Teaching Procedures: A MUST

Going into my first year of teaching, I assumed I'd spend the bulk of my time teaching and my students would spend the bulk of their time learning.  By and large, that is how it went down.  But what I didn't anticipate was what would go down the rest of the time.  I thought I was ready.  I thought I had it all figured out and I would be a killer teacher. I had decorated my bulletin boards, planned my first nine weeks lessons according to the school curriculum, stocked my desk with Post-It notes and Ticonderoga pencils and drank my coffee.  I was ready.  Prepared to teach.

But not, evidently, prepared to manage a class of 27 fourth graders! As I attempted to deliver my carefully and thoughtfully planned lessons, the little rugrats kept interrupting me and needing stuff. Like, they don't just sit there! They want to go to the bathroom in the middle of your lesson, or sharpen their pencil, or run out of paper, or, or...so many issues! Needless to say I grossly underestimated what it would be like. By Christmas break, I was a wreck. I knew I needed to do something, and FAST.

I remembered a required reading from my classroom management course in undergrad: The First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong.  As a student I remember feeling like this book had all of the answers and it was one of the few I didn't sell back at the end of the semester.  But evidently I hadn't listened well enough because I failed to do one of the main things the book recommends: Teach procedures. Sure, I had told my students to raise their had before speaking but there were so many other little things I hadn't anticipated and therefore hadn't developed a set of procedures to address.  Since I hadn't taught my students that I wasn't comfortable with several of them on the floor at a time, they didn't know that. So I had kiddos running amok around my room. Since I didn't have a system or procedure in place for sharpening pencils, the pencil sharpener ran 24/7 and it Stressed. Me. Out. To this day I can barely tolerate the sound! We'd be in the middle of a great classroom discussion and somebody would raise their hand to sharpen a pencil. What!? Dude, we're TALKING. You don't need your pencil right now, mmkay? Collecting homework was a clumsy and time-sucking ordeal each day. SO many things about my classroom weren't going as smoothly as I'd hoped, and I couldn't stand it much longer.

Read (or re-read) this book! 

So, I dusted off my First Days of School and made a plan. I listed all of the little things that I felt distracted myself and the students from the real business of teaching and learning, then developed a set of procedures to address each. I went back to school in January, prepared to turn things around.  I approached the classroom as I should have done in August, and spent a solid two weeks teaching classroom procedures using direct instruction.  Just like you would a lesson plan.  Students want to do the right thing, they want to please you... they just have to know how.  And it was my job to let them know how, to set them (and myself) up for success. I created anchor charts and posted them around the room to remind students of the procedures.  We made T-charts and identified acceptable and unacceptable examples of classroom behavior.  I made sure they were aware of my expectations and you know what? They met them.  

Click this link for a GREAT blog post and freebie on teaching procedures from Brook Brown of the blog Teaching Outside the Box!

My classroom started working like a well-oiled machine.  Instead of random restroom requests in the middle of a lesson, students used hand signals that I could reply to with a quick nod or shake of the head.  Instead of the pencil sharpener making my ears bleed all day, students each sharpened two pencils in the morning and I provided a cup of freshly sharpened pencils for them to exchange broken pencil for throughout the day. Only two students at a time were allowed on the floor (unless we were doing something requiring more) and my students actually waited until somebody sat down to get up.  It was like MAGIC.

But I'm no magician.  I just did what a good teacher is supposed to do: I set my students up for success.  I created an environment of clear expectations and so, my students could easily meet them. Sure, it wasn't perfect.  There were some stumbles along the way and some refinements to be made.  For example, I thought that having a tray by the door for students to turn in homework each morning would take care of that issue, but I quickly found I was having more zeros this way... there was no immediate accountability for not turning in work because I was simply unaware of it until that evening. I think some kiddos felt they were "getting away with it" and so I switched up my game.   Instead, I had students place their homework in the top right corner of their desk when they arrived and at 8:15 I quickly walked by and collected each paper without saying a word. Nobody wanted to get the stink eye from me and feel the shame of not turning in their work, so they did.  It worked out!

Long story short, teach procedures.  Review them throughout the year.  Read and reread, every summer, The First Days of School so you can recalibrate yourself and refine the procedures you want in place to make your classroom the learning environment you know it can be!