The 3 Student Behaviors That Will Make or Break Your School Year (And How to Tackle Them Fast)

By Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC

There are three student behaviors that will make or break your school year that happen in almost every classroom, impact learning as well as classroom culture and need to be addressed immediately or you will be up to your eyeballs swimming in a sea of challenges.

1.     The Off-Task Contagion of Distraction

Student attention spans can be short and when students are disengaged, this phenomenon becomes contagious! Side conversations, fidgeting with phones, staring into space, or wandering to sharpen a pencil can be tiny behaviors in isolation of themselves, but feel like death by a thousand papercuts as a teacher!

How to Tackle The Distraction Monster Fast-

·       Use attention resets where you have students stand and shake off the lack of engagement as you call to order a “pure productivity moment” whereby students “lock in.” You may even use a timer on your phone to see how long they can stay focusing. Turn this into a humorous engagement tactic. For example, “Alright everyone, let’s do this! How long can we lock in? Let’s beat our last best time!” With this strategy, students learn that there are times when you have to race to the finish line, complete a task with focus, and garner enough sustained attention to achieve a task.

Also, use humor as motivation. For example: "Okay, everyone we are going to be working so hard here I should see smoke coming out of your ears. We are 'on fire with our learning' so lock in! Then there is opportunity to banter with students as they reply that they are sizzling or cooking with their learning. When I have used this strategy, students have said "Today Mrs. PS, I cooked!" or "I was on fire!" as we giggle together. Humor helps to build strong relationships as well as bonds between teachers and students.

2.     The Contagion of Scream Talking

If you have ever been in an intermediate, middle school, or high school classroom recently you will notice that many students have lost the ability to “read the room” and if they want to say something to their friend who may even be four rows or tables over, they will stay put and yell what needs to be said from across the room. The remainder of the students are jolted out of concentration as they become passive bystanders to a scintillating conversation such as “Hey Bro, can you score me a pencil?” The reply is usually… “No Man!” With the climatic response in return… “B…R…U…H !!!!!”

Now everyone is lost and can’t remember what they were doing so why not… well check your cellphone. You may have missed some important social media updates or more importantly maintain your streaks because an algorithm cannot wait for downtime.

How to Tackle the Scream Talking Monster Fast-

·       Use social coaching to help students “Read the Room” to watch and see what is going on and to adjust to the environment. Ask students to start by “setting themselves up for success” by having the pencil they need and getting ready to learn before the instructions are even started.

3.     The Contagion of Learned Helplessness

Often students will say “I don’t get it” or “I can’t do this” as this then gives them permission to stop trying as they take a mental break. This is too hard so they shut down.

How to Tackle the Learned Helplessness Monster Fast-

·       Model a growth mindset by inserting the word “Yet” after every self-defeating comment. For example, “You don’t get it YET.” Now students do not have the opportunity to shut down because they are learning resilience. Also, when you set work up in short achievable chunks of learning, then they can pace their work without being overwhelmed. Finally, when teachers backwards chain, then they can start with the end in mind and show the final product of something by then breaking down the steps to get there.

Don’t Let Monstrous Behaviors Hijack Your Class and Your Love of Teaching

There is an opportunity you have to set yourself up for success this school year, by teaching soft skills to your class that will help them to be more focused learners, develop study skills, manage screen time digital overload, and also meet your core competencies for social and emotional learning.

One such way of skill building while creating targeted interventions is with the new program “Twenty” created by Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC (teacher and counsellor of over 20 years in Elementary as well as High School) who designed over 60+ modules supporting 20 indicators of healthy youth. Students are able to journey with six animated characters at “urschool” who struggle with similar issues of concentration or focus, social belonging, identity achievement, screen time overload, social relationships and more. Students are able to watch engaging videos of these characters and skill build by solving the characters’ challenges in particular social and emotional areas while also engaging in interactive quizzes and reflection exercises with ready-made materials all integrated into a learning management system with teachers utilizing their own free copy or as students have their own individual login accounts. Such a program has broad-reach, instant implementation, and affordable scalability.

For more information and to access your Free Teacher Copy visit: https://www.softskillstrainingcenter.com 

This site also includes school-wide or even district-wide infographic implementation plans for quick reference and use amongst educators.

Your Call To Action

Get your free Teacher Copy of “Twenty” and pass along this article to every teacher you know so they can keep their love of teaching in tact while setting their learners up for success!

About The Writer:

Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC is an educator of 20+ years with diverse experience in all levels of elementary, high school, and post secondary education as a teacher, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. With extensive experience in research and counselling, she understands the impact as well as sources of disengagement as well as chronic absenteeism on learners at all levels. She is also the creator of this new innovative program “Twenty” sponsored by Soft Skills Training Center and Patterson-Sterling Consulting and Counselling Services.