Managing for Success

Classroom teachers do everything they can to make sure that their lessons are a success. However, sometimes things dont work as well as they had planned. There may be many reasons for this, but the one that many teachers find most difficult to deal with is when students fail to cooperate. This can disrupt the learning which should be taking place and sometimes, when individuals get significantly out of control, lessons have to stop while the teacher reestablishes order. Such moments of disruption can be unsettling, not just for teachers but also for students, especially since our aim, as classroom managers, is to promote student success, rather than to become involved in damage-limitation. Problem behavior from students can take many forms; Paul Wadden list disruptive talking, inaudible responses, sleeping in class, tardiness and poor attendance, failure to do homework, cheating in tests and unwillingness to speak. Of course their list may reflect the educational culture where they were teaching, rather than being universal. In other context we might add behavior such as insolence to the teacher, insulting or bullying other students, damaging school property and refusing to accept sanctions or punishment. However, what is characterized as indiscipline depends on what counts as well-ordered or disciplined classroom for the individual teacher. Some teachers are more tolerant than others. But whatever our own view of problem behavior is, if we are to manage for success, we need to know why it occurs, how to prevent it and, in the last resort, what to do if it happens.

Why problems occur

Dona points out that when students come to class they bring with them their own personalities and their learning expectations. Their behavior will also be influenced by their current circumstances and by what happens in the lessons. There is always, as well, the possibility of interpersonal tensions between students and between students and their teacher. Students personalities are closely bound up with their levels of self-esteem-how they feel about themselves and what level of comfort and self- confidence they are experiencing. Self- esteem is influenced by a large number of factors. At the most basic level, it is very difficult to feel good about ourselves if we are not safe, or do not have food to eat or warmth or shelter. But once we have all those, we can still be both positively and negatively influenced by the people around us. The family: students experiences in their families have a profound influence on their attitudes to learning and to authority. Sometimes indiscipline can be traced back to a difficult home situation.
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Learning expectation: previous learning experiences of all kinds affect students behavior. Students are influenced by what went before. Their expectations of the learning experience can be colored by unpleasant memories of unhappy classroom experiences, and their behavior can sometimes be the result of what they were previously allowed to get away with.
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Students learning expectations are also powerfully affected by the learning culture they are operating in, where norms of thinking and behavior may have become ingrained without anyone even questioning them. Zoltan and Murphey discuss the norm of mediocrity in this context. This is the norm which says that being too good in lessons is not desirable or appropriate. And there are other norms, too, about how students should behave in lessons and about what they should think of the teachers, etc. If these norms are not confronted, problem behavior is likely to be ongoing reality. Approval: a students self esteem may result partly from the way the teacher behaves. Children seem to thrive on teacher approval and they are not alone. Most people who enjoy good rapport with their teacher are happy to get that teachers approval. Where that approval is lacking, their incentive to behave well-that is to comply with the norms of the group-is often compromised. Students also look for approval from their peers. This is generally the case but is often most noticeable in teenagers, who may not be very impressed by learning success but are often amused or amazed by the humor or anarchic behavior of their peers. Problem behavior then becomes desirable rather than being a problem. Teachers will have to reverse that concept and try to find other ways that students can meet with approval. Despite the fact that students are often interested in their peers antics, however, we need to remind ourselves constantly that if a class gets out of control, the people who lose out most-and who are most resentful of that loss of control-are the students.
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What the teacher does: a lot will depend on how we, as teachers, behave in class. In the first place, students are far more likely to be engaged with what is going on (and are therefore unlikely to be disruptive) if they have something interesting to do. If they do notor if they see the teacher as unprepared and uncertain about what to do in their lessons-they are far more likely to lose interest. If they lose interest, their incentive to maintain their level of concentration is lessened, and if that happens, they are more likely to become disconnected with what is going on. That is when problem behavior often manifests itself. As George points out, most of the discipline difficulties experienced by teachers in the classroom were created before the lessons started. In the other words, if teachers arrive at the classroom door without a clear idea of what they are going to do, the chances of things going wrong are greatly increased. The way that we react to inappropriate behavior will have a profound influence on our students subsequent behavior. If they see us as deceive, effective and fair, they will be far less likely to be disruptive in the future, and the chances of their learning successfully are enhanced.
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Success and failure: success is a powerful agent for the sustaining of a students motivation. If they achieve identifiable goals, our students are likely to remain engaged with what is going on. Part of a teachers job is to make sure that students recognize their achievements, however small those achievements actually are. If students do not see any evidence of their own success but are presented constantly with failure (in test or in their teachers attitude to their classroom behavior), then their
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incentive to behave within the limits set by the teacher and the group is greatly reduced. Failure is a powerful engine for problem behavior. Teachers need, therefore, to manage for student success. External Factors: Some external factors may affect students behavior, too. If they are tired, they will not be able to concentrate. If the classroom is too hot or too cold, this may result in students being too relaxed or too nervy. Discomfort then leads to disengagement. Noise from outside the classroom can impact badly upon students concentration.
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