This week, I was lucky enough to attend a professional development meeting on responding to student behavior. The Behavior Specialist in our district came to discuss how to appropriately respond to negative student behavior, both in crisis situations and everyday, more common scenarios.

One thing that he said that really stuck out to me about behavior management in general is that you do not CONTROL student behavior, you INFLUENCE it. It is impossible to control your students, but what you do to influence their behavior is the best that you can do as an educator.

Another piece of advice he offered was to realize that if a student misbehaves, it is not your fault. Students are going to act how they are going to act, and you need to detach yourself from the behavior by not taking it personally and letting it affect your feelings and reaction. Once you can remove yourself from this idea, you will be a lot more successful in handling the behavior in a calm and effective manner.

The main idea the presenter offered us was to NEVER react in a negative way such as yelling at the student, threatening them, etc. What you SHOULD do, however, is offer the student a choice. Put the fate of their actions in their own hands. For example, you can tell a student “I’m going to give you two choices. The first choice is the right choice, and the second choice is the wrong choice which will follow with (insert consequence here).  You can choose to do (the right choice), or you can choose (the consequence)”. This approach should be calm and patient, and if the student chooses not to make the right choice, it’s important to follow through with the consequence. This is something that can be used with any grade level as the choices and consequences will vary.

In my first grade classroom, we have a lot of students with behavioral needs. My cooperating teacher and I have been practicing offering students the choice to make the right decision, and so far we have seen it working tremendously! It really holds students accountable for their own actions. I hope this helps when you run into some negative behavior within your own classrooms!