One of the most difficult skills to master as a teacher is classroom management. Unfortunately, if you can’t master this skill, you won’t survive as a teacher, especially as a middle school teacher.

However, when the school year begins, many first-year high school teachers are pleasantly surprised. Throughout their teacher training, they have been told how difficult classroom management can be at the middle school level and how important it is to have effective classroom management skills in order to be a successful teacher.

However, for the first few days of school there doesn’t seem to be much of a problem…the students seem to be quite attentive, no one is really talking or passing notes, there certainly hasn’t been anyone responding or fighting for the first few days…but then the things start to change.

You see, those first few days are the honeymoon period…the students are nervous and many are a little scared, so they sit and wait. However, by the end of the first week of school, or certainly the second week of school, high school students begin to feel more comfortable, begin to test the limits of the teacher, and managing the classroom becomes increasingly difficult.

It is at this point that many teachers begin to panic and immediately resort to various reward/punishment systems, or as Alfie Kohn calls them “carrot and stick” systems.

Unfortunately, these elaborate systems are a mistake. They provide only temporary solutions to an ongoing problem. Students who respond to rewards begin to do their work and behave ONLY if it is a reward, while at the same time, many students who thrive on negative attention actually begin to seek punishment.

The best plan is the “proactive approach” to classroom management. The proactive approach is based on the premise that the best classroom management plan is a strong instructional plan…that the key to middle school classroom management is keeping all students actively involved in all lessons .

Unfortunately, there are times when teachers are still forced to REact. There are times when the teacher has used every proactive trick in the book and yet a student does something that requires the teacher to react.

HOWEVER, the fact that a teacher must react to a situation means that the teacher must punish the student. The teacher should still save the punishment as a last resort only!

So what is a teacher to do?

Well here’s an idea… create a “behavior action plan”. Better yet, have the student create the “behavior action plan.”

The key to changing inappropriate student behavior is to make the *student* take responsibility for their actions. First, the student must identify the inappropriate behavior, and then determine why it is inappropriate, and finally, how she plans to stop the inappropriate behavior.

All the teacher needs to do is have the student complete a “behavior action plan.” The plan requires the student to complete the following three statements:

1. I am writing this plan because I…

2. This behavior was inappropriate because…

3. To prevent this from happening again, I plan to…

Then, at the bottom of the booklet, make sure the student signs their name. By signing his name, the student agrees to follow through with his plan.

In the end, this classroom management approach is significantly better than simply punishing the student for misbehavior. This classroom management approach has long-term results.