Defer to Students at All Times

Deferring to students at all times is really an easy segue. Students will never care about disappointing you as their teacher. That’s probably not accurate. Students might care about disappointing you as their teacher, but not enough to change their behavior in class; impressing their friends will always outrank impressing you. Some teachers look at this as a sad fact of life that makes students bad. Smart teachers use this to their benefit to help avoid explosions and arguments.

If you walk through a school, you’ll notice that Level 1 Screamers always refer to themselves as the emphasis of their classroom management. “I have a master’s degree and I deserve more respect!” “I work hard to achieve my best possible self and you should be more like me!” “You’re all disappointing because I expected you to be better!” “This isn’t what I taught you!” “You should know the rules because I know I shared them with you throughout September!” Notice the prominent, italicized “I” in all these false but illustrative statements.
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These students created what I believe they called "the triangle of feet?" All three finished their work that day. To an adult, working with your feet attached to other people's feet is absurd, and could easily cause you to explode on students. As a middle-school student, working while your feet are touching other people's feet represents the single, most important thing to a middle-school student: being accepted.

Two of my SUPER cool girls, with nothing to worry about in terms of being accepted as awesome, who volunteered to wear my helmet for this post, still feel genuinely embarrassed by the experience. Such is the power of acceptance in a middle school classroom. Building a culture capable of deferring to students is paramount.

​Students don’t care about you, and will explode all over you and argue with every word that comes out of your mouth if you establish classroom management as a you versus them battle. 

​Students DO care about each other. They are intensely aware of how they’re perceived among their peers, and can hear a whisper of gossip across a noisy auditorium. Smart teachers, then, create an atmosphere in their classroom where students are the most important element of the classroom management equation, and the rules are not enforced for the teacher by the teacher against the students. Rules are enforced for the students, and eventually, largely by the students.

This requires a few careful moves to achieve. As a teacher, you have to defer to students at all times. Make it clear that the rules are for students. You’re not assigning an arbitrary detention to one student, you’re helping 17 other students learn better by creating the perfect classroom atmosphere for students to learn. Take a look at the following chart to clarify how Level 1 Screamers can simply modify how they word their reminders to maximal (though entirely unproven) effect.
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Bad Teacher, Selfish Statements of Classroom Management Failure:

Good-Teacher, Selfless Statements of Classroom Management Success

 “I have a master’s degree and I deserve more respect!

Your behavior is disrespectful to your classmates. They deserve your respect.

 “I work hard to achieve my best possible self and you should be more like me!

Your classmates are working hard to make themselves better. Notice how hard they work, and see if you can pick up a few tips from them.

“You’re all disappointing because I expected you to be better!

You guys worked so hard and learned so much in November. In December, you’ve really lost your focus. Let’s work together to get back to the expectations you enforced in November.

“This isn’t what I taught you!

How can you help your classmates learn?

“You should know the rules because I know I shared them with you throughout September!

All your classmates are modeling perfect adherence to the rules. If you are confused, just look to them for help. They’d love to help you back on track to success.

It seems simple, but again, when you make statements like the ones on the right, kids are just more likely to follow them. I’ve heard stories from teachers about “horrible” students screaming “I don’t care about your stupid rules” and storming out of classrooms. I’ve never heard a story about a student screaming “I don’t care about my stupid classmates, I’ll happily destroy their chances for success!” Such a statement would be a recipe for remaining single and friendless for all of high school. No one wants to be single and friendless for all of high school. Furthermore, single and friendless forever is a way worse consequence than any teacher can ever hope to enforce.

Without exception, kids will be like "who are you to pretend to care about me?" It's only by deferring to kids constantly, with every decision you make in your classroom, that you'll convince them that you're genuinely on their side. Ironically, those statements will simultaneously make them more likely to adhere to your requests and rules, because they will establish mutual respect.