For instance, a minute and a half into the first day, I gave one student a verbal warning for whispering to another student as he was searching for his seat. Assuming the best in this young man, I told him,“ I know you were probably talking about your seat, but you can ' t even talk about that, so that ' s your verbal warning. Go back to your seat and silently start your work." By assuming that he was trying to do the right thing find his assigned seat, I affirmed that he wanted to meet the expectations. And yet I was firm with him that his choice to whisper after he had been told to silently begin his work was not OK. Similarly, at the end of class, I kept behind a student who was sighing to herself over the course of the period. By letting her know that I wouldn’ t accept her subtle expressions of boredom or frustration, I also let her know that I thought she was great and her expressions of negativity wouldn ' t fly because they ' d hurt our collective learning environment and because they didn’ t square with the wonderful person I knew her to be. Call attention to the things your students are doing that meet your expectations. The power of this is stunning for a number of reasons. Here are two:
It enables you to restate and reinforce the expectations for student behavior in a nonnegative way. By narrating on-task behavior, you enable students who may have misheard you the first time to hear exactly what you expect of them. It ' s easier for students to meet your expectations when it ' s amply clear what those expectations are.
It shows your students that you ' re with it, that you ' re very aware of what ' s happening in the classroom. When they see and hear that you see and hear pretty much everything, they know that you mean business and that even their smallest actions matter.
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