A guide to good discipline in the classroom

1. Good discipline in the classroom starts with being fair. Make sure all students get the same punishment for doing something wrong, even if it’s your best student. Instead, make sure all of your students are equally rewarded for good work. Don’t favor a student: other students will see this and resent you for it and be even less likely to follow your rules.

2. Make your rules easy to understand. If you want excellent classroom discipline, make sure your students understand exactly what is being asked of them. Don’t make a list of 200 rules; no student will remember all those rules. Instead, think about the rules that are most important to you and enforce them. And be sure to make those rules very clear.

3. Make your consequences easy to understand. Make sure your students know ahead of time what the consequence will be if they break one of your rules. Make sure the consequences are as clear as the rules.

4. Be consistent with your classroom discipline. You need to make sure that you consistently enforce your rules. Your students are not Pavlov’s dogs: the best way to enforce a rule is to have consistent punishment for breaking it, not just randomly.

5. Use a little humor to enforce good discipline in the classroom. If things are getting a bit out of hand, it might be a good idea to play a little prank, no need to throw in the towel. Sometimes all your students need is a little humor, a little fun, to get them back on track.

6. Try to avoid confronting a student in front of their peers. You don’t want your student to look bad in front of her classmates and friends; will resent it. Also, every confrontation has a winner and a loser, and if your students think you don’t see yourself as the winner in a confrontation, they may not respect you as easily. Be sure to take a student to one side before confronting him.

7. Classroom discipline need not interfere with classroom instruction. You want to deal with classroom interruptions as quickly and smoothly as possible; you don’t want to lose the momentum of the class. Deal with the interruption immediately.

8. Start your classroom discipline plan strong. As the school year progresses, you can loosen up the kidneys a bit. Just remember that it is much more difficult to start as a softy, and then try to squeeze the kidneys – the students will still misbehave.

9. Don’t assume your class will need to be disciplined. Why not take on the best in class? Do not assume that you will constantly need to enforce some form of discipline in the classroom or otherwise. Have high expectations. Assume that your class will behave. Then teach your students as if you know they will behave; if your students think you think they are good students, they may act like good students. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

10. Make sure you have enough activities and lessons to fill a day. Classroom discipline can start to get a little shaky if you have too much free time to fill. Avoid having free time: This is a time when a class can become disruptive.

11. Treat your students as individuals. Know that what works for one student may not work for another. Just because 9 students understand your rules, doesn’t mean the 10th student will. Students learn in different ways. All students are different. Individuals have different needs.

12. Use positive discipline rules in the classroom. For example, instead of all your rules saying what your students are not to do, have rules that state what they are to do. Instead of “Don’t speak unless called,” say “raise your hand if you have a question.”