2. Hold students accountable.  Just like with anything in the classroom, students have to be held accountable for their behavior.  While I’m the teacher, I look at myself as a facilitator. I chose to give students the opportunity to prove that they are the young adults that they claim to be. So when I start my class, the rules and expectations are not only told but modeled. Students are encouraged to take appropriate risks and to deal with the consequences (both good and bad) that come with them.
In my last school, there was a problem with students in the hallway during class time. So in my class, I instituted a pass system and explained to students the rules for using them. Knowing that someone would break the system, it was imperative that the student is held accountable. One day a student signed out a pass and stayed out of class for fifteen minutes and when he came back it was obvious (from the snickering of the other students) that this student had been skipping. Â To make him accountable for the class time he missed, I limited him to only one hall pass for the year, AND he had to make that time up in after school detention, two-fold. Â Needless to say, the student was mad as hell but when I explained to him the consequences but I stuck to my “guns”. Click here for strategy #3.
