Part 1: Why Won’t These Kids Listen to Me?

A couple things before you go….

1. Comment. Did you share your biggest challenge in the comments below?

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If You Want the Cliffs Notes….

Here’s a summary of the main points of the video.

My first year teaching was just short of disastrous – at least that’s how I felt about it. Instead of loving this job I had always dreamed of, I found myself dreading teaching my first period class. I just didn’t know how to get my students to listen to me.
My mentor teacher shared with me a great strategy. I explain it in detail in the video and I also share it in this post. The main idea is that I developed an official warning system for my class. Every time a student talked or disrupted class they would receive a warning. If they got 3 warnings in one class period, they would receive some type of consequence.
The key to using this system is to find a way to give warnings that 1) doesn’t interrupt the flow of your teaching and 2) puts responsibility on the individual without giving any actual penalty for the first warning. For me, what worked was writing their names on the board as warnings. Other ideas include using class dojo or putting a post-it note on the desk of the student who is receiving the warning.
You can learn to control your classroom, too. In the next video I share 4 ways to cut out disruptions (as well as a secret weapon that truly make all the difference).