Five years ago, I was nearing two decades as a high school Spanish teacher. Although I still enjoyed my time in the classroom, my happiness was often dependent on how my students behaved. Some days were better than others. Most of the time, students behaved well, but there were always a few who wouldn't fall in line. I felt like the only solution was to kick them out and write them up. On those "other" days, I found myself questioning my career choice.
At the beginning of the school year, four challenging boys entered my classroom together. I started that year with the same packets of worksheets I had always used. But when I went through the motions with my best lecture-style teaching, the boys revolted. They would not be quiet and listen to me lecture. They refused to complete the packet work and were soon failing.
I wrote up or kicked out at least one of the four students every single day. I called their parents and met with my administration. The boys received detentions and suspensions, but nothing changed. Every day, I would go home frustrated and angry, wondering what I was going to do to reach these students. My methods were not effective and hurt the culture of my classes.
Classroom management, in my personal experience, is one reliable predictor of how teachers will fare in their profession. If you can "handle" the kids, I thought, you'll make it, and if you can't—well, those kids will eat you alive and send you screaming for early retirement. I was simply replicating the classroom-management practices that I experienced as a student.
Then it dawned on me: The situation was not going to get better by forcing the students to meet me where I was. Maybe I needed to go to them.
New Guidelines for Support
I called a friend who is an instructional coach and asked her for advice on how to differentiate my instruction to fit multiple levels, including students who were misbehaving and not doing work. I wanted to use the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages's proficiency guidelines, which provide clear outlines of what individuals should be able to do with speaking, writing, listening, and reading languages at different levels. She said the guidelines sounded a lot like Response to Intervention (RTI), a multitiered approach where teachers use academic-intervention supports with struggling learners at increasing levels of intensity to improve how quickly they learn. I decided to combine both practices, and the boys agreed to try the new approach with me.
We began meeting once a week during their lunch period, starting with rubrics for C-level work. I wanted them to learn to handle the workload slowly so that they could improve their grades in steps. We focused on vocabulary, word lists, and answering questions about short dialogues. When they were able to do the C-level work consistently, we used testing data and their input to decide if they were ready to move to B-level work.
What was so different about this approach? Instead of the same premade packets, I gave the boys accountability sheets and personalized the work for them. I allowed them to choose their assignments from a list and work at their own pace. Each day, we talked about which strategies were successful. We celebrated when their scores crept up from 27s to 47s. By the fourth period of the year, some of them were earning Bs. It was my proudest moment in teaching.
Moreover, as the boys improved academically, their behavior changed. They didn't have any more write-ups that school year. Students still acted out sometimes, engaging in behavior I would have written up in the past, but I was learning that I needed to seek to understand them rather than punish them.
A New Way of Teaching
These processes also changed me. I re-evaluated my own teaching and realized that my responses had often provoked bad behavior. When I messed up, I apologized to the students. I got to know students' parents better, calling them every week to share students' growth and partnering with them to work out any lingering behavior issues. Parents often get left out, especially at the high school level, but they are important allies who helped me reinforce the positive lessons of student ownership in learning. Our classroom was no longer a toxic environment. Everyone could breathe.
When we struggle with classroom management, we should look at our own practices before blaming the problem on students. Issues arise when students don't feel connected to the content or to the person delivering that content. My problems were the result of outdated practices, not "bad" kids. If you make the content too easy or too hard, nobody wins. If you take the traditional, teacher-centered approach and constantly force students to comply with stringent rules and regulations, they will feel stifled and unstimulated. When I tailored instruction to meet struggling students instead of punishing them and gave them voice and choice, both students and I were happier. Every year since then, I have thrown away those worksheet packets and tried to get to know every student personally. Now, I think, we're all speaking the same language.
