Setting Up Guidelines For Your Classroom

School is about to start again and we are attending Teacher in-service and trainings to make sure we are planning for the best year yet with our students. Every year we recreate our guidelines for our classroom - how we want our classes to run. We are told that we have to have rules and a list of consequences if students break those rules. Every student is not the same, but we are expected to have universal rules and consequences so that our classroom is "fair." Most schools and districts require set consequences or steps when dealing with misbehavior (first a warning, then a parent contact, then a detention, etc...). Rules make things easier and harder at the same time. They are concrete and are documentable. Rules must be enforced and consequences must be followed through completely. Rules have to be set in stone and not ever-changing. Rules and set consequences can seem to create an environment of constant policing. However, rules can become easy tools to set boundaries and expectations for your classroom when done correctly. They have to be clear, concise, and measurable. Rules must be stated in positive wording - what you want to happen, not things you don't want to see. 

When rules are written in a forceful or negative tone, you set that tone for your classroom. You want to tell the kids what the expectations are in a clear, concise, and emotionless tone. 

 Such as this poster states - Keep Calm ... when writing your rules. It also important to prioritize your rules - what things MUST happen in your classroom to be successful. If you list too many, the kids (and you) cannot keep up with them all. You will set your students up to fail. If someone cannot easily remember all the rules, are they really punishable if broken?

One mistake that teachers seem to make each year when creating their rules is that they confuse rules with general expectations, policies/procedures, and general classroom character traits. Rules and expectations go hand and hand. Rules are what you expect in class, but like stated above, rules are clear, concise, and measurable. They are stated with positive action words ("You will...") and can be measured. For example, "You will be in your assigned seat before the bell rings for class to begin." That is clear, concise, and measurable. You definitely will be able to tell whether a student is or is not in their assigned seat before the bell to start class rings. Expectations are more general and are more like goals for the classroom. For example, an expectation for your classroom might be that everyone have their instrument and supplies for rehearsal. What if a student forgot his pencil (and all of his other supplies for that matter) because he spent the night in the hospital with his dying grandfather and didn't have a chance to go home and get his backpack? Your expectation is that he have his pencil for class though. Is this really something to issue a detention over? Does his not having a pencil really effect the good of the entire class? Some may argue yes because he doesn't have a pencil to mark in that breath mark at the end of measure 8. But can't you just loan him a pencil? I'm sure as an observant and caring teacher, you would pull him aside and talk with him and let him know the expectations for the class, but also let him know that you understand and care for him and his family.

Teach your students the rules, but also teach them what is expected of them. Let your students know that you have high expectations and let them know what those expectations are. Let your students know that it is okay for them to set expectations for themselves. And it is always okay for students to exceed expectations whether they be yours or their own. Most students will try very hard to meet your expectations. They want to make you proud. Many students cannot set goals for themselves. They don't have self-belief, so you have to set those goals and expectations and let them know that they CAN and that they WILL achieve them. For some it might take longer, but that's okay. 

And this takes me to policies and procedures. Policies and procedures are used in many types of large organizations - from businesses to government to schools, to name a few. Policies are basic principles to which an organization is guided, or even better defined as the declared objectives that an organization seeks to achieve. Procedures are the specific steps to get to those objectives. When stated this way, it becomes clear that policies and procedures are goal driven. I think if we go about setting our classroom procedures with our end goal in mind, we will set procedures that make sense for our classroom. Classroom procedures for a middle school band rehearsal will be very different from a math class or a science lab. Each band class might have slightly different classroom procedures. For instance, my beginner trumpet class that meets in the cafeteria will have slightly different classroom procedures from the beginner low brass class that meets in the band hall that exact same period. The beginning and end of each class will have to be slightly different to accommodate the one class having to travel to a different room. 

Each school and/or district has specific policies on a number of different topics, and you will not have to create those for your classroom. However, procedures should be created for your classes and rehearsed over and over...and over. Procedures should be practiced and reinforced throughout the school year. You should have procedures for everything you do in a class. There is a classroom management tool called CHAMPs. which can help you outline what your procedures will look like, sound like, etc. You use the CHAMPs acronym to define detailed behavioral expectations for each task you do in class. Let's create our procedure for getting instruments out for class/rehearsal using CHAMPs. The C stands for Conversation - Will you allow conversation at this time? If so, what should it look like? With whom can the students converse? At what volume level can they converse? For how long can they converse? You need to have a solid answer for all of these questions so you can communicate your expectations to the students and model and practice this aspect of the procedure. The H stands for Help - How do students get your attention for help in getting their instruments out if they need it? How do students get their questions answered? What should they do as they wait for you? The A stands for Activity - What is the expected end product of this activity? What is the task or objective? The M stands for Movement - What type of movement is allowed? The P stands for Participation - What behavior(s) show that a student is participating correctly or not participating? And the S stands for Success - Once the student has completed all of the expectations of the procedure, they are successful. 

And last, but not least...general character traits - these are our end goals and are not really measurable in any sense. Responsibility, Respect, Empathy, etc. We can talk about what these might look like or sound like in any situation, but they are objective. Respect can look very different from one culture to the next, even from one generation to the next. 

Because rules have to be measurable, should one of your classroom rules be "Respect one another?" No. How can you really tell a student they didn't respect another student? You can tell that student how it made the other student feel, how it was interpreted as being disrespectful, etc., but it is not really measurable. Now if one of your rules was "Keep your hands to yourself" and a student purposefully knocked another student's music off of the stand, you can easily say the student broke the rule and will receive consequences. To them, it might not have been disrespectful or rude; they might have seen it as being playful even though the student who had their music knocked off did not see it that way. 

So, when creating rules for your class this year, it might be better to go from macro to micro. What are the general character traits you want your band kids to have? Based on that, what general policies do you want to set for your program? What are your expectations for your program, grade levels, classes? Based on your expectations, what are your rules? Based on all of the above and other circumstances, what will your classroom procedures be for each class this year? 

I hope you find some gems at teacher in-service, training, and faculty meetings this next week before school starts and are able to implement them in to your own teaching. I always try to find at least a few things that seem applicable for band and that I can be excited about trying out. Good luck and happy new school year!