“They didn’t teach me this in college!” is a thought that many new ag teachers have when faced with difficult situations. For the most part, we are prepared with the “what” to teach and have practiced the “how” to teach, but it’s those curveballs, like a student behavior issue, that really can throw us for a loop.
I am currently in my eighth year of teaching high school agriculture and have taught in three very different types of ag programs. I spent three years in a small, rural, one-teacher program, two years in a large, three-teacher program, and am currently in my third year at an alternative high school.
Some individuals might see “alternative” school and assume I teach at an innovative agricultural magnet school with all the resources I need to teach the brightest, best behaved students in the district. My reality is pretty far from that truth. In Idaho, an alternative school is a public high school where students must meet certain requirements in order to attend. While students don’t have to meet all requirements, some of their qualifying factors might include being at least one grade level behind in credits, chronic absenteeism, a social or emotional that limits their ability to succeed in a mainstream high school, being a teen parent, or having a substance abuse problem. Many of my students carry labels like “oppositionally defiant”, “dropout”, “homeless” or “has no support at home.” Because of all the baggage my students bring to school, sometimes their behavior is quite different than those model students we all dream of during our pre-service training.
I’d like to share with you some advice regarding dealing with difficult sudent behavior based on my own experience (and mistakes!). Here are my top 5 tips:
Tip #1: Don’t call or think of them as difficult students.
(I know- I should change the title of this post!) The first thing you have to do is change your mindset. Separate the behavior from the student. I have not yet met a student that wants to be a behavior problem. I’ve met many that are hurting, stressed, or scared and all of that happens to come out as ignorance, rude comments, and disrespect. If you have access to permanent student files or behavior log entries from previous teachers, DO NOT read those entries until you really have a good reason to do so. If you continue to struggle with a particular student, you might need to see if the same issue has been dealt with in the past in order to inform how you choose to handle it now.
Tip #2: Set the stage with high expectations.
This year my principal hung up a sign in the teacher workroom that say, “What you permit, you promote.” This has become my classroom management philosophy this year. At the beginning of the term, you need to be clear about your behavior expectations and take the opportunity, early and often, to model how you will handle deviations from those expectations. You don’t need to be a tyrant and rule with an iron fist, but letting little things go at the beginning of the term will set the precedent that you are ok with those behaviors and you didn’t really mean what you said about your expectations.
Tip #3: Build a relationship.
The Adverse Childhood Experience Survey found that at least two thirds of the 17,000 individuals interviewed had suffered at least one adverse childhood experience while 40% reported experiencing two or more traumas. The study found that because of the childhood trauma, brain toxins were produced which inhibited the child’s ability to learn and function normally. You can read more about the study here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study.
I highly recommend you watch the film “Paper Tigers” which showcases the turn-around that happened in a school in Washington where a principal stopped punishing students for misbehavior and started asking them a simple question, “What is happening in your life that is causing you to behave like this?” The result was a huge difference in the number of misbehaviors by students in that school. Suddenly, they felt cared for and often took it upon themselves to go apologize to their teachers and try to make it right. The teenage brain isn’t developed enough for students to make rational, logical decisions in response to trauma in their lives. Their behavior is simply the way they are expressing their pain, confusion, and stress. As a teacher, don’t punish them for that trauma- they’re being punished enough.
Additionally, you can show the student that you care about them by correcting with kindness instead of anger, refusing to argue, not singling the student out in front of their peers, and frequent praise for the good things the student does. For me, a behavior correction might look like this:
- Quickly acknowledge the behavior: “Put your phone away, please.”
- If the student refuses, give the student a choice: “Being on your phone in class is against my rules. You can choose to put your phone away or you can choose to stay after class today.” Then WALK AWAY.
- If the student refuses, have a PRIVATE meeting with the student after class. Ask the student about what is going in their life that is causing them to refuse to follow teacher directions. LISTEN to the student. Sometimes students have a really valid reason for being on their phone or being “checked out” in class. I can’t emphasize the LISTEN part enough. Let them talk! Ask the student to tell you how they think the behavior affects the rest of the class. LISTEN! Ask the student how they think you should handle it. I’ve actually had a student in this exact scenario hand me their phone and tell me that they deserve to have it taken away until the end of the school day and they would come get it after last hour. Some students say they will help me enforce the rule in class and remind their classmates to put their phones away. Whatever you do, don’t turn this conversation into a negative experience. Sometimes you may even need to apologize for overreacting in class if you became part of the problem instead of the solution. An apology from an adult can sometimes make all the difference in the world.
Tip #4: Involve the parents.
As a parent, there’s nothing that I would hate more than to hear that my student has been struggling in school secondhand. What I mean by this is that I don’t want my daughter to come home and tell me that her sister had to sit out in the hall for the fourth time that month. I would have loved to hear about the situation from the teacher the FIRST time it happened. Even if you handle the issue effectively and everything is hunky-dory, call the parent or guardian and let them know how you worked it out with their student. What a blessing to the parent to hear from you that their student made a bad choice, you resolved it with the student, and they showed real progress in their behavior for the rest of the class period. A parent doesn’t want to hear about their student’s behavior issues after it’s too late to intervene. Don’t, however, just call the parent to complain about their child. You can certainly ask them for help or ideas on how you should handle things going forward, but don’t just call and say, “I’m just done with your kid. They’re terrible in my class. I don’t know what to do.” Offer a solution and get the parent’s feedback. Sometimes, after calling the parent, you might realize that the parent is probably part of the reason why students are choosing to misbehave in class. Many of my students lack supportive, responsible adults at home. They are simply a product of their dysfunctional environment.
Tip #5: Forgive and forget!
Everyone has their pet peeves and can identify those behaviors that really push their buttons, but sometimes you just have to let things go. (Cue Elsa…. Let it go!) Once you deal with a student issue, don’t hang that scarlet letter around a student’s neck for the rest of the term. I’ve heard students say, “I don’t know what I did to that teacher, they just hate me.” Give every student a new slate every day. You might be the only caring adult they have in their life. Give them the benefit of the doubt- you never know, you might be the first person to ever do that for a student, especially one who has been labeled a “problem child” since elementary school.
I hope that my tips will help you when you are faced with difficult behavior from your students. Remember that you are the adult. Fred Jones says that “It takes one fool to talk back. It takes two fools make a conversation out of it.” You are in this profession for a reason- because you care about kids. Above all, you chose this career to teach kids, not content!
