On the Importance of Consequences

A myth predominates among administrators that teachers are just out to get “a pound of flesh.” If you’re not familiar with the adage, it means that teachers want administrators to punish students very harshly for small infractions to prevent further infractions. The fact of the matter is, successful classroom managers do not ever require a pound of anything. Successful classroom managers utilize meaningful, barely noticeable pinpricks as the harshest consequences necessary to regularly stymie the most commonly occurring, seemingly insignificant infractions. The best classroom managers snap fingers, tap desks, point silently, raise eyebrows, and use silly silent sign language they learned watching commando movies on television. No one ever notices these silent cues, and that’s the whole point. “Pounding” whether verbally or “flesh-ily”, is a useless way to manage a classroom. 

In years one through three of my career, I looked to punish BIG behaviors with BIG consequences. It was a very “Level 1: Screamer” view of classroom management. The idea was that most small, bad behaviors were pretty much ok, and then when something major wasn’t ok, you let loose with everything you had at your disposal, screaming, removal, write ups, calls home to parents, and ideally prison forever. Decapitation? If it’s on the menu. You can see why the above “pound of flesh” theory is stupid and useless. It’s used by teachers early in their careers, and terrible teachers late in their careers who have never learned the finer points of manipulating classroom management. The goal, of course, is never to become the teacher who proudly says “I’ve been doing this for twenty years and [insert huge consequence here] is the only thing that these kids understand!”
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I would actually argue that any statement prefaced by the number of years a person has been sharing it is inherently useless and self-consciously self-qualified. Don’t trust people who claim a number of years doing something as a justification for their own expertise. Meaningful learning develops expertise, not time spent doing a task with the steadfast mediocrity that marks most people’s lives and careers. Meaningful learning is continual and is never measured in the number of years doing the exact same thing, in exactly the same way. I digress.


In the middling years of my career, I achieved mediocre status. Mediocre teachers reach “Level 2: Talking” and notice middling levels of bad behavior and dole out middling consequences. Class still doesn’t run that smoothly, and consequences, because they’re of the middling level, still get noticed by administrators and parents, both squeaky links in the chain of classroom management command that are best left lubricated and unnoticed.
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You might recognize the comments made by middling classroom managers. “My fifth period is terrible, but no one is bad enough for a consequence.” “My homeroom doesn’t listen but there’s nothing to do to control a homeroom.” “I know that my second period is bullying Adriana but there is no way to tell who is doing it.” Students are experts at misbehaving in ways that are not quite middling. They are subtle and clever, despite being largely idiots, and so you must be exacting and precise enough to squash their subtlety and prove that you are cleverer on a microscopic level while they’re measuring using the inadequate rulers with which you provide them.


I don’t bother with middling anything anymore. I realized that it’s best to manage micro-behaviors that no one else bothers with (or pays enough attention) to notice. It is with the careful management of micro-behaviors and micro-consequences that I have moved myself towards the higher levels of classroom management. It is very important to note that if you are a lecture and notes kinda teacher, you will never have time to rise above level two of consequence ascension. You’re also doing far too much of the work. It’s much better to have your students do the work, and the learning, while you just watch for pinprick-sized micro infractions, and get pricking with that silent, but precisely-sharpened pin.