Positive Classroom Culture is Your Management Secret Weapon [Episode 285]

Heidi 0:01
This is episode 285 of Teacher Approved.

Heidi 0:05
You’re listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I’m Heidi.

Emily 0:13
And I’m Emily. We’re the creators behind Second Story Window, where we give research-based and teacher-approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

Heidi 0:28
We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

Emily 0:35
Hey there! Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we are talking about how to shape your classroom culture so it can boost your classroom management, and we’ve got a tip for making your mornings a little easier.

Heidi 0:49
But first, let’s start with a try it tomorrow, where we share a quick win that you can try right away. Emily, what is our suggestion this week?

Emily 0:55
Okay, this week look at the school calendar and get all the upcoming school theme days or dress up days on the calendar. Maybe even set a reminder for the day before so that you’re not scrambling in the morning.

Heidi 1:09
And also, if you need to buy anything like new pajamas for pajama day or a shirt in a certain color, order it now so that you have exactly what you need.

Emily 1:19
And if you’re worried about how to look cute in the school T-shirt you’re expected to wear, go back to episode 245 where Lindsay from Fashion Fix shared a teacher-approved tip for how to style a school shirt. She had some really great ideas.

Heidi 1:34
And if you like this idea or anything else we share here today, would you do us a favor and share this episode with a teacher friend? People trust recommendations from people they know. So every time you share our show, it really does help us out.

Emily 1:48
Okay, we are officially in September, which means a lot of our listeners are starting school this week. And if that is you, happy first week! We hope everything goes smoothly.

Heidi 1:58
And actually, a lot of teachers have been back in school for weeks already.

Emily 2:02
Yep, especially around where we are. And if that is you, then we hope everything is continuing to go smoothly a few weeks later.

Heidi 2:10
But wherever you land on the back to school spectrum, hopefully you’re in a situation where you only have 16 kids in your class, and they’re all eager, focused learners.

Emily 2:20
Yes, I really hope that’s true for all of you, but more likely, let’s say there are 25 students in your classroom, maybe 30, maybe more, and there is one of you.

Heidi 2:32
I don’t like that math.

Emily 2:34
No.

Heidi 2:35
Because even if you are the most present, most connected teacher in the building, there is no version of the day where you can personally manage all of those kids all of the time. It is absolutely impossible.

Emily 2:47
Right. Because while you’re helping one student understand the assignment, there’s two kids that are deciding whether to stay focused or start talking. Someone just knocked over their pencil box, and their neighbor is looking around to see if it’s okay to laugh. Another student is trying to decide whether it’s socially acceptable to ask a question that they think might sound dumb.

Heidi 3:06
And you aren’t there to personally coach students through every one of those decisions. You physically can’t be, which means that for most of the day, your students are not being managed by you at all. They are being managed by each other.

Emily 3:20
Yeah, and this is a part of teaching that we don’t discuss enough. The social environment in your classroom develops its own answers to questions like, is it cool to try, or is it cooler to pretend that you don’t care? How do we respond when somebody is being annoying?

Heidi 3:38
Or is this a room where we help each other, or a room where we look out for ourselves? The answers to these questions aren’t just individual behavior choices; they are cultural norms.

Emily 3:50
Classroom culture is the collection of unwritten rules about how things work. Is this the kind of classroom where people stay on task if the teacher has to step in the hall for a minute, or is it the kind of class where the teacher’s absence is an excuse to run wild?

Heidi 4:04
That always bugs me about teachers on TV or in movies. You know, they just step into the hall for a five-minute chat without a second to worry about what’s breaking up behind them.

Emily 4:14
One of the most unbelievable parts of Abbott Elementary. Even though I love Abbott Elementary, but frequent hall chats with multiple teachers. That’s not, that’s not realistic, and obviously that’s because those teachers are lucky enough to have writers telling those kids what to do. But sadly, someone forgot to hand out the script to the rest of the kids that we have in our classrooms.

Heidi 4:37
Which is why culture matters so much. It’s essentially the script your students follow for knowing how to behave from minute to minute, which makes it much more influential than the rules hanging on your wall.

Emily 4:49
And unlike classroom rules, culture will develop completely organically. Which means if you don’t decide to shape your culture on purpose, you are basically letting the loudest voices in your room do it.

Heidi 5:02
Sometimes that works out beautifully. You get two or three natural leaders who set a great tone, and then you can just ride that all year and feel like a genius.

Emily 5:11
Uh huh. But more often than not, you end up with a culture of chatting and nonstop water bottle flipping contests. The reason culture is such a potent tool is because of something called social contagion. Like that back to school cold that you’re currently fighting off, behavior also spreads.

Heidi 5:31
You have definitely experienced how this works. So when you are the new person at a job, you watch your coworkers to see where to sit at lunch or how loud conversations can be, and then you just copy what everyone else is doing.

Emily 5:44
Classrooms run the same way. When kindness and effort and respect are the standard in a room, then kids absorb it and reflect it back to each other without being asked. But it also works in the opposite direction.

Heidi 5:56
Yeah, if eye rolling is tolerated in September, eye rolling is the standard by October. Kids are watching what you let slide far more closely than they are listening to what you say.

Emily 6:08
So when you’re working against a student-created culture, you spend the whole day putting out fires that the culture started.

Heidi 6:16
But with a teacher-led culture, your students hold each other to the standard, and you have fewer problems to manage. That’s because you have peer pressure on your side.

Emily 6:26
We spend a lot of time trying to protect kids from peer pressure, but the truth is, peer pressure is going to exist whether we acknowledge it or not.

Heidi 6:35
And that’s why we definitely want to make sure that the pressure in our classroom is pushing everyone in a useful direction. Positive peer pressure makes the difference between students watching someone disrupt a lesson and joining in, and someone leaning over to whisper, “Dude, stop! We’re trying to work.”

Emily 6:52
In the first few days of school, hopefully, you scheduled time for important community building activities. But as we move into the school year, your work here isn’t done. A positive classroom culture requires attention, the way that relationships do.

Heidi 7:07
But don’t let that panic you. Unlike most lessons, teaching students how things work in your room happens in the little moments. When you respond calmly to a broken rule instead of losing your cool, you teach that mistakes are expected.

Emily 7:20
Yeah, and when you invite a student to try again if they’ve spoken harshly to a classmate, you teach that respect and relationships matter in your class.

Heidi 7:29
But if you want to be more intentional about shaping your classroom culture, we’ve boiled down the whole process to five steps: name it, teach it, practice it, notice it, and protect it.

Emily 7:41
All right, let’s walk through the first one, which is name it. This is an easy one to skip over because it feels so obvious, but it’s worth saying it anyway. Start by finding 10 minutes on two different days for a class discussion.

Heidi 7:55
For the first day, prepare a chart or a blank slide with three columns. Label one column, “I want a teacher who,” label the second column, “I want a classmate who,” and label the third column, “I want a classroom that,” and then invite students to share their ideas about how to complete those sentences.

Emily 8:14
And then on the second day, post a chart or slide that says, “We are the kind of class…” Refer back to the previous day’s poster. If we want to have classmates and a teacher and a room that does all of those amazing things, what kind of class do we need to be? Have students help you fill out that second chart.

Heidi 8:33
And you might need to share a few ideas to get the ball rolling. So, for example, we’re the kind of class that protects learning time. We’re the kind of class that makes room for people, and we can disagree respectfully.

Emily 8:43
When you have enough ideas, post the chart where it can be referenced. Then, when work time gets too noisy, you can call students’ attention to their own words. If this is the kind of class that protects learning time, show me what I should expect to see you doing right now.

Heidi 8:58
You gotta love a tool that gets everyone back on track without you having to issue a single correction.

Heidi 9:04
So after naming it, the second step is to teach it. We all want classrooms where students communicate, problem solve, and include each other.

Emily 9:13
But those aren’t personality traits; they’re skills. And if students haven’t learned them, telling them to work together is a little like handing everyone a recorder and saying, “Okay, let’s all play Uptown Funk.”

Heidi 9:25
You’d expect absolute chaos in a room full of kids turned loose with recorders. So it’s no surprise we get chaos when we expect kids to know how to solve disagreements or how to get in a group without any training.

Emily 9:39
So teach social skills the way that you would teach anything. Name the skill, model it, let them practice, and then discuss how it went when they put it in action.

Heidi 9:49
Yes, that is right. You can tell try telly talk here too. Think about the skills you want students to use in your class and start teaching them one at a time.

Emily 9:57
And luckily, skill lessons are usually much shorter than procedure lessons. If you have visuals for students to reference, you only need two or three minutes to help them understand what’s expected. For example, how to respond when you’re frustrated. The steps would be one, pause; two, identify the problem; three, ask for what you need; and four, try a solution.

Heidi 10:19
And then role play at a time or two. If the culture you want requires a skill, don’t assume students already have it. You need to teach it.

Emily 10:28
Next up, it’s time to practice. During the first few weeks, add lots of low stakes group interactions to your plans. Help students understand exactly what should happen during turn and talk. How to form partnerships or groups without leaving anyone out, and how to share materials.

Heidi 10:45
During this stage, keep the focus on the social skills, not academics. So, for example, my second graders worked with partners several times a day. So, at the start of the year, I taught them how to be good partners, and then gave them a non-academic task like a get-to-know-you activity. My goal is to give them practice working on the partnership skills without worrying about content.

Emily 11:06
And you can do the same thing with group work or any other learning formats. Review the skill and invite students to practice with “Would You Rather” questions instead of math questions.

Heidi 11:16
And this is a game changer if you do centers. Stock all of your centers with simple activities, even a coloring page works okay here. And then focus on giving students practice with managing materials, rotating quietly, working with an assigned group, people they didn’t choose. All of those skills that go into making centers run smoothly.

Emily 11:34
You might not eliminate the issues completely, but you’ll have far fewer if students know how to succeed before you expect them to both manage social and academic expectations at the same time.

Heidi 11:47
And then after the activity, don’t just move on. Take a couple minutes to debrief. What went well? What was tricky? What will you remember to do next time?

Emily 11:56
And this step is easy to skip, but is crucial because the activity itself isn’t building your classroom culture; it’s the reflection afterward where all of this gets internalized.

Heidi 12:08
The next way to shape classroom culture is to notice the behavior you want more of. What you notice, you make visible, and what you make visible has a better chance of becoming contagious.

Emily 12:18
The catch is that generic praise does not do the same thing. Good job, Table Three. It tells nobody anything about anything. So name the behavior. I just saw three people move their chairs that they could see the board better. That’s taking responsibility for your own learning.

Heidi 12:36
Now you’re not really saying this for the kids who move their chairs, although you know everyone likes to be praised. You’re saying it for the other 22 because you just gave them an example of what normal behavior looks like in your room.

Emily 12:48
If risk taking gets highlighted, you get a class that will make a guess, even if they’re unsure. But if it never gets noticed, you get 25 kids who sit and wait for you to hand them the answer.

Heidi 12:59
So you can start here by asking yourself, “What behavior do I wish would spread around the room? And then pay attention for the little examples of it. Notice the student who helps clean up, the group that solves a disagreement, students who redirect themselves, and the ones who make room for someone else.

Emily 13:16
This isn’t about manipulating anyone into good behavior, and it’s not throwing a parade every time someone acts like a decent human being. The goal is to connect individual actions to the larger well-being of the group.

Heidi 13:29
Unless there’s a problem later in the year, you probably don’t need to schedule time all year long to practice your class norms. But noticing is ongoing because we want to keep our class norms from drifting into the half-hearted attempts.

Emily 13:43
And that brings us to our fifth step: protect it. When someone steps outside a norm, the most powerful thing you can say is some version of “That’s not how we do things here.”

Heidi 13:53
That might sound like “That’s not how we solve problems,” or “You don’t have to like what he said, but you do have to respond respectfully.”

Emily 14:01
Every time you respond to a behavior, you’re not just managing that individual student. You’re also teaching the rest of the room what the real rules of this community are.

Heidi 14:11
But if you allow the same norm violation over and over without addressing it, you’re teaching the class that everything you say is optional, and that is not a lesson you want students to learn.

Emily 14:23
At the end of the day, your classroom culture is whatever pattern of behavior you permit. You may have a beautiful poster that says we respect everyone, but if students regularly talk over each other, exclude classmates, and make little cutting comments, you don’t have a culture of respect.

Heidi 14:42
Yeah, the poster might reflect your values, but the poster isn’t your culture. The tolerated behavior is.

Emily 14:48
But don’t feel bad if you have let things slide because we have all been there.

Heidi 14:53
Oh yes, that’s because consistently upholding your expectations is absolutely the hardest part of management. We talked all about this a couple weeks ago in episode 283. So go back and check that out if you missed it.

Emily 15:06
And if you need to course correct, consider what’s happening repeatedly in your classroom that you don’t want to normalize. Maybe that’s calling out, complaining, tattling, or students refusing to work together.

Heidi 15:19
And then pick one of those and address it as a cultural issue. Try saying something like, “I’ve noticed this has started becoming normal in our room, and it’s a problem because it’s keeping people from doing their best. Let’s talk about what we want to do instead.”

Emily 15:33
And doing this at the start of the year will save you time in the long run, but redirection can be done at any point in the year.

Heidi 15:41
Yeah, maybe you need to reset after a long break, or get everyone back on track when spring fever hits. When that happens, gather everyone for a discussion, talk about what’s going well and what isn’t working.

Emily 15:52
And just keep the focus on students’ ideas. Ask what kind of class they want to have and what they need to do differently to get there. Then name it, teach it, practice it, notice it, and protect it.

Heidi 16:04
As you settle into the regular rhythm of the year, remember that the goal is to build a classroom where students increasingly understand how to act, how to solve problems, and how to treat each other, even when you are across the room helping somebody else.

Emily 16:19
That doesn’t mean there won’t still be water bottle flipping contests. There probably will be, or whatever this year’s version of six seven is going to be.

Heidi 16:28
Oh no.

Emily 16:29
But when the culture underneath is strong, those moments are smaller and shorter.

Heidi 16:35
That’s because your students have a shared framework for making it right and moving on. And every time they work through a hard moment together, the culture gets a little stronger.

Emily 16:45
If this conversation was helpful, you definitely want to join us in the Teacher Approved Club. This month, we have a resource to help you make sure that all of the lessons you’re teaching students about how to function in your room stick in their cute little brains. So there’s a link to sign up in the show notes, or you can visit us at secondstorywindow.net/club.

Emily 17:04
Now for our teacher-approved tip of the week, where we share an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and simplify the rest. This week’s teacher-approved tip is to get multiple lunch bags. Okay, tell us about it, Heidi.

Heidi 17:19
Okay, well I can’t take credit for this. So, for the past few weeks, Mackenzie’s Journey on Instagram and probably on TikTok has been sharing tips for how teachers can prep their homes, not just their classrooms, for back to school. And she has some really great tips that I would have never thought of. And one of those tips is getting five lunch bags. This seemed a little crazy till she explained it.

Heidi 17:42
So, if you like to batch prep your lunches for the week, or if you think this is something you’d like to try, you’ll be more likely to stick with it if you remove as many hurdles as possible, even if all of those hurdles are small. I know when I have batched lunches in the past, I would make all my meals, and then I would have to fill up my lunch bag every day. But every extra step in a system is a potential weak spot. And if you’re like me and running late in the morning, that extra step of having to load your bag each day could be the step that derails this whole plan.

Heidi 18:16
So to counter that, Mackenzie got five lunch bags. So then, when she’s finished prepping the lunches for the week. She can load all of the bags right then.

Emily 18:24
Dang, that is so smart. I guess sometimes it really is the simplest ideas that can have the biggest impact. And I think a lot of people would hear this and be like, “Oh my gosh, I do not need five lunch bags.” But in reality, it probably would free up more space in your brain than you might realize.

Heidi 18:39
Yeah, and I don’t think it takes that much more space because you have to have all of those containers in your fridge anyway.

Emily 18:44
Yes, that’s just meal prepping.

Heidi 18:46
Yeah, now they’re just packed and ready to go. And Mackenzie even goes a step further. She has a fridge in her garage, so she can put all of her lunches out there and then just grab one as she’s heading to the car. Oh, but even if you don’t have a second fridge, just having those extra bags could be a huge lifesaver for you.

Emily 19:04
Well, these kind of, I hate to call it a hack, I don’t think it’s really a life hack, but it’s something you’re looking at something different in your life that you hadn’t looked at that way before. But I just lived for this kind of stuff. I’m like, should I? I’m staying home, but should I prep my lunches for the week and get five lunch bags?

Heidi 19:21
You would feel super organized.

Emily 19:23
I bet I would.

Heidi 19:26
Okay, to wrap up the show, we’re sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, I get your extra credit?

Emily 19:31
Okay, I’m giving extra credit to the movie Solo Mio, which is a Kevin James movie. It was in theaters, I think. I think?

Heidi 19:43
I don’t think so. I think it was for TV.

Emily 19:44
Oh, maybe it was just straight for TV. I don’t know. But I watched it on Hulu, I think. I was working on a project a couple weeks ago, and so I blew through a bunch of movies because I was just putting something on in the background, and I was like, “Oh, I’ll just give this one a try.” And it probably helps that I went in with rock bottom expectations because I’m like, oh, you know how Kevin James is. Although I do like Kevin James, but you know how his movies are. But I thought this was adorable.

Emily 20:11
So the premise is that he is in Italy to get married, and his wife or his fiance, I guess, leaves him at the altar. Now this happens in like the first five minutes of the movie, but then he stays for the next three weeks or something for the honeymoon. So he’s on this tour group basically for all that time with all these other couples and newlyweds, and it’s just such a fun cast of characters. I love when a show has fun side characters, but that are not too ridiculous, I thought these were all like genuinely fun and cute. And I don’t want to give too much of the movie away, but I, I honestly thought it was a really sweet little rom com watch, if you’re looking for something.

Heidi 20:55
Well, I’ll definitely have to check that out. That sounds delightful.

Emily 20:58
What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Heidi 21:01
This is a hard pivot.

Emily 21:03
Yours usually are.

Heidi 21:05
I’m giving extra credit to slim, non-slip metal hangers.

Emily 21:09
Oh, ooh la la!

Heidi 21:12
So I don’t know why I even ordered these, but they are so nice. I’ve been switching out my regular hangers, and I, I have had the same plastic black hangers probably for 20 or more years. But I’ve been switching these out, and I cannot believe the space it has freed up in my closet just to have these thin hangers. So they’re metal, but they’re thicker than wire hangers. You couldn’t. I don’t think you could bend them, and then they’re coated in like I don’t know rubber silicone something, so your clothes don’t slide off them. It’s a game changer for how my closet looks so much neater, and I have way more room. I am frankly surprised at the difference just this little switch up made.

Emily 21:55
I’ve had those kind of hangers for years. Mine, I think, are kind of like felt lined to keep the clothes on there.

Heidi 22:01
I have some that are, I tried some like velvet ones.

Emily 22:04
Maybe that’s what it is, velvet.

Heidi 22:05
And then, like at one point, it’s like I’m going all in on wood because I’m investing. And then I was like, my clothes are, these are huge. My clothes are not nice enough to need wood hangers.

Emily 22:16
They take up so much room.

Heidi 22:17
Yes, and I thankfully only bought like five.

Emily 22:20
Well, good thing.

Heidi 22:21
Anyway, yeah, I’m a big fan. I will put a link in the show notes if you need to upgrade your closet.

Emily 22:26
I committed to wood hangers for my children when they were little, and now I’m like, why did I do that? It just, I felt like it made their closets look so cute with all their little clothes, and now they their clothes are too big for all those little wooden hangers, and I need to do something with them. Maybe I’ll get them some non-slip metal hangers.

Heidi 22:43
There you go. I think that’s the only way to go.

Heidi 22:47
Well, that is it for today’s episode. Remember to name, teach, practice, notice, and protect the classroom culture that you want to cultivate.

Heidi 22:57
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 23:00
And I’m Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an episode.

Heidi 23:07
You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. We’ll see you here next week. Bye for now.

Emily 23:14
Bye.