Handling behavior issues in the classroom while they are still small is key to building healthy relationships with your students and fostering student success.
How many times have you made mountains out of molehills?
It’s easy to do without even noticing. All it takes is avoiding a conversation or a confrontation long enough that it seems much bigger than it actually is.
Handling behavior issues in the classroom while they are still small is key to building healthy relationships with your students and fostering student success.
Nip Small Problems in the Bud
Here’s a scenario you’ve likely observed:
A teacher asks their class to be silent.
One student continues to speak.
The teacher doesn’t intervene, so the student starts calling out to their friend across the room.
The teacher doesn’t confront this either, and then the student starts to yell.
What happens next?
At this point, that student will most likely be referred to the principal’s office. But the best course of action would have been to address the behavior from the start.
Being proactive about addressing problems before they escalate helps to maintain a positive relationship between educator and student. By tracking student behavior, you can recognize positive student trends and catch negative behavior patterns before they get out of hand. Use DeansList to keep track of attendance, referrals, and behavioral consistency so you can intervene when necessary and help students stay on track for having a successful year.
3 Data Points to Start Tracking Now
1. Attendance: Research says that being present for 90% or more of classes in the school year leads to positive outcomes for students. Performance slips when absences become more frequent.
How can data help? Tracking attendance data, including chronic absenteeism, makes it easier to recognize when a student has had multiple absences from school.
Take action when a student has had 2-4 consecutive absences, and keep it from becoming a recurring problem.
Addressing the situation early can help avoid truancy issues that involve school administration and or even have legal implications. Sometimes addressing the issue is as small as providing a bus pass or getting an alarm clock, and it keeps the student from losing more learning time.
Tracking attendance helps facilitate communication between the school and the student as well as the student’s family from the start. The school can get more information about the student’s absences and make it easier to respond to that student’s needs and build better attendance habits early on. Sometimes family members are not aware of their student’s absences, which is why it’s so important that these absences are recognized and discussed.
2. Referrals: When a student is sent to the principal or dean’s office for negative reasons, the relationship between student and staff starts to deteriorate.
How can data help? Be aware if a teacher refers one student more than any other student in the class. Administrators can flag this issue and provide coaching and support.
Tracking interactions around referrals allows teachers to reflect on their behaviors and how they may affect their students. Perhaps they may be escalating the situation without realizing it. Gathering and reviewing referral data better equips teachers to solve problems as they arise and maintain a positive relationship with their students.
3. Behavioral consistency: It's important to have consistent expectations for student behavior across a school.
How can data help? Data can show if teachers are following a consistent system of rewards and corrections. Without this consistency, students may be unsure of expectations. Clear expectations ensure that the system feels fair to students and encourages a positive school culture.
Make Data Entry Routine to Catch Problems Before They Start
Start the school year by training teachers and administrators to habitually log student behavior.
When your school tracks a standard set of values, you can easily compare what’s happening across all your classrooms and come up with best practices to catch problems early.
To encourage a more accessible data entry routine, administrators can:
By using the data collected on DeansList, small problems can stay just that - small.
