Preventing Your Classroom Rules from Falling Apart
By Howard Seeman, Ph.D.

Why does Mrs. Smith's rules work and last throughout the whole year, and Mrs. Johnson's rules fall apart in a few weeks, leaving her screaming louder, and sending more and more students to the office?

No one can tell you what rules to make in your classroom. That is because if they are not congruent with your personality and teaching style, these rules and their warnings will come off as phony, the students will sense that these are not your rules, and these rules will eventually become ineffective.

However, I can offer guidelines that will make your rules effective and still fit who you are, what you believe in, and your specific teaching style. I will suggest here: Ten Guidelines that you should follow as you design your rules (and their warnings) for your classroom:

•  Decide on the consequence that you will enforce (in the form of a warning at first) if a rule is broken.

•  Be congruent with your rules. Don't blurt out something you don't really believe in or that you later realize is too harsh.

•  Follow through with the consequences you design for each infraction of your rules. Don't blurt out “I'll suspend you!” if you can't really do that.

•  Respond first to an infraction as nonverbally as possible; e.g., a disapproving look or no recognition instead of a verbal reprimand. Why? Because the latter gives more attention to the misbehavior. You don't want to accidentally award “negative attention” to behaviors you're trying to extinguish. If you have to reprimand, reprimand while giving the misbehavior as little attention as possible. Thus, for example, putting a disruptive student's name on the chalkboard or asking him or her to come to the front of the room, etc., places the student in the limelight. It's a limelight, but some students would rather get negative attention than none at all.

•  Along with denying students the negative attention they seek, reward them immediately as they “turn over a new leaf” and now try to get attention for being good.

•  Try to deliver your warnings in a place, or in a way, that has the least audience reaction. Don't reprimand a student in front of the class if you can at all help it. Try to remember that a reprimand in front of the class, especially for adolescents, is always much more severe than the same one given in private. Students reprimanded in front of an audience need to revolt against your warning to save face. Always, if you can, deliver your warning after class at the “See me after class!” meeting.

•  Don't make your warnings too long-winded. If you do, the time it takes to reprimand will slow down the train of your lesson. Students will then turn off, and more disruptions will be incited. Say it short and sweet, and then immediately go on with the lesson.

•  Design a hierarchy of consequences in the form of warnings if your rule is broken. If a student violates a reprimand the second time, the severity of the consequence should be greater than the first time. The warnings should have graduated consequences—that you have the authorization and the will to back up.

•  Design the warnings for breaking your rules so that they have as many small step-by-step consequences as possible and do not skip warning steps. For instance, an ineffective hierarchy of consequences would be: “If you call out twice, your mother will have to come to school.” This consequence is too big and has too few steps. The student has little time to change his behavior.

•  Call in a third party to your system as late as possible; if you think you are nearing the use of a third party, prepare that person ahead of time. For instance, an ineffective system would be: “If you call out, you'll have to report to the dean.” This tells the student that very quickly you can't handle things by yourself and leaves the administration with the same impression.