Posts Tagged ‘Classroom management strategies’

Why You’ve Stopped Believing Classroom Management Advice Can Help You

July 14, 2026

If you’ve quietly stopped clicking on classroom management videos, stopped reading the PD slides, stopped hoping the next staff training will actually change anything, this post is for you. Not because you’ve given up on getting better. Because the advice has given up on you first.

The pattern you’ve probably noticed

Search “classroom management” and you’ll find two kinds of content.

The first kind makes you feel understood. It tells you that difficult students had a rough morning, that behaviour isn’t personal, that you’re not failing, you’re human. It’s warm, and it’s not wrong. But watch until the end and count how many actual, repeatable actions you were given. Usually one or two, and they’re often the same ones you already knew: stay calm, build relationships, don’t take it personally.

The second kind gives you a technique with no explanation underneath it. Lower your voice. Pause before responding. Address it privately. All genuinely useful. But try one of these in a real classroom, with thirty teenagers watching and one of them testing exactly how far they can push you, and it often falls apart, because you were handed the move without ever being told why it works, or what to do the moment it doesn’t.

Neither of these is dishonest. But neither of them is enough. And after a few years of trying both, a lot of teachers quietly conclude the same thing: maybe this just isn’t fixable through advice.

Why that conclusion is wrong, but understandable

Here’s the distinction that matters. You haven’t stopped wanting to get better at this. You’ve stopped trusting that the next piece of advice will actually hold up under pressure. Those are two very different things, and mixing them up matters, because one leads to giving up, and the other leads to being more selective about what you’re willing to try.

The strategies that actually work under pressure aren’t secret. They’re grounded in something specific: an understanding of what’s happening in a dysregulated nervous system, yours and the student’s, in the moment things start to go sideways. Without that grounding, a technique is just a script, and scripts break the second a student doesn’t follow them.

With it, you’re not memorising a line to say. You understand why silence works better than a snap response, why lowering your voice when a student raises theirs changes the physiology of the room, why the goal in a heated moment isn’t to win the exchange but to end it without anyone needing to save face in front of an audience. Once you understand the mechanism, you can adapt on the spot, which is the one thing a script can never do for you.

What’s actually missing from most advice

Three things, consistently.

The psychology underneath the technique. Most classroom management content tells you what to do. Almost none of it tells you what’s happening physiologically, in you and in the student, that makes one response work and another backfire. Without that, you’re following instructions. With it, you’re making judgment calls, which is what the job actually requires.

A next step, not just a feeling. Validation matters. Feeling understood after a brutal day matters. But validation without a testable next action leaves you exactly where you started tomorrow morning, just a little more comforted about it.

Proof that this is learnable, not innate. A lot of advice implicitly suggests that calm, controlled teachers were simply born that way, and the rest of us are trying to fake it. That’s not true, and it’s worth saying plainly: the ability to stay regulated under pressure, to de-escalate instead of escalate, is a skill that gets built the same way any skill gets built, through understanding, small deliberate practice, and enough early wins to start believing it’s possible.

Where that leaves you

If you’ve been feeling like the problem is too big for advice to touch, that’s not a personal failing, and it’s not really about you at all. It’s a reasonable response to years of content that diagnoses well and solves poorly.

The actual fix isn’t more validation, and it isn’t a longer list of tips. It’s strategies that are explained, not just issued, tried once in a low-stakes moment, and allowed to become evidence. Not evidence for a video or a PD session. Evidence for you, that tomorrow’s lesson really can go differently than today’s.

That belief doesn’t come from being told it’s possible. It comes from trying one thing, on purpose, and watching it work.

If you’re ready to test that for yourself, the CALM Method is where I’d start. It’s not another list of tips, it’s the framework underneath the ones that actually work, free to download, built to be tried tomorrow, not just read tonight.

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The Free Resource That Could Change Your Teaching Career

July 12, 2026

If you are a caring teacher who is struggling with classroom management, I want to tell you about something that is completely free and might be the most useful thing you read this year.

It is called the CALM Method guide. And I built it because I spent twenty five years in education watching good teachers leave the profession for a reason that had nothing to do with their ability or their passion.

They left because nobody gave them the right system.

What is the CALM Method guide?

It is a single, practical document that takes you from a struggling classroom to a managed one. Step by step. No jargon. No academic theory that falls apart the moment you walk through the door on Monday morning.

It is built around four strategies I developed over twenty five years of teaching and school leadership, including time as Head of High School. Four strategies designed specifically for caring, relationship-first teachers who were never given a classroom management system that worked with their personality rather than against it.

The four strategies are these.

C. Claim the Start. The first five minutes of every lesson set the emotional temperature for everything that follows. The guide shows you exactly what those five minutes should look like and why getting them right changes everything.

A. Arrive Prepared. Predictability is not the enemy of great teaching. It is the foundation of it. The guide shows you how to create a classroom environment so structured and consistent that even your most difficult students begin to feel safe enough to learn.

L. Leverage Key Relationships. Your genuine care for your students is your greatest asset. The guide shows you how to make that care work for you rather than against you, and how to use your key relationships strategically to shift the culture of your entire class.

M. Mean It Every Time. Consistency is not about being harsh. It is about being the same teacher on Monday as you are on Friday. The guide shows you exactly what that looks like in practice and why the room notices every exception.

Who is this for?

It is for the teacher who lies awake on Sunday night dreading Monday.

It is for the teacher who has been told to just be stricter and knows that is not the answer.

It is for the teacher who got into this profession because they genuinely love young people and cannot understand why that love is not translating into a classroom that works.

It is for the teacher who is thinking about quitting and has not quite made that decision yet.

If any of that sounds like you, this guide was written for you.

Why is it free?

Because I remember what it felt like to be in that classroom without the right system. And I remember what it felt like when things finally started to shift.

I do not want money to be the reason a good teacher does not get the help they need.

The guide is free. It always will be. Download it, use it, share it with every teacher you know who is struggling.

What teachers are saying

Teachers who have downloaded the guide describe it as the first classroom management resource that actually speaks to who they are rather than who they are supposed to become. Practical. Honest. Immediately usable.

Not a list of tips. A system.

Download it now

You have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain.

The free CALM Method guide is waiting for you at the link below. Download it today and start using it tomorrow morning.

Download the free CALM Method guide here:
https://confidentteachingacademy.com

It is free. It is practical. And it might be the thing that keeps you in the profession long enough to discover the teacher you are capable of becoming.

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5 Things That Are Quietly Destroying Your Classroom Management (And What To Do Instead)

July 6, 2026

If you are a caring teacher who is struggling with classroom management, I want to say something before I say anything else.

You are not failing because you do not care enough. You are almost certainly failing because nobody gave you the right system.

After twenty five years in classrooms and school leadership, I have watched the same patterns destroy good teachers over and over again. Not lazy teachers. Not indifferent teachers. Caring, committed, relationship-first teachers who got into this profession for exactly the right reasons and were let down by advice that was never designed for their personality type.

Here are the five things I see most often. And what to do about each one.

1. You are letting things go that should never go unnoticed

Every time you overlook something that should have a consequence, the room reads it as an opening. Not as kindness. Not as flexibility. As an opportunity.

There is a chance.

And once that seed is planted, every student in the room will test whether the chance is still there. Sometimes consciously. Often not. But the testing will happen.

The reason caring teachers let things go is almost always grounded in something that sounds reasonable. The parents are difficult. The student is going through something. It feels cruel to escalate. But the cruel irony is that the act of compassion in that moment, the giving of benefit of the doubt, is the exact thing that makes the room harder to manage tomorrow.

What to do instead. Identify your non-negotiables before the lesson starts. The three or four behaviours that cannot go unaddressed regardless of the circumstances. And deal with them every single time, calmly, consistently, without exception.

2. You believe rapport is enough

Rapport is essential. It is the foundation everything else is built on. But it is not a system.

A student who likes you will behave for one lesson, for one day, sometimes for one week. But the brief is to behave for an entire year, day in and day out. And warmth alone does not hold a room across two hundred lessons.

What to do instead. Use your rapport as the reason students trust your system, not as a substitute for having one. When students understand that your procedures come from a place of genuine care for their learning and their future, they are far more likely to buy into them.

3. You are optimising for the wrong unit

This is the mistake I made for years and it is the hardest one to see when you are inside it.

You are trying to manage one student at a time. Being patient with the difficult one. Giving them more chances. Adjusting your approach for their specific needs. And all of that sounds like good teaching.

But you are not a tutor. You are a classroom teacher. And the patience that would be exactly right for a one on one session becomes a liability in a room of thirty. Because the other twenty nine are watching every decision you make.

What to do instead. Think in terms of the room, not the individual. What does this classroom need to function well for every student, from the easiest to the hardest to reach? That question will often give you a different answer than the one you get when you focus only on the most challenging student in front of you.

4. You are starting your lessons too late

By the time you have settled the room, dealt with the students who came in hot from recess, handled the ones who are still talking, and finally gotten everyone facing forward, five minutes have gone. Sometimes ten.

And those are not neutral minutes. They are minutes where the emotional temperature of the room has been set by whoever was loudest. Not by you.

What to do instead. The first five minutes of every lesson need to be intentional, structured, and calm. Not exciting. Not a hook designed to grab attention. Calm. A quiet, self-directed task waiting for students when they arrive. Something low stakes enough that even your most overwhelmed student can engage with it without feeling threatened.

The first five minutes set the temperature for everything that follows. Get them right and the rest of the lesson becomes significantly more manageable.

5. You are waiting for the system to fix this for you

The most painful truth about classroom management is this. Most of what is making teaching brutal right now you cannot fix by yourself. The pay. The admin culture. The lack of support. The complexity of what students are bringing into your classroom from their home lives.

But there is one part of this that belongs entirely to you. What happens inside your classroom. And when that one variable changes, your relationship to everything else changes with it.

Caring teachers who are struggling tend to wait. For better support. For a different class. For the difficult student to move schools. For something outside themselves to shift.

What to do instead. Start with what you can control. Today. Tomorrow morning. The first five minutes of your next lesson. One non-negotiable held consistently. One relationship invested in strategically. Small changes compounded over weeks become the difference between a classroom that works and one that does not.

If any of this resonates, I have made two videos that go deeper on these ideas.

The first video walks through the full CALM Method, the classroom management framework I developed over twenty five years specifically for caring teachers.
Watch it here: https://youtu.be/C8yOzE3Hn1c

The second video is for teachers who are thinking about quitting. Before you make that decision, watch this.
Watch it here: https://youtu.be/_Oe3eUh7dDE

And if you want the complete CALM Method framework in a single document, you can download the free guide here: https://confidentteachingacademy.com

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My World Famous Teaching Brain Fart

August 12, 2019

You know those times when you think you have worked out the solution to a nagging problem?

You think you are a genius. If only everyone was as creative as you.

But then you discover that there is a great reason why no one else would tackle the problem the way you did – because it is a horrible solution, one that will end up biting you on the proverbial.

And that’s exactly what happened to me.

My students, like every other kid their age, have no control over their bowels. Farts are a common fixture of my classroom. One fart I can tolerate. Two is unlucky. Then there are those days where the farts roll along in a continuous tirade. Death by a thousand squeaks.

Worse than the smell, is the ensuing laughter and embarrassment from the custodian of the said fart. And then there’s the sweater over the nose ritual and the exaggerated, “that stinks something awful!” It is a very disruptive force for the the teacher and it is very hard to get the kids back on task.

The worst are the quiet ones.  That’s when the self-appointed CSI forensic squad feel they have to investigate the owner of the smell and lay as much blame as possible. This turns into Law and Order as the accused always denies the claims and calls for a lie detector to back them up. This scene always finishes in tears.

After a number of these incidents in the one calendar year, I had reached the end of my tether. I couldn’t do it anymore. It was time to take control.

So I did.

Kind of …

I told my students that passing wind is normal and natural and everyone does it. I advised them that this shouldn’t be disrupting class and that the investigations were unnecessary. I suggested that from now on, whenever someone farted they could just blame it on me. They can pretend I did it and have a small chuckle at my expense. They all liked the idea.

This wasn’t an easy thing for me to try. There are 2 nightmare scenarios I have in teaching. I am not in the least bit embarrassed about making a spelling mistake or mucking up a math sum in front of the students. It doesn’t worry me if I can’t answer a student’s question. The only two things that would cause me immense shame is farting or vomiting in front of my class.  But I was desperate and was prepared to give it a go.

And what would you know, it worked like a charm. A kid would let one go and they would all turn to me and say “Mr. G! You did it!”

Then they would quickly calm down, no formal investigation, no feelings hurt and carry on with the lesson.

How could this brilliant idea go wrong?

A few months later, my class, together with a number of other classes and their teachers met in the music room for a meditation lesson conducted by a visiting expert. I was impressed how well the instructor got the kids quiet and they seemed to be following her directions without cynicism or immaturity.

The room was completely silent. That was, until one child let the trumpet out of the bag.

Without hesitation, my class turned to me in front of a number of my colleagues and half the primary school and shouted. “That was Mr. G! Mr. G farted!”

All I could do was squirm in my seat. Red as a beetroot.

From then on, I happily allowed my students to blame each other all they wanted for any farts that surfaced. Go for your life. I am staying out of it!

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The Questions that Great Teachers Ask Every Day

December 11, 2014

question

Courtesy of the wonderful Mark Barnes. I particularly like question 3:

 

1-What if my homework assignments are a waste of time?

Facebook is rife with parent complaints about homework. There are numerous Facebook pages and groups dedicated to abolishing the horrible homework practices that contribute nothing to learning and ignite a hatred of school in many children. Here is one example of traditional homework that a friend recently posted; oh, it’s worth noting that this homework was for a seven-year-old:

Tuesday homework: 1. Math worksheet 2. Read aloud 1 page story, answer 3 comprehension questions and have it signed 3. Put 14 spelling words in ABC order 4. Sort all spelling words by noun, verb, adjective, or “other” 5. Pick a word from each category and write a sentence, underlining the spelling words 6. Read 26 page storybook aloud, have sheet signed 7. “Optional homework” read silently for 20 minutes.

Great teachers recognize that burying a second grader in piles of senseless homework serves no purpose. Spelling homework is one of the biggest wastes of time in the history of bad homework. The only useful part of the above assignment is the optional part–voluntary reading. This homework assignment is a crutch for either an ill-prepared newbie or a tired veteran who lives in a that’s-the-way-I’ve-always-done-it world.

2-What if my students use mobile devices?

A fantastic, fearless teacher understands that learning simply can’t be measured.

Today’s classrooms are filled with iStudents. Kids who come to school with billions of resources in the palms of their hands, only to be told by teachers and school administrators to leave these powerful assets in their lockers or, worse, at home. Great teachers realize that we live in the digital age, and they are not threatened by the idea that students can become amazing independent learners, using mobile learning devices, web tools and social media. The best teachers realize that embracing mobile learning is the future of education.

3-What if my planned class activity is boring?

Far too many teachers rely on ancient textbooks, dusty worksheets, canned lectures, and last year’s multiple choice tests as their go-to teaching tools. “Kids need discipline, and learning doesn’t have to be fun,” they argue. Great teachers, though, say “Learning should always be fun.” Great teachers envision lessons and class activities and say, “If it isn’t going to be engaging and fun,” I’m throwing it out.

4-What if my room is noisy and chaotic?

A teacher walked into my classroom one day and said, “Wow! It’s kind of crazy in here.” When I informed her that we liked it this way, she shrugged, shook her head and quickly disappeared. For a very long time, my classroom was quiet and orderly. Students wouldn’t dream of leaving their seats without permission, and most would consider peeing their pants before asking me for a bathroom break. Fear and control were the order of the day, and learning was at best a rumor. After one amazing summer of change, I rebuilt my attitude and my classroom. Students worked collaboratively, moved about freely, talked openly, laughed, jumped, shouted and, best of all, had fun. Show me a silent room, and I’m betting it’s a place that is bereft of real learning.

5-What if I don’t grade this?

The thought of a class without traditional grades makes many teachers shudder and scoff. A fantastic, fearless teacher understands that learning simply can’t be measured. It’s impossible to effectively assess with numbers, percentages and letters. The best teachers give their students objective feedback. They observe and ask questions; they provide alternatives. Most important, they encourage students to revisit prior learning and rework activities in an effort to achieve mastery. The best teachers help kids understand that failure is necessary and should never be punished with a low mark.

6-What if the Common Core is just another bad idea concocted by bureaucrats?

Even if they think the Common Core might be a good thing (there’s no evidence right now that it is), the best teachers question Common Core State Standards and high stakes testing every day of their lives. Great teachers may see how the Common Core can be successfully integrated into some classes, but they always wonder if their own standards and learning outcomes that their students want are the best standards for our children. The best teachers know how to teach. They don’t need a prescription dreamed up by nonprofits to tell them what is right for their students.

 

Click on the link to read Learning as an Experience

Click on the link to read I Love it When Teachers are Excited to Come to Work

Click on the link to read Every Science Teacher’s Worst Nightmare (Video)

Click on the link to read When Teachers Prank Their Students (Video)

Click on the link to read 18 Tips For Getting the Best Out of Your Students

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Useful Resources to Assist in Behavioural Management

September 4, 2012

A compilation of behavioural management links by the team at The Guardian:

Positive ways to manage behaviour provides a range of techniques from the training organisation Pivotal Education. These include establishing explicit rules and routines, providing students with clear choices regarding their behaviour and starting each day with a clean sheet.

Further advice on some of the most common behaviour problems is contained in Classroom management strategies. Areas covered include dealing with pupils who are defiant, use abusive language, refuse to work or make silly noises in class. The resource highlights “needs-focused interventions”, such as “chunking” tasks to make them more manageable, taking time over your classroom seating plan and encouraging parental involvement. Strategies to avoid include giving ultimatums or tactically ignoring disruptive pupils.

Coping Strategies for Teachers contains tips on preventing, reducing and managing unacceptable behaviour. Ideas include having a challenge on the board for pupils to complete as they arrive in class, giving responsibility to students for activities such as taking the register, and keeping a behaviour file to record any incidents, meetings or contact with parents.

To encourage positive behaviour in early years and primary, Twinkl has created a range of wall display resources. These include a set of posters about good listening and a Noisometer that you can use to set and monitor noise levels in the classroom. To help celebrate good behaviour, there is a set of star of the day and star of the week posters, and as an alternative to the traditional traffic light behaviour management resource, you can use a set of Behaviour Management Dragons to give warnings for misbehaviour in a calm, non-confrontational way.

For newly-qualified teachers, a list of 10 top tips has been created by assistant headteacher and mentor Eugene Spiers. Advice includes remembering to smile and greet your classes, even the groups you dread, being consistent with praise and sanctions and calling a selection of parents with good news every Friday. There is additional advice in the resource 10 top tips for NQTs.

On a lighter note, Five Minutes to a Calmer Classroom provides tips on using meditation in the classroom. It includes details of a simple breathing exercise that can be used to tackle stress and improve concentration.

And for anyone starting the new school year as a supply teacher, there is a list of top tips from primary teacher Colin Cartmell-Browne. Advice includes arriving as early as possible, making a note of the school timetable and discussing with other members of staff whether there are any pupils who will need additional support.

Click on the link to read The Dog Eat Dog Style of Education

Click on the link to read Problem Kids, Suspensions and Revolving Doors

Click on the link to read The Solution to the Disruptive Student Has Arrived: Body Language Classes

Click on the link to read When Something Doesn’t Work – Try Again Until it Does

 

 

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