Walking the walk

I'm not sure what this says about my ability to relax on break but..

Just for fun, I'm reading a text book on classroom management The first chapter talks about identifying the cause of behavior problems and one of the potential causes is demands and prohibitions: your expectations.

One paragraph says:

"Sometimes teachers state one set of expectations verbally but in subtle ways convey a different set of expectation through their non verbal behavior."

Thinking back, I was terrible at this. I would set the expectation that students needed to raise their hands to speak, but then in class discussion, I would respond to students who didn't raise their hands. I would set the expectation that cell phone were NOT allowed but then give students several chances to put them away. During my whole student teaching experience, I saw cell phones every day, but never took a single one away.

Now I see that every time I changed the expectation, I just confused my students. They were never quite sure which rules I was enforcing, which ones I wasn't and which ones I thought were important. And I have no doubt that if I had tried to start enforcing some of those rules mid semester there would have been chaos!

When I set expectations for my students, I have to be sure to enforce them; the same way, every day. Students need consistency. They need to know what to expect. As a teacher, I have to walk the walk when managing my classroom so that my students have the best opportunity to learn.

--Kauffman, J. M., Mostert, M. P., & Trent, S. C. (2002). Identifying behavior problems. In D. P. Hallahan (Ed.), Managing classroom behavior: A reflective case-based approach (pp. 3-20). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.