Methods to Instill Discipline in the Classroom
- Recognise the purpose of student discipline
- Align discipline methods with the institution's policies
- Facilitate open collaboration and communication (colleagues and parents)
- Implement effective discipline techniques respectfully
- Suspension and expulsion as last resort
Being an educator in a school, college, or university in the 21st century isn’t easy, especially when you’re first getting started. A teacher's job scopes go beyond teaching the entire syllabus from A to Z, but also includes carrying out disciplinary actions for students who misbehave, interrupt classes, or break the school’s rules.
From warnings to expulsion, you need to understand why we discipline students, how to discipline them effectively, and the right ways to go about it.
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Understanding the Purpose of Student Discipline
Essentially, disciplining students in the classroom comes down to one key goal: maintaining order to ensure a safe and secure environment where both students and educators can engage in a productive teaching and learning process.
Students need to understand that if their actions or behavior disrupt order, they will face consequences in accordance with the rules and code of conduct established by the educational institution, which could have different levels of severity according to their wrongdoings. When implemented effectively, student discipline can help them reflect on these three important questions:
They threw their friend's belongings out of anger during a heated argument in the classroom.
They intentionally damaged their friend's belongings, which can lead to broken trust and hurt feelings.
They should learn to manage their emotions and resolve conflicts peacefully to prevent hurting others or damaging relationships.
It's important to note that any form of discipline should be educational. There’s no point in disciplining someone if they won’t learn from their mistakes. Hence, be smart when punishing students so that they’ll get something out of that experience. However, in some cases, suspension or expulsion may be unavoidable.
As a teacher, you mightn’t get to make the final call on whether a student is suspended or expelled. Usually, these measures are saved only for the very worst transgressions.
Similarly, suspension and expulsion can ruin a student’s life, so they’re not to be taken lightly.
If warnings and explanations during the initial stage of disciplining have failed, then you may need to take stronger disciplinary action towards the students. However, avoid being unnecessarily harsh when doing so.
Aligning Discipline with School Policies
Any disciplinary action you give to a student should fit the wrongdoing that they have committed. Light disciplinary action for serious misbehaviour will teach students that they can do what they want, and heavy disciplinary action for small transgressions will make students think you’re unreasonable.
Discipline of others isn’t punishment. You discipline to help, to improve, to correct, to prevent, not to punish, humiliate, or retaliate.
John Wooden
🧾Understanding Institutional Guidelines
Similarly, your disciplinary actions have to be in line with the school’s disciplinary procedure. You can’t just make up the rules yourself and discipline as you see fit. For instance, if students do not respect basic classroom rules like raising their hand, waiting their turn to speak, listening to others, etc, they can be addressed with warnings and explanations.
Generally, students will be disciplined with stronger actions for the following misconduct:
❌ Disobeying the teacher. If a student refuses to do as the teacher tells them, they may be disciplined.
❌ Disrespecting their classmates. This can be insulting, taunting, or mocking other students
❌ Disrespecting the teacher. In this case, the teacher must not let their feelings cloud their judgment of what constitutes an appropriate disciplinary action.
🚫 Bullying. Generally, bullying is ongoing harassment of a particular student and is often met with stricter actions. It’s taken far more seriously than isolated issues of students disrespecting one another.
🚫 Using banned substances such as tobacco products (for smoking specifically), alcohol, and drugs
🚫 Physical violence towards students or staff (including teachers)
Collaborating with Colleagues and Parents
To ensure effectiveness, consistency, and a comprehensive approach to addressing behavioral issues, it’s important to establish a shared understanding with your colleagues and the parents regarding implementation methods and follow-up discussions.
You can work together with school counsellors and other school administrators to constantly discuss and reevaluate the classroom management strategies. For example, what are the steps involved in facilitating the counseling process for a student who disrespected a teacher by swearing at them?
As a teacher, it's also important to constantly engage in open communication with parents on their child's well-being, beyond their academic performance.
This ongoing dialogue can help you better understand the underlying causes of any sudden misbehavior and develop more effective, personalized intervention strategies.
Strong collaboration between school administration and direct communication with parents can create a powerful synergy that supports students in developing healthy behaviors in and outside the classroom.
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Implementing Effective Discipline Strategies
When it comes to implementing effective discipline strategies, it's important to adopt a series of responsive techniques that are adaptable according to their age and circumstances of their misbehavior in the classroom.
🤫 Non-Verbal Cues
- Utilize body language and proximity to address minor infractions
- Using direct eye contact to remind the student to focus in the case of mild distraction
- Using a stop-motion hand gesture to prompt the student to cease or refrain from continuing an action
🗣️ Verbal Warnings
- Provide calm and clear reminders of expected behavior
- Privately address the matter to the student without embarrassing them (singling them out)
- Adopting positive framing language instead of accusing language
(I know you can stay focused and finish on time)
🤗 Restorative Practices
- Encourage students to reflect on their actions and make amends
- Verbal or written reflections by the students: what and how things happened, and how to make things right
- Facilitating specific steps for the student to apologize and repair the relationship (through concrete actions)
These strategies and techniques can help create a supportive and conducive classroom environment because of their direct, proactive and respectful intervention approaches, where students are guided and not punished harshly towards good behavior.
Suspension and Expulsion
Unfortunately, schools sometimes have to suspend or expel students as a form of school punishment. Just like employees being suspended from work, students can be suspended from school either temporarily or permanently.
Again, this strong disciplinary action is only for very special cases, and a student can’t be suspended just for talking too much in class! On the other hand, when other means of penalization have been ineffective or the student is a danger to the other students, suspension and expulsion may be considered.
Generally, this decision is left up to the school and is exercised following their disciplinary procedure. When it comes time to kick a student out of school, there’ll normally be a meeting with the student and their parents.
From there, there are a couple of options:
- Temporary suspension: The student won’t be allowed to return to school for a set number of days.
- Expulsion: The student no longer attends the school and will not be allowed to attend any classes or go to the school.
Learn More About Classroom Management With Superprof
Remember, the types of disciplinary actions and school punishment in the classroom will usually reflect the circumstances of the incident. Basic behavioural infractions can be dealt with in a matter of minutes. Make sure not to abuse your position of power, as it can sometimes be too easy to make a statement about the severity of your punishment.
For instance, you can discipline students for not doing the assigned work, but punishing students for failing an exam can be counterproductive. As a teacher, you need to be neutral and calm when deciding on disciplinary actions and not let any biases get in the way. Again, this will all come with experience.
If you'd like more professional help with classroom management and all things teaching, like pedagogy or even grooming, you could always look for private tutors. At Superprof, there are tutors for a large variety of subjects as well as those who specialise in special needs education teaching or educational technology. There are different types of tutoring available, so you must consider the pros and cons of each before you decide which would work best for you and what you want to learn.
Face-to-face tutoring is excellent if you have specific things you want to learn and work on, as the tutor can tailor every lesson to you.
These tutors tend to charge more than others as they spend extra time outside of the lessons planning and adapting their resources to the student. However, this also makes them the most cost-effective type of tutoring because every minute of the lesson is spent working with you.
On the other hand, group tutorials are great for those on a budget as the cost of the tutor's time is shared amongst several students.
This does mean that you won't be able to get lessons that are tailored specifically to you, but if you're looking to brush up on your subject, for example, this type of learning approach could be very useful and affordable.
If you can't find any suitable or available tutors in your local area, you can always broaden your search to include private online tutors from all over the country and around the world. As long as you have a webcam and a decent internet connection, there's no limit to how far away your tutors can be.
Don't forget that 97% of tutors on the Superprof website offer the first lesson for free. Once you've found a few tutors that you think could be suitable, get in touch with them to arrange a free lesson. You can try out several tutors before deciding.
We hope this article has offered you some insights into the significance of effective classroom management through the right disciplinary actions and strategies.
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