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Are We There Yet?

Everything is taking longer than it did before. Students aren't sitting down and getting to work on their Do Now. No one can find a sharpened pencil. Side conversations about The Avengers and summer plans interrupt your lessons. Students aren't handing in their homework. Your pile of papers has grown so high that you can no longer see over it or fit it into your tote bag.

Sound familiar?

The last few months of school are challenging in so many ways, especially when it comes to maintaining your classroom routines and procedures and student behavior. Rather than start a countdown of how many days you have left before summer, respond to this chaos by hitting the reset button.

Here are our top tips for classroom management at the end of the school year, and if you are looking for more, check out our hub of classroom management strategies.

Slow Everything Down

It can be tempting to speed everything up: your teaching, the amount of time students have to complete their work, and your responses to student disruptions. We start to panic when we realize that we aren't as far in the curriculum as we planned to be. This panic can result in hitting our own mental fast-forward button.

This is where wait time needs to become part of your practice again. Before you call on a student, wait five-ten seconds. Before you move on to the next thing, take the time to answer some questions and do a quick pulse check. Don't skip asking your students for feedback. If students are misbehaving, take a breath and count to ten before you respond.

Strategy: Wait Time

One of the most powerful classroom management strategies is to stop teaching and be silent and still. Wait, and the students who aren't doing what they are supposed to will realize you waiting on them. Don't waste your energy by telling them what not to do, but show them with your stillness and silence that you can't teach this way.
Resist the urge to race to the finish and slow yourself down.
additional resources on wait time, check out: Tips and Strategies For Making Student Thinking Visible and Your Secret Weapon: Wait Time.

Make Time For Classroom Community Building

In my teaching, I often dropped important classroom community building activities like my class shout outs, and class meetings because we had too much to get done. This was a mistake. In many ways, the activities that emphasize the positive are time well-spent and result in better behaved students.

Strategy: Gratitude Countdown

One of my favorite classroom management strategies for shifting the negative to the positive is a gratitude countdown. We all know our students are going to start counting down how many days of school are left. Rather than become annoyed by this, we can create a gratitude countdown. Each day, we can ask a student so share out one thing they are grateful for in this classroom. They might name a friend who helped them with a difficult assignment or a project that they loved.

Keep track of what they share and type it up for the whole class. You can print a copy and share it with each student as they leave your class to remind them of all the good times the class had together.
Resist the urge to skip community building, and keep doing it.
Let Your Students Teach

Depending on the grade you teach, you might have to give your students a final exam. Even if you don't, summative assessments are a reality as we wrap up the year, and chances are, you need to review with your students.

Strategy: Student-Led Mini-Lessons

One of my favorite review strategies is to give students the opportunity to teach the class. Create a list of topics or skills and assign them to students. If you think students will be anxious about teaching the class, let them work in pairs.

Let students know what your expectations are for their mini-lesson. Some important criteria to consider are:

The amount of time they will have

The structure of their mini-lesson

Including some guided practice for their classmates

Provide students with class time to plan their lessons. This break from the usual routine can be especially helpful late in the year. Make sure that students have deadlines and know what they are expected to complete during class time so you can hold them accountable.
Resist the urge to control the class, and let the students take ownership over their review.
Provide Opportunities For Choice

I don't know about you, but one of my biggest challenges at the end of the school year was when my students started asking me, "why are we doing this?" and "do we have to do this?" There was a lot more pushback in May than there was in November.

One of the most effective ways to combat this pushback was to use Choice Boards.

Strategy: Use Choice Boards

A choice board is an instructional approach where students are given options in how they will learn and/or what they will do. For example, you may offer students three choices for independent reading time: read by yourself, read with a partner, or listen to the audiobook. You might also provide different assignments and activities for practicing one skill like writing using figurative language or long division.

My students loved having a choice, and I tried to make the choices as creative and varied as possible. Planning a choice board does take time, but the benefits are worth it.
Resist the urge to teach one-size-fits all, and incorporate choice into your teaching.
For choice boards that you can download, print, and use, check out: Multiplication Choice Board, Division Choice Board, and Time Choice Board.

Go Ahead and Count Down

And if all else fails, use positive reinforcement as much as possible. Try to focus on what is working rather than what isn't. Remind yourself that you are doing the best you can, and don't take it personally, and if you need to, start counting down the days.

How do you keep your students on track at the end of the year? Share with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Julie Mason is the Head of Curriculum and Content for TeacherVision. She taught middle and high school English for eight years, and then worked as an instructional coach, supporting K-12 teachers to blend and personalize their classrooms. She has a BA in English from Connecticut College and an MA in English Education from New York University.

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Everything is taking longer than it did before. Students aren't sitting down and getting to work on their Do Now. No one can find a sharpened pencil. Side conversations about The Avengers and summer plans interrupt your lessons. Students aren't handing in their homework.

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What do you think will be some of the challenges for teachers who might be returning to the physical classroom for the first time in a year and a half, and what are your ideas for how they can best handle them?
The new school year has already begun for some and will soon kick off for the rest of us.

Today's post offers some advice for all of us on how to face it ...

Today, Meg Tegerdine, Robert S. Harvey, Lauren Nifong, and Julia Stearns Cloat offer their best suggestions.

You might also be interested in Ten Ways I'll Be Teaching Differently Next Year, where I previously shared my own plans, along with A Beginning List Of Resources On Supporting Our Students As We Make Baby Steps Towards Returning To A Post-Pandemic Classroom.

Giving 'Grace'
Meg Tegerdine is a nine-year veteran special educator teaching in a self-contained setting in north St. Louis County, Mo. Three words she uses to describe her classroom culture are leadership, community, and voice. Meg was recognized as a 2021 Extraordinary Educator by Curriculum Associates:
For many kids, learning virtually meant having limited access to peers and, therefore, limited access to social interactions. For my kids, this was even more difficult because they are in my self-contained classroom in order to improve their academic progress and their social/emotional/behavioral skills. Not only were they out of practice in social interactions by the time we returned to in-person learning in late 2020, but we also suddenly changed the rules on them. We had to social distance, wear face masks that were uncomfortable and made it hard to understand one another, and could no longer high-five or give a side hug.

These barriers and many more led to a lot of frustration for my students, my staff, and myself. My classroom has always felt like a community, but we had to relearn how to be one. Here are some things that helped us:

1. Explicitly communicate expectations, routines, procedures, and consequences: Be clear and concise and make sure to give reasoning when possible. Make consequences of positive and negative behavior clear so that no one is surprised. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. This may seem like going overboard, but be sure that your students are consistently hearing about, observing, and practicing these skills.

2. Build in time to get to know each other better: We all spent months teaching through screens. Now that the kids are back in person, you may feel that you need to focus 100 percent of your attention on academics. Yes, academics are essential and the BIG reason we come to school, but we're not just teaching academic skills. Keep in mind that you are teaching an entire human being who needs to learn how to positively engage with others. Build time to create positive relationships. This may seem like a small piece of the puzzle, but without positive relationships and community, your teaching will not have as much of an impact.

3. Combine learning modalities and give kids voice in your class: None of us had a choice in how we were learning during the pandemic. Most of us were told we had to stay home and reach our students through a computer screen. That was tough for adults, but think how much more difficult it was for students who don't have the coping or problem-solving skills that we do. Our students' lives were drastically changed over the pandemic, and they had little to no say in their own learning.

Give students voice in your classroom. This can be as simple as combining learning modalities by allowing students to choose to complete assignments with paper and pencil or through their computer. When possible, give them ownership over classroom problem-solving and management. Encourage your students to be leaders in their classroom and school community and to use their voice to advocate for themselves and others.

4. Give one another (and yourself) grace: I imagine that like me, many of you felt like you just weren't doing enough. That you were working 24/7 and that there still weren't enough hours in the day. Take a breath. Maybe two. And give yourself grace. This is not going to be easy. Teaching changes constantly, but over the last year, you have done incredible things to support your students. Coming back in person is not going to be picture perfect, but it will be classroom perfect. Your kids will be exactly where they are meant to be with the exact person who was meant to teach them.

'Naming Emotions'
Robert S. Harvey is the superintendent of East Harlem Scholars Academies, a community-based network of public charter schools in New York City, and chief academic officer of East Harlem Tutorial Program, where he manages an out-of-school-time program and teaching residency. He is visiting professor in public leadership at the Memphis Theological Seminary. And he is the author of Abolitionist Leadership in Schools: Undoing Systemic Injustice through Communally Conscious Education:
As teachers prepare to return to physical classrooms, the challenges facing them [as humans, first, then as pedagogues] are expansive, particularly because it will demand balancing the personal and the pedagogical. From internalized loss and social isolation to increased anxiety to exacerbated housing, economic, food, and health disparities, teachers will inevitably have to hold the impact of these challenges on a young person's lived reality, and therefore, on a young person's pedagogical engagement.

Against that backdrop, emotional ambiguity from the joy of being reconnected and yet the angst of that connection occurring within close proximity will require teachers to radically humanize the emotional as consequential for the pedagogical. In effect, returning to the physical classroom will inescapably yield an experience of emotions that many of us have never experienced.

Thus, a strategy to employ is communal emotional labeling, which is the practice of making space [within community, which is classroom] for naming emotions with granularity-an act that seems simple but can be incredibly transformative. It transcends, "I'm fine," and invites, "I feel worried and closed-in." Or, instead of "I'm OK," it allows, "I feel confused, just here, lost." Susan David, author of Emotional Agility, writes: "We need a more nuanced vocabulary for emotions, not just for the sake of being more precise, but because incorrectly diagnosing our emotions makes us respond incorrectly."

Think about how often we as educators, and the students we support, barrel through our days and weeks completely unmindful of what we are feeling? Now, take that unawareness and compound it by the last year and a half and imagine the pedagogical possibilities by ensuring that before we give of ourselves in teaching and learning, we check in with ourselves in mind and spirit.

In marginalized communities full of Black, brown, and economically vulnerable students, correctly labeling [or what we can call, self-diagnosing] emotions is the beginning of utilizing agency to set an expectation of what students need to be supported within the classroom.

For instance, when one of our upper-elementary students told me that she felt frustrated with coming to school, we explored it more. Did she feel nervous about entering into a building because she had experienced loss at the height of the pandemic? Did she have anxieties from previous years about her academic performance, which clouded her experience with school prepandemic until now? Was their perceived embarrassment because her friends' families selected for them to be virtual, yet her family selected otherwise?

As students, and as teachers [modeling the expectation], become aware of the intricacies of what we are feeling and can communicate effectively with those around us within community, we can then free ourselves to become present in meaningful and whole ways, which creates the conditions for information internalization and emotional transformation.

'Consistency'
Lauren Nifong is an instructional coach in Greenville, S.C. She holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education, a master's degree in administration and supervision, and is currently a member of South Carolina ASCD's 2021 Class of Emerging Leaders. You can connect with Lauren at @Lnifong0320 on Twitter:
As schools begin to reopen and welcome young people back into their buildings, teachers and students alike are now faced with the challenge of returning to "normal" (or as close to "normal" as possible). What obstacles will teachers face, and how will they overcome them to best serve their students in this new era?

One of the greatest challenges that teachers will most likely face will be helping students acclimate back into classroom expectations and procedures. For over a year, students have participated in virtual learning without a classroom full of their peers to collaborate with in person. After being self-paced in their own homes, students will now have to adjust to coming back into an academic setting. The structure that is normally implemented throughout a school day will have to be relearned.

Teachers may also need to address social-anxiety issues that arise for students who are entering back into society after quarantine. With mask mandates and social-distancing guidelines perhaps lifted, students will now be able to be in close contact with many people throughout the school day. Some students may be apprehensive about collaborating closely with others. Families have approached this pandemic in various ways. Students will enter our schools with differing opinions and understandings of what the world has experienced in the last year. It will be crucial for teachers to be compassionate, understanding, and supportive.

The variables that face educators in this new school year may seem daunting, but like any other obstacle, teachers seem to always find a way to meet the needs of their students. Building relationships will be key to fostering environments that are supportive and conducive to learning. By being intentional about connecting with students and their unique circumstances, teachers can build a bridge of trust that will help to ensure expectations and procedures are respected and followed.

Consistency will also be essential to the fidelity of classroom routines. Educators will need to spend even more time than usual explicitly teaching and modeling classroom expectations so that students can adjust back into the academic setting. The road to recovering from a global pandemic may be rocky, but if anyone can persevere and ensure students are educated, loved, and protected-it's a teacher.

'Unfinished Learning & Stamina'
Julia Stearns Cloat, Ph.D., has spent the past 25 years working in unit school districts in roles including literacy specialist, instructional coach, and curriculum director and has earned awards for her work in student services. Julia currently works as executive director of curriculum and instruction in Freeport, Ill., and as an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University:
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, most students have experienced disruption and/or a lack of continuity in their formal learning. Students who have been learning from home for the past year will face challenges as they adjust to being back in the physical classroom. It is likely that the biggest challenges to students and teachers as they return to a fully in-person environment are unfinished learning and stamina.

Data from the 2020-21 school year shows a trend among students of unfinished learning, especially in math. Students who return to in-person learning after having been learning at home for the past 18 months will return with a greater range in their progress toward grade-level proficiencies than teachers typically see at the beginning of the school year.

In the coming year, differentiated instruction will have greater importance than ever. In order to accommodate for the increased need for remediation, teachers and administrators should consider how to adjust the systems, such as MTSS or RTI, that support students. With the increased need for academic and behavior supports, tier 1 core instruction should focus on grade-level standards that were identified by the state or district as being high priority. Teachers who are in districts and/or states that have not identified priority standards can work together to identify the high-leverage standards. In the coming year, tiered interventions should be pushed into the classroom when possible. It will be important for teachers to not give into the temptation to spend every instructional minute on the remediation of skills. Instead, teachers should continue to teach grade-level skills and standards, adding the remediation as a differentiated layer on top of the core instruction.

When learning remotely, it is much easier to take mental breaks than it is while in the physical classroom. Students who are returning to in-person learning for the first time in a year and a half will need to build back the stamina that it takes to be in school and learning all day, five days a week. Students will need to readjust to the routines and structure of school.

Establishing and communicating clear routines will be crucial at the beginning of the year. Teachers should work toward building learning stamina by reducing the amount of time that students are required to sit and listen, increasing the number of physical breaks, and by slowly increasing time spent on cognitively demanding tasks (e.g., independent reading, independent work).

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign-new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

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11 Strategies for Facing This Year's Classroom Challenges (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: What do you think will be some of the challenges for teachers who might be returning to the physical classroom for the first time in a year and a half, and what are your ideas for how they can best handle them?

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Any student may refuse to cooperate at times, but handling students with oppositional defiant disorder requires that teachers have a plan.

We all have students who test our limits. Most kids can be uncooperative at times, especially if they're tired, hungry, or feeling overwhelmed. For certain age groups, like 2- to 3-year-olds and teenagers, noncooperative behavior is a normal part of development.

In addition, up to 16 percent of all children and 40 percent of students diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), which is characterized by a pattern, in multiple settings over time, of consistent negative and hostile behavior that can include deliberately annoying or upsetting others, explosions of anger and hostility, defiance or frequent arguing with adults, and then blaming others for misbehavior.

Often teachers react defensively to obstinate behavior, creating a situation where teacher and student may become locked in a power struggle or an ineffective pattern of communication.

So how does a teacher handle a student who openly defies rules, purposely tries to irritate the teacher, or has a pattern of hostile behavior toward authority? Here are some suggestions to help you avoid problems or to manage them when they arise.

Remain Calm

As a new teacher, I quickly determined that showing anger was counterproductive with students who were oppositional. It made the behavior worse as they were often amused or encouraged by upsetting an adult.

Even when you're upset or frustrated, it's important not to allow the child to see your emotional response. Keep a positive tone to your voice, and adopt neutral body language by keeping your hands by your sides. Be cautious about approaching the student or entering their personal space as this might escalate the situation.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Learning to use "I statements" helped me immensely in working with students with difficult behavior. When a student is noncompliant, often our first impulse as teachers is to point out the behavior by using a statement that begins with "You" and gives a command. For example, "You never listen and follow directions. Don't get out of your seat again!"

Rephrasing this as an "I statement" is much more effective. For example, "I would like for all of my students to sit down, listen, and follow directions so that they know what to do next."

This statement is less judgmental, and it instructs by describing the positive behavior desired. Remember to keep directions concise and deliver them in multiple ways (in writing, spoken aloud, or using signals, for example).

When possible, offer choices where you will be happy with either outcome. For example, "Students may sit on the beanbags or at their desks to work quietly." Choices make students feel like they have agency without having to display defiant behavior.

Reinforce Positive Behavior

Switch your focus from recognizing negative behavior to seeking out demonstrations of positive behavior. Look for and reward even small steps toward flexibility, compliance, and cooperation.

When a student shows improvement, give it attention. I found positive notes home to be especially effective. I sent postcards to my students who demonstrated improvement in their behavior. A parent once told me that not only was this the first positive note the student had received, but he was so proud of it that he kept it on the refrigerator to look at every day. Don't underestimate the power of positive words in shaping behavior.

Determine the Cause of the Behavior

When does this behavior happen or not happen?

What happens before and after the behavior?

Who is the audience?

Are there factors outside of the student's control that might be causing or contributing to the behaviors? (For example, has the student experienced trauma? Does he or she come from a household with housing or food instability?)

What alternative behavior would be more acceptable than the one being displayed?

Behaviors help students obtain something desirable or escape something undesirable. Learning to think of behavior as feedback or a form of communication helped me to work more effectively as a teacher with students who display problem behaviors.

Consider that there may be understandable reasons for the misbehavior. For example, as a teacher I often saw students create a problem to avoid doing work that was too difficult for them. Some students act out because of difficult issues in their homes or communities. I also saw students act tough or argumentative to impress peers or avoid bullying or victimization by other students.

Understanding the cause of the behavior will help in establishing a plan to address the challenges.

If a student frequently displays problematic behavior, it also may be possible to request a functional behavior assessment (FBA), which looks at academic and non-academic factors that could be contributing to or triggering behavior. While the law only requires an FBA after a suspension of 10 days or more, an FBA may be requested at any time. An FBA is usually conducted by a team, which can include a special education teacher, general education teachers, parent or guardian, school administrators, and specialists (such as a speech therapist, psychologist, or behavior specialist). The FBA is then used to create a detailed behavior intervention plan (BIP).

Once a behavior is identified and assessed, a plan may be developed to prevent it from continuing. A BIP outlines steps a teacher will take when a problem behavior occurs.

A BIP should teach the student more productive behaviors and strategies, reward positive and appropriate behaviors, and outline who is responsible for each intervention.

Perhaps changes can be made in the environment, like moving the student's seat, or instructional methodology changes could be made, like shortening or modifying an assignment to match the student's capability for independent work. Teachers could also consider altering routines if there are times when the behavior is likely to occur.

The teacher will provide the student with a set of questions about the lesson to answer on paper and turn in instead of answering questions aloud.

The student will be responsible for asking for a short break or alternative location to complete assignments when they are feeling overwhelmed.

Each day, if the student turns in their answers after the lesson, they will receive a positive note home and 5-10 minutes to work on their art projects.

For example, if a student is having an outburst every time they're called on in class or asked to present information in front of their peers, the plan might offer alternatives such as:

The behavior plan that the team comes up with should be implemented in all classes. The team should meet to hear teacher and parent/guardian feedback, and the plan should be revisited periodically to change ineffective interventions or modify interventions where the student shows improvement.

We all have the capacity to learn, change, and grow. When given the right tools and environment, students with problematic behavior can learn more productive strategies that will help them have positive and effective interactions with others.

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Any student may refuse to cooperate at times, but handling students with oppositional defiant disorder requires that teachers have a plan.

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With less than a month before most schools in the country are scheduled to start, many teachers still don't know how they will be conducting classes this fall.

Each model brings its own challenges. Remote teachers will have to build class culture and routines with students they may never have met in person; teachers in school buildings will need to figure out how to adapt their instruction, shaped and constrained by the physical environment.

In school buildings, almost every operational concern, from social-distancing-friendly class schedules to cleaning times, has implications for instruction. Some teachers may have to adapt courses from daily 45-minute periods to 90-minute blocks every other day; others will need to figure out how to plan small-group work so that it lines up with staggered bus arrivals.

Class cultures built on collaboration or group project work will change.

"This will be taking me back to my own childhood, when [students are] all sitting in their desks with their own notebooks, and the teacher is calling on them," said Cathy Burge, a 5th grade teacher in Holmen, Wis., whose students usually sit in groups at trapezoid tables.

"I think we want to be really honest with parents ... [in-person school is] not going to be what they remember from last year. I think that open dialogue is going to be really important," she said.

For teachers, uncertainty can make it hard to prepare. "Until I know what's happening, I don't want to do all this planning and then not use it," said Laura Haddad, a high school English teacher and technology coach in Glastonbury, Conn.

Still, experts say there are some priorities for instruction this year that cut across environments. Frequent communication between students, teachers, and parents is essential to re-engaging students in school, especially if class is online in the fall. Challenging students with cognitively demanding work, and providing them supports where needed, is more important than ever as schools anticipate significant learning loss.

We discuss these priorities and present ideas for adapting common classroom routines for remote or socially distanced settings. (Previous installments of this series cover best practices for online learning and building remote relationships, specifically.)
The priority: Frequent, meaningful engagement
It's recommended that each student has meaningful interaction with at least one educator every day. In a virtual setting, this could look like a synchronous advisory or morning meeting. This doesn't have to rely on internet access, though-teachers could also call individual students on the phone.

Regardless of method, communication shouldn't overburden teachers. Grade-level teams can split up student rosters, and other educators-such as counselors, teachers' assistants, or reading specialists-can share some of the responsibility. Posting video lessons and check-ins for students to access asynchronously is encouraged as well, but it doesn't replace a one-on-one conversation.
The priority: Cognitively demanding work
Jana Beth Francis, the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning in Daviess County schools in Owensboro, Ky., said deep intellectual engagement was missing from a lot of work during the spring closures.

"There was a lot of, watch this video, fill in this worksheet. Kids weren't thinking about their work. So that's the first step we're taking" in planning for the fall, she said.

Even in a fully remote environment, students should have the opportunity for synchronous or asynchronous discussion, personalized feedback from teachers, and coaching. They should be analyzing text, working through complicated math problems, and testing hypotheses, independently and together with other students. Centering this cognitively demanding work can accelerate students academically, but it's also a way to keep them emotionally invested in remote learning.
The priority: Responding to formative assessment
Teachers have always embedded checks for understanding into their lessons. But this year, as students may be starting school with unfinished learning from the spring, figuring out where gaps might prevent students from understanding grade-level content is especially important. Experts recommend against starting the year with a formal or standardized test, instead advising teachers to use formative assessment to figure out where students might need extra support to engage with the work. ( For more on this, see "Don't Rush to 'Diagnose' Learning Loss With a Formal Test. Do This Instead".) Responding to this instructional need is the next step.

Teachers can give feedback in the context of the lesson, if students only need a quick reminder or refresh of concepts. Moderating asynchronous student collaboration-on chat boards, for example-gives teachers an opportunity to provide feedback that clarifies misconceptions or deepens understandings. Teachers can also prepare virtual scaffolds ahead of time, providing digital anchor charts or recordings of themselves analyzing an exemplar of student work.

School schedules-whether in-person or online-should be designed so that there is ample time for teachers and specialists to work with students who need additional support, beyond what they can receive within the context of whole-group instruction.

Adapting Common Classroom Routines in an Online (or Socially Distanced) Environment
How to: Introduce yourself to students at the beginning of the year
Teachers can record an introduction video that welcomes students to the class and helps students get to know them. In the first online class session, teachers could give students a tour of the online environment, explaining where they will find assignments, how they can participate, and any class norms. This virtual tour can also be recorded, or key instructions written up and posted, so that students can go back and review later if needed.

Alice Chen, an 8th grade English teacher and technology coach in Walnut, Calif., who will be teaching remotely, plans to have her students do introduction videos, too. She'll ask her class to take photos of themselves and each record a short bio, which includes them saying their names. "Instead of asking the student over and over how to pronounce their name, I like to record it, so I can listen to it at home and learn to pronounce it the right way," she said.

Even though video can be a good way to connect at the beginning of the year, teachers don't need to require that every student have their video feed on for every synchronous lesson. There are equity concerns here-students may be connecting through an app on their phone, dialing in, or not have the bandwidth for video.

And just as teachers might in a traditional classroom, they should also use time at the beginning of the year to explain schedules and routines in an online space: What time windows will teachers be available, and how should students contact them? What time is class each week, and when will assignments be due?
How to: Hold a remote discussion
Class discussions will look different online than in-person. "Freewheeling, seminar-style debates" are hard to pull off in a Zoom class with 20-30 students, said Justin Reich, the executive director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab.

In interviews with 40 teachers about their experiences teaching remotely this past spring, the Teaching Systems Lab found that some teachers said students were self-conscious about turning on their video in whole-class settings. Other teachers had more success in smaller groups-either splitting the class into smaller synchronous meeting times or circulating between simultaneous breakout sessions.

Discussions can also take place in an asynchronous environment, with message boards that allow students to respond to each other.

In a math class, for example, a teacher could share (with permission) two examples of student work that demonstrate solving the same problem in different ways. She could post these examples, along with a few discussion prompts, to a discussion forum and ask for student reaction. As the students respond, she should moderate the conversation, prompting students to expand on their thinking or clarifying misunderstandings.

Even with no internet access, teachers can still use the phone-calling students to talk through problems or convening two or three students on a group call to have academic discussions.

Regardless of how teachers structure conversations, it can be helpful to provide a rubric that clearly lays out what full, thoughtful participation looks like in each environment.

Less formalized opportunities for discussion can also help build relationships. Chen, the teacher in California, invited students to schedule virtual book talks with her in the spring. Students didn't have to be in the same class section to sign up for the same time slot, so groups of friends could come together.
How to: Have students think-pair-share

How to: Plan a socially distanced art, music, or physical education lesson
In art, one group of students shouldn't be using the same set of materials as the next. It may be necessary for art teachers to rotate lessons: using paper and colored pencils for the first block of the day, and then watercolors for the second, for example.

For music class, the National Federation of State High School Associations and the National Association for Music Education recommend against indoor group or ensemble singing. Instead, focus on instruments that don't require breath-like xylophones, tambourines, or bells-and music theory work, like ear training or chord building (no equipment or instruments should be shared without disinfecting between uses). Performances and concerts can be recorded or streamed online.

Schools should consider holding outdoor physical education classes when possible, SHAPE America suggests, with limited or no use of equipment. Some educators have started planning for no-contact games for P.E. or break times. Andrew Jones, a kindergarten instructional assistant in Trinidad, Calif., compiled a list of "pandemic-friendly" games for young students to play during indoor and outdoor recess.

"In all of the teacher forums I've been reading, everyone's focused on desk configurations and facemasks. For me, those are the easy things to do, because you're going to get instructions from the administration on what you have to do," he said. "They're not going to tell you how to have fun with the kids."

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Classroom Routines Must Change. Here's What Teaching Looks Like Under COVID-19

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With less than a month before most schools in the country are scheduled to start, many teachers still don't know how they will be conducting classes this fall. Each model brings its own challenges.

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Classroom management was my biggest struggle as a new teacher. I went in suspecting I would have classroom management in the bag because I'd had pretty extensive experience working with kids from babysitting, being a camp counselor, and taking on similar volunteer-type roles. But as it turns out, managing a classroom was way different and way more difficult than anything I'd done before.

In my first year, I had no procedures in place and thought that my students wouldn't learn if I wasn't always nice to them. Because of this, I had zero control over my classroom. I was as helpless as a kitten.

In my second year, I overcompensated for my leniency the previous year and behaved somewhat like a dragon. I used procedures this time and had near-perfect control over my classroom, but I was so strict at the beginning of the year that it made it difficult for my students to relate to and/or trust me. Not OK.

My third year is when things started to even out. I knew I needed to have set boundaries and be firm with my students who pushed them, but I also wanted a classroom environment that was warm and engaging so that kids wouldn't even want to push boundaries. In my fourth year, I worked on perfecting this balance, and in my fifth year, it finally felt totally natural, like riding a bike.

Classroom management isn't like following a recipe, where you follow exact steps and end up with a beautiful finished product. It takes time, practice, and patience. But here are some tricks I've learned that help move that process along:

1. Use a quiet (but firm) voice for redirecting behavior.

A quiet voice is way more effective than a loud one in the long run. What I mean by this is that while a loud voice might scare a student into doing what you want in the moment, you may completely lose their respect, and/or they may lose the ability to focus in your class. A loud voice says, "Congratulations, teenagers, I've given you complete control of my temper! Allow me to demonstrate how easily manipulated I am." A controlled, calm, quiet voice says, "I'm still in control-of my emotions and of this classroom. And you'll need to listen carefully to what I'm saying."

2. Apologize.

We all make careless mistakes or bring frustrations from our personal lives into the classroom by accident. If you carry on without acknowledging or addressing it, the only example you're setting is that people in power don't have to apologize. But when you can admit your mistakes and ask for forgiveness, you are modeling an extremely important character trait (humility), and your example will matter to your students.

I probably had to apologize to my first-period class eight times last year. (Probably because I had them right after what were often frustrating faculty meetings.) I found that taking that few seconds to apologize often put me in a better mood. They even helped me come up with a routine to "reset" me, which involved looking at pictures of baby animals for 60 seconds.

3. Come up with some kind of unique activity, game, or tradition that is quirky, fun, and unique to your class.

This is not only fun for students but perfect for building classroom camaraderie (which is tough to do with secondary kids). Here are some examples from some outstanding teachers around the country:

"I love doing Monday morning share! I get to hear about their weekend, and they get to hear about mine. We celebrate good weekends together and sympathize with bad weekends. It also makes Mondays something to look forward to!"

"My classes are split into four houses, like in Harry Potter. They're named after four great thinkers/innovators: Nikola Tesla, Maryam Mirzakhani, Percy Julian, and Ida B. Wells. Students get "sorted" with the Sorting Hat, and their first project is to research their founder and teach a lesson to the rest of the group about him/her. They get house points for answering warm-up questions, being awesome, etc., and I randomly give prizes to whatever house is in the lead."

"I'm in a portable, so I have a sidewalk out front. I use sidewalk chalk to write students notes on their birthdays, write quotes, or wish them good luck on testing days. It makes for something special that everyone in the school can see when they walk by."

"On the first day of school, I ask each of my eighth graders to address a blank postcard for me. The most time-consuming part of mailing home a note is addressing envelopes/cards! As the days/weeks pass, I'll write a thoughtful note to my students and mail them. Fourteen-year-olds seem to love getting mail at home, and it's such a fun way to build a positive relationship with your students and their families!"

"I teach high school Spanish. I wait outside to greet my students, and every day I have a new question for each of them. Usually it is somewhat related to the vocabulary we are studying, always in Spanish, and I try to make it as personable as possible 'Do you prefer cats or dogs?' 'Who is better: Justin Timberlake or Justin Bieber?' At the beginning of the year, they are all kind of weirded out by it, but by Thanksgiving they all wait for their question. If I don't ask them, they tell me they want their question!"

"I put stickers on the outside of their reading journals rather than the pages inside. I teach in Ohio, so they always compare it to the Ohio State football players' helmets."

"On my door: 'Late? No entry without dancing.'"

"We use the sign language symbol for 'I love you' to respond when a student shares a writing, when they admit to something difficult-pretty much whenever we feel one of us needs and/or deserves love or appreciation. I don't like clapping as it sometimes becomes a symbol of popularity (louder = more popular). The kids are pretty awesome with this one. Someone will be sharing a writing about sadness, and the signs just go up. It makes me cry."

4. Don't engage in an argument with a student.

Kind of along the same lines as number one-engaging in a heated argument does nothing except show the student that they hold the power to control your emotions. When you redirect a student or give a consequence, give it calmly and immediately move on with some kind of task, whether it's continuing your lesson or filing folders. The student may object or try to rile you up, but you'll clearly be busy with whatever it is you're doing to notice.

5. Make 'em laugh!

One of the best ways to have kids eating out of your hand is to show your sense of humor. Laugh at yourself! Add goofy questions to your finals! Dress up in something related to your lessons! (Just don't use humor to redirect a serious rule violation or to embarrass a student.)

Here's to hoping that you won't find yourself as a kitten or a dragon in the classroom this year, but somewhere in between. Like a horse, maybe. Or a griffon.
What's your best classroom management tip for middle and high school? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Plus, why teaching middle school is so hard.

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5 Tips for Classroom Management in Middle and High School (That Actually Work)

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Classroom management was my biggest struggle as a new teacher. I went in suspecting I would have classroom management in the bag because I'd had pretty extensive experience working with kids from babysitting, being a camp counselor, and taking on similar volunteer-type roles.