Dreading a New School Year?
I don’t know about you but a new school year with new students used to get my tummy turning. Dread hung on my shoulders and motivation was nowhere to be found. How was I to keep control of new students, teens I didn’t know and who were different from me? But my experience as the training coordinator for a youth development organization saved me. I learned to maintain control of kids I didn’t know and that it’s all about classroom management relationship-building.
Don’t Make Classroom Management All Business
To keep control of new students, classroom management is essential. But setting boundaries and rules upfront at the beginning of the school year, being consistent, having clear expectations and consequences, effective transitions, and intentional classroom layout as well as other strategies are only half — the businessy half — of classroom management.
You’ve Got to Get to Know Your Students
The softer strategies of relationship building, the engaging with and understanding of students, is the other half of classroom management that makes the businessy side to maintain control of new students fall into place without much effort. Getting to know your students is one of the highest forms of respect. Everyone desires respect and once gained, young people will rotate to and honor its source — you!
Classroom Management Relationship Building Bundle
For the upcoming school year, I have put together a bundle of, not only my favorite youth development-based classroom management resources to help maintain control but my students’ favorites! With the “What’s Your Style,” “Circle of Community,” and “Strong Suits” resources in the “Classroom Management Relationship-Building Bundle,” students are not the only ones who will engage, understand, and learn about their classmates ( while building communication skills). Teachers will too. While figuring out what makes students tick —why they do what they do — you’ll also empower and engage them, all at the same time.
