to bypass that moment and prevent a breakdown.

Tip 10: At the same time, when the teacher names the strategies a student is employing, he is helping the student build a toolbox that can be used independently. Strategies might include, asking a teacher to help her start when she feels frozen, or asking to preview the homework. For perfectionist students, difficulty starting can stem from a fear of messing up. Give those students dry erase boards, where the mess ups can be easily erased. It helps when teachers treat the difficulty starting as a small problem and say something like, "Looks like you're not initiating. What strategy are you going to use?"

'When I shift the reinforcement to skills, I've noticed the skills go up and that's what makes the difference for the kids who have mental health difficulties.'

Tip 11: Some strategies to build persistence include skipping the hard ones and doing the ones a student knows first, working with a buddy, and double checking work on problems that have been completed.

Giving help in class is often a tricky balance, especially if a student is too embarrassed to ask vocally. Instead of acting out because she can't do the work, the student might raise her hand, pass the teacher a note or make eye contact. Then the teacher has to be careful not to give too much help. "We accidentally create dependency because we help so much," Minahan said.

That goes for academics as well as behavior. Often a teacher will notice a student becoming agitated and dysregulated and tell him to take a short walk. But ultimately the student will be better served if he can learn to monitor himself and implement strategies when he notices early signs of agitation. "Kids have to learn how to catch themselves on the way up and calm down there," Minahan said, because that's when the strategies work. But kids need to be taught how to recognize the signs.

Tip 12: Teach kids how to do a body check. With younger students a teacher can describe the signs of agitation as they are happening so the student starts to recognize them. With older students, ask them where in their body they feel anxious, for example, "in your belly?" "Give them the data every day," Minahan said. "This is your body on the way up." After the groundwork has been laid, a teacher can just say "body check, please" to let a student know it's time to check in with themselves and start using a strategy.

But what can you do when a kid is already exploding? Minahan says, not much because the child will have a very hard time reacting in a reasonable way once he or she is riled up.

Tip 13: What educators can do is anticipate those moments and rehearse self-calming strategies when the child is calm.

In one case, Minahan knew an elementary student she was working with was going to have a traumatic change in her life. The child's mom was giving her up to foster care and the date had been set. To prepare for what would undoubtedly be a moment when the student couldn't control herself, Minahan had her practice self-calming in the social worker's office, where she would probably go on the day. Twice a day for five minutes she rehearsed a self-calming routine when she was already calm so her working memory was available and she was learning the strategies.

When the day came and the child did freak out, Minahan quickly got her into the office with very little touching or verbal interaction which might further set her off. Once there, the girl got into her routine, and started singing to herself as a cognitive distraction. "The rehearsal allowed for automaticity and did not require cognition or working memory in that moment," Minahan said.

Tip 14: Rehearse replies to confrontations. Minahan worked with a high school student who constantly got in fights. If he felt disrespected he'd start swinging. Together they rehearsed over and over him saying, "I don't have time for this," and walking away. During the rehearsals, Minahan gave him something to hold in his hands as he said this. And soon, he stopped getting in fights. It gave him the moment he needed to make a decision not to use his fists and a go-to automatic reply.

Tip 15: Use data to disprove negative thinking. Writing is a common barrier for kids with anxiety, Minahan said. But one way to begin getting students past this hurdle is to ask them how hard a task will be before they start and again after they've completed it. Almost always the perception of the task is worse than the actual task. With several weeks of data you can show students the pattern in their responses.

Minahan worked with a girl who hated writing so much that she was skipping school twice a week. She would often say that writing was torture to her. Minahan broke writing down into component parts with corresponding strategies for getting started on each part. When the student worked on a writing task Minahan would ask her how many strategies she employed. Often the girl didn't use that many strategies, which didn't fit with her own conception of herself. "We reframed her whole thinking and she felt more empowered to solve her problems," Minahan said.

INTERACTION STRATEGIES

In any interaction with students teachers can only control their own behavior, but that's actually a lot of power. "We are 50% of every interaction with a child," Minahan said. "We have a lot of control over that interaction."

Tip 16: If a teacher gets off on the wrong foot with a student early in the year, try randomly being kind to the child, rather than only giving positive attention based on his or her behavior. This kind of noncontingent reinforcement helps the child to see the teacher likes him for who he is, not because he does math well or reads perfectly, Minahan said.

Tip 17: In areas where the difficult student is competent, give her a leadership role. Maybe let her take a younger child to the nurse or start an activity club. This helps change the child's perception of herself and also her relationship to the teacher.

Tip 18: When demanding something of a student, don't ask yes or no questions and teach kids not to ask yes or no questions. In that scenario, someone has a 50 percent chance of being disappointed with the answer. By changing the question, the teacher opens the door for the answer to be diffusing, rather than an escalation of defiance. For example, if a student asks, "Can I work with Jack?" The teacher can reframe the question: "Oh, did you want to know when you could work with Jack? You can ask: When can I work with Jack." The student might not like the answer, but it likely won't produce the same explosive reaction as getting an outright "no."

Tip 19: Give kids time and space. If a student is prone to arguing, eye contact and physical proximity can escalate potential protests.*** For example, if a kid is humming in an annoying way, a typical teacher move might be to make eye contact with the child and shake your head to get him to stop. But in this situation eye-contact is non-verbally asking the child for a response, which he may be incapable of giving at that moment. Instead, calmly walk over and put a note on his desk that says, "please stop humming." Then run away and do not make eye contact with that student for a few minutes.

"The initial reaction is not pleasant and you have to wait for them to de-escalate before they can comply," Minahan said. Sometimes the mere presence of the teacher prevents that de-escalation.

Tip 20: Reward practice or strategy use, not performance. "When I shift the reinforcement to skills, I've noticed the skills go up and that's what makes the difference for the kids who have mental health difficulties," Minahan said. Ultimately, educators are teaching kids the skills and strategies that they can then use throughout their life when they're anxious, so rewarding practice makes sense.

The more teachers can empathize with students, teaching skill building and focus on preventing challenging behavior, the smoother the classroom will run. Often that means learning about the student in order to identify triggers and design new ways of interacting with even the most challenging students.

*An earlier version of this post overstated the connection between bad behavior and seeking attention.
**An earlier version of this sentence highlighted only one type of negative behavior -- fighting.
*** This section was updated to include the situations under which eye contact could make a situation worse for a student. We regret these errors.

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20 Tips to Help De-escalate Interactions With Anxious or Defiant Students | KQED

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Anxiety is a huge barrier to learning and very difficult for educators to identify. "When anxiety is fueling the behavior, it's the most confusing and complicated to figure out," Minahan said. That's because a student isn't always anxious; it tends to come and go based on events in their lives, so their difficulties aren't consistent.

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Public Versus Private Relationship

Community organizers try to help people understand the difference between public and private relationships (I was an organizer for 19 years prior to becoming a teacher). Often, those in power will try to blur that division when it suits their purposes (for example, politicians kissing babies).

Here is another example: I have spent time over the years working with many organizations, including religious congregations, organizing for community improvements. The political decision makers with whom we would have to negotiate for those neighborhood changes were sometimes members of those congregations, and they would often try to privately influence pastors or congregation leaders to take a different public position. The religious leaders, in turn, would point out that when it came time to participating in public life, it was a public relationship and public dialogue -- and when it came time to a personal issue, it was a private relationship and a private dialogue. In public life, the relationship was conditional, based on negotiation and reciprocity. In private life, the relationship was often based on love and friendship. This distinction was particularly important to demonstrate in public settings.

And we carried this distinction over to how members needed to act in the context of the organization -- at our meetings, with the media, and whenever they were in the public eye.

I apply this concept in the classroom by helping students understand the difference between public behavior and private behavior. When students are in the classroom, it is a public space with certain expectations. One small example is a student shouting out "I'm bored" or some other inappropriate comment.

One possible response to that kind of remark is a sharp admonishment from the teacher. Instead, though, what I generally do, either right then or at the next available opportunity, is to go over the student, put my arm around his or her shoulders, and have this kind of quick dialogue, with a smile:

Me: "Johnny, is it okay for you to think what you said?"
Johnny: "Yes."
Me: "Johnny, is it okay for you to tell your friends after class what you just said?"
Johnny: "Yes."
Me: "Johnny, is it okay for you to say what you just said out loud in the classroom?"
Johnny: "No."

And with both of us smiling, it's over.

I sometimes will have done it enough times with a student that when I go over, he or she will recite all of the lines. Notice that the dialogue leads with what students can do, instead of what they can't.

These kinds of inappropriate comments seem to decrease as the school year goes on, because at least some students gain a greater understanding of the differences between public and private, an understanding that should serve them well for years to come.

"What Would Be the Long-Term Effect of Doing That?"

Educator and positive classroom management consultant Marvin Marshall recommends a simple strategy of asking a disruptive student a simple question, either in the moment or afterward: "What would be the long-term effect of doing that?" As he suggests, asking can be far more effective than telling.

Alternatives to Collective Punishment

I suspect many teachers have had an experience like this:

A paper airplane, ball of paper, or pencil flies through the air, or somebody makes an obnoxious noise. The object is probably aimed at another student, and it may or may not hit the intended target. The noise is just meant to be funny.

You can tell the general area it came from, but you don't really know who the culprit is. It's frustrating because that kind of behavior does not contribute to a learning community.

What do you do?

It's not uncommon for teachers to first yell something like, "Who threw it?" No one admits to it, and then the teacher will punish the entire group.

Here's a definition of collective punishment:

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions.

I'm not convinced that this behavior is one we want to model for our students.

If collective punishment is out, then what are the alternatives?

This kind of misbehavior does not happen that often in my classes, thankfully, but it certainly does occur. What I usually do is go over to the area where I suspect the noise or projectile originated and quietly explain that I don't feel respected when this kind of thing happens. And, since I feel like I show that I respect students at all times, I would hope they would want me to feel respected. I then explain that I don't know who actually did it, but that I would like each of them to commit that they will not throw something (or make a noise, etc.), and we shake on it. I tell them that I'm sure they are people of their word, and the matter is closed.

Nine times out of ten, that is the end of things, and there is no repetition.

However, if it does happen again, I go to the next step. For example, somebody in my class was occasionally making an obnoxious noise. I knew it was one of two students. I did the first step with them, and that went fine. Then, two days later, one of them made the noise again.

I asked them both to come outside with me, and I explained that I was disappointed that one of them was not keeping their word. I knew that one was trustworthy, but I didn't know which one. So I said that I couldn't trust the word of either of them and didn't like feeling that way. I suggested that the person who was making the noise might want to think about how his or her actions were now affecting the other student. Then, I gave them a few minutes to talk about it privately (I left the door open and asked them to stay in front of it so I could observe their actions, but not overhear what they said).

We didn't hear that obnoxious noise again.

So in other words, the second step, when necessary, is to ask students to consider the impact their actions have on others, and ask them to try to work out problems among themselves. In my teaching career, this has almost always resulted in stopping the inappropriate behavior and, I hope, students gaining some added maturity.

Of course, one of the most common situations where the specter of collective punishment is raised is after a difficult time with a substitute teacher. One preventative strategy is the use of something like the Attitude and Behavior With A Substitute Teacher grading rubric. Early in the year, the teacher shows the simple rubric to students and explains that a substitute will use it with them. Five minutes prior to the end of class with the sub, he or she will distribute the rubrics, and students will write down their names and grade themselves. The sub will then go around, give what grade he or she believes the student has earned, and collect the sheets (this process means the sub does not have to worry about remembering individual names and can base the evaluation on student faces).

This can be a very effective strategy to reduce teacher temptation to inflict collective punishment on a class, enhance the likelihood of a class with a sub being somewhat productive, and dramatically reduce stress for the sub.

After a class has shown that it understands and respects the expected behavior, a teacher can experiment with not using the grading rubric and explaining to students that he or she trusts that they will act appropriately.

In Part Two of this excerpt, I'll offer additional positive classroom management strategies. In the meantime, please share your own in the comments section below.

This article was adapted and excerpted with permission from Larry Ferlazzo's Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies for Student Motivation, © 2013 Eye On Education, Inc. Larchmont, NY. All rights reserved. www.eyeoneducation.com. More information about this title is available here.

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Positive, Not Punitive, Classroom Management Tips

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Community organizers try to help people understand the difference between public and private relationships (I was an organizer for 19 years prior to becoming a teacher). Often, those in power will try to blur that division when it suits their purposes (for example, politicians kissing babies).

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I remember the first student I ever suspended. He was 13 years old.

It started off as a minimal disruption. He was stealing pencils from other students at his table. That turned into breaking pencils. Then, stealing homework.

Determined not to let him derail the entire class, I changed his seat. I went over to him, and quietly said, "Can you tell me what's up? I know you can behave better than this." He swore at me in two languages.

I gave him a five-minute timeout in the hallway. He came back in and kept throwing and stealing. Finally, another student got so irritated that she threw a pencil back at him. And before I knew it, he had her in a headlock.

I didn't think twice. I just made him disappear for a week. I wasn't a seasoned teacher. I was a couple feet shorter than many of my students, and younger than many of their siblings.

It's hard for any teacher to see the big picture in every disciplinary action we take, and how it can impact a student's education. But it does.

I've been out of the classroom for three years now, and for the past year, I've been following teachers, students and school districts, trying to understand the latest research on school suspension and its effects down the line.

Understanding How Suspension Can Lead to Dropout

I met Robert last spring. He was a talkative, skinny kid with lots of energy. It was the end of his sixth grade year, and Robert had already been suspended three times. One more time, and he knew he would be expelled.

Students with a record like Robert's are at risk. He should be entering high school soon, but 49% of students who entered high school with three suspensions on their record eventually dropped out of school, according to " Sent Home and Put Off Track," a new report by Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University.

And research shows that most students who get suspended end up getting suspended twice, causing some researchers to say that suspension is not an effective tool for changing behavior -- something that teachers can tell you instinctively.

"It's been really hard to keep kids invested in school, because once they fall behind, it's embarrassing to be behind their peers, and to take that risk to try. It's almost too much," said Robert's teacher, Megan Macpherson, who worries about her students moving on to middle school where there will be less individualized attention to keep them on track.

When students transition from elementary to secondary school, their chances of being suspended increase from 2.4% to 11%, according to a recent study out of UCLA.

And once they do get suspended, they're more likely to drop out.

Researcher Robert Balfanz found that students who were suspended once in ninth grade dropped out of high school twice as often as their peers who were not suspended.

Interventions

Youth Court and Restorative Justice

In Robert's school district, administrators are actively trying to reduce suspensions. Between 2004 - 2011, the district cut its suspensions in half through restorative justice strategies like the youth court program at Richmond High School. In this program, students are trained to act as lawyers, judges and jurors. They listen to both sides of a problem and then decide appropriate consequences other than suspension.

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS)

Another popular strategy for lowering suspension rates in schools is Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). This strategy revolves around intentionally creating a positive culture in schools to prevent negative behavior from occurring.

Dr. Rob Horner is a Professor of Special Education at the University of Oregon and an expert on PBIS. He says the method is used in over 8,000 schools and has even caught traction with the White House.

"The reason educators feel the compulsion to use techniques like detention, suspension, expulsion, is because they say, 'This child's behavior detracts from the educational opportunities of everybody else,'" Horner said. "We've learned if you focus on the front end to prevent problem behaviors, the number of these situations goes way down."

Tough Decisions

I taught eighth grade in a school that was close to being taken over by the state because of its low performance. Schools in this position are often encouraged to set a hard line with students -- you're in or you're out. That doesn't exactly encourage new teachers to be flexible with students and get to know them.

Balfanz observed that one of the best ways to prevent suspension is to foster strong relationships between students and teachers. "When those relationships are weak, it's easier for students to act out, and it's easier for teachers to be harsh in their reactions. Neither side has an invested relationship with the other," he said.

Reflecting back on my years as a classroom teacher, I wish I had prioritized keeping students in school. But at the time, it felt impossible. I did feel compelled to use suspensions to keep my class under control. Getting a knock from the teacher next-door asking me to "keep it down" only made me more desperate to get rid of noisy students.

Now I'm realizing that I might have been getting rid of them for good.

Have you used any interventions besides suspension to work with troubled students? What has worked for you?

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The Link Between Suspension and Dropout | Edutopia

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I remember the first student I ever suspended. He was 13 years old. It started off as a minimal disruption. He was stealing pencils from other students at his table. That turned into breaking pencils. Then, stealing homework. Determined not to let him derail the entire class, I changed his seat.

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Imagine that a student enters an English class to find that it's that most dreaded of days -- graded paper pass-back day. As he receives his paper, his teacher begins to criticize him for his mistakes saying, "You should have known better than to write your thesis that way." What if the teacher went on to add, "That's the third time this month. What am I going to do with you?" before sending him to the office for his mistake?

Students who make academic mistakes are given time to review, relearn, and reassess until they master the content. But with students who fail to meet behavior expectations, more often than not we respond by assuming willful disobedience, removing students from the classroom, and assigning disciplinary consequences. When our typical responses for behavior are applied to academic issues, it's easy to see the disparity.

Because educators are well trained to deal with academic failures and missteps, we know that this isn't the way to handle the issues with an academic assignment. Somehow, though, it's become an acceptable way to address student behavior.

The "He Was Told So He Should Know" Problem

As a high school teacher, I certainly didn't think that I needed to teach behavior. I was under the impression that if I posted rules and reviewed them in class on the first day, I had done all that was required. As a result, even when it didn't work, I often found myself returning to my list of posted rules when it was time to "review expectations." With academic content, teachers have a number of tricks up their sleeves. They start with what students know and build from there using great models, repetition, and novelty to make student learning memorable.

Here's what I wonder: What would happen if we taught behavior expectations with our best instructional practices?

Instead of looking at students as willfully disobeying all the good manners they've been taught, what if we put a process in place to teach our expectations for student behavior with the best practices often reserved for academic work? Approaching behavior expectations with our best instructional practices will allow students to internalize our expectations better and for longer.

A Better Way

Here's a process along with a few starter ideas to move you in the right direction, whether you're an individual teacher or thinking about this on a campus-wide scale.

1. Be clear with your expectations.

2. Draft a list of memorable ways to teach these expectations (be sure to include models).

3. Estimate how often you will need to reteach this lesson: create a timeline then establish a list of signs that indicate when it is time to reteach this expectation.

Let's use a problem that could happen on any campus: students who don't pick up after themselves.

At the beginning of last year, we noticed that students weren't picking up their trash between lunches like we needed them to do. At a high school, this is something we expected them to know, but when we noticed the gap between their behavior and our expectation, we decided to approach the issue proactively using this process.

With our aim set on every student picking up his or her own trash after lunch, we calculated how long our custodial staff actually had to clean each of the 60+ table tops in the cafeteria between lunches and asked students to clean tables at that speed. We captured their efforts on video. The result was entertaining and proved our point: Since the custodial staff cannot pick up the trash from every table in time for you to sit at a table that doesn't have trash on it, let's all pick up our trash.

We came back to these reminders three times throughout the year. We chose hot spots (the beginning of the year, the first week of January, and the week after spring break) to reiterate our expectations. With these clearly defined expectations, students responded in the way that we hoped.

What Could You Do?

If you're a classroom teacher and are interested in trying out this idea, here are a few questions that might serve as a good point of departure for teaching discipline:

What should students do when they hear my signal?

What are the teacher's expectations when students enter the classroom?

What are the teacher's expectations for electronic devices in the classroom?

What should students do when they return from being absent?

If you want to take the schoolwide approach, consider creating lessons to consistently establish these expectations at the campus level:

Be on time to class.

Follow the dress code.

Eat food in the cafeteria (and only in the cafeteria).

At sporting events, yell for your team instead of against the opponent.

In the hallways, stop and listen if an adult addresses you.

It's What's Right

On the first day of school, my English III students often heard my "you're a day closer to being high school graduates than being middle schoolers -- so let's act like it" speech. It was pretty short little speech -- in fact, you just read most of it -- but I felt that was an appropriate way to address things because, by the time students enter junior year of high school, they know how to behave, right?

It wasn't fun for me to realize that I was the one who needed to make the big change, but it needed to happen. I'm glad it did, and so were my students.

Teaching behavior expectations in the way that we know students really learn -- with models and repetition -- will help them learn your expectations, and help you help them learn in your classroom.

How do you teach behavior expectations in your classroom or school? How successful are you? Please tell us about it in the comments section of this post.

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Behavior Expectations and How to Teach Them | Edutopia

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Imagine that a student enters an English class to find that it's that most dreaded of days -- graded paper pass-back day. As he receives his paper, his teacher begins to criticize him for his mistakes saying, "You should have known better than to write your thesis that way."