Posting classroom rules is not enough. In order to maintain discipline in your classroom, you should follow a consistent discipline plan. This type of plan can guide you so that you can remain fair, even when you want to pull your hair out. Remember, the punishment should match the crime: detentions and referrals should be reserved for major or multiple offenses. You might want to consider posting your discipline plan so that students know what will happen when they do something wrong.

This works especially well for earlier grades. As you creating your discipline plan, you might want to consider the importance of using both positive and negative reinforcement. While positive reinforcement is providing students with praise and rewards for good behavior, negative reinforcement is when good behavior on the part of students helps them avoid something negative. In other words, negative reinforcement is not punishment.

Teacher Actions and Attitude

Much of maintaining control in the classroom begins with the teacher’s actions and attitude. This is not to say that students won’t misbehave on their own, but there is a reason why the same student will behave in one class and then misbehave in another. A lot of has to do with consistency in enforcing rules along with treating each student in a fair manner. Teachers who are inconsistent, just like parents who are inconsistent, will find themselves in an increasingly chaotic classroom.

Following are a list of ideas to implement as you strive to maintain a positive learning environment:

• Have high expectations for student behavior
• Avoid direct confrontations with students in front of the rest of the class.

• Use humor to diffuse situations but realize that some students can’t appreciate sarcasm.
• Overplan. Busy students are less likely to disrupt.

Learn more about each of these and other classroom management tips and ideas.

One item that many new teachers don’t consider is how they will deal with returning students who have been out of the classroom for disciplinary reasons. In my experience, it is best to “start fresh” with students who have been sent out. In other words, don’t continue to hold a grudge or assume that the student will continue to misbehave. You can read a real world example of this in My Best Teaching Experience.

• More on Holding on to Anger

Maintaining Parental Contact

By staying in touch with parents, you will be able to rely on them when problems do occur.

When you have a real problem in class, you will want to schedule a parent-teacher conference. Make sure that you come to a conference prepared with a plan in mind to help solve the problems you are facing. Not all parent-teacher conferences will go smoothly, but there are some important steps you can take to make them more effective.

By: Ms. Maricel A. Hualde | Teacher III | Cabcaben Elementary School