How to Regain Control Mid-Year: Resetting Your Classroom Management [Episode 217]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
So January is always an interesting time because some of you are starting fresh with brand new students. Personally, this is my favorite thing about a semester block schedule. I absolutely love getting to basically squeeze in two years in one by getting to start over mid year with new students. But based on my conversations in my inboxes, it sounds like most of you are with the same group of students you’ve had for the last four or five months. Whether you’re on a traditional schedule or an AB all year schedule, you’re with the same people and things have gotten maybe a little too familiar. Lines have been blurred, boundaries have been crossed, expectations have been forgotten, and you just, you don’t feel like you can fully start over and start completely fresh all over again because you have history with these students. So how do you hit the proverbial factory reset button on your classroom management to reset expectations and regain control in a new way mid year? That is what today’s episode is all about. Let’s dive in.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:13]:
This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about how helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. So first I have to say this, and I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably say it again on this podcast as long as this podcast exists. And it’s that you can in fact hit the reset button mid year. I know a lot of us can feel really defeated, like a class is too far gone or we formed too bad of habits or I can’t just totally upend how I run my classroom mid year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:11]:
But the truth is no group is ever too far gone and you can always start over and totally train your students in new procedures and new ways of doing things. Yes, it will be harder if you are starting with a group that you’ve had before versus if you’re starting totally fresh at the beginning of the school year with a brand new group. But at any point you can decide to reset. Okay, this, this kind of thought process was critical for me when I had newborns. Maybe you’re listening and you have a newborn right now. And I remember clinging to the concept of new morning mercies and every morning. Once it hit like 4:35 o’, clock, I finally felt like I’d made it through the night. Like it was officially a new day.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:59]:
Thus I could put the coffee pot on and I could. I just had this fresh sense of energy even if I had not slept all night with that baby, knowing that, like, new morning mercies were available to me. And I never will forget texting a friend and saying, like, I made it through another night. Like, God is good. His mercies are new every morning. And she said, you know what? His mercies are new all the time. And I remember her texting me at like 1pm and being like, his mercies are new right now. You can press restart right now.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:30]:
So that is a very micro example, very personal. I know not everyone listening can relate to that. If you’ve never had a newborn or obviously if you don’t share the same, you know, religious background or faith that I do. And that’s totally fine. All are welcome here. But I tell you that little story just to let you know, like, it is a mental thing. We have to get over that, like, fresh starts are only January 1st or August 1st, or at the beginning of a new day. A fresh start can be at any point that you want to stop and say, we’re doing things differently now.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:03]:
Of course, it is harder if you’ve already got these kind of bad habits, like I said, blurred some lines and kind of been lax on some things. So today I’m going to tell you the four things you need to do to hit that proverbial factory reset button on your classroom. Okay? First, you need to assess what needs to change, and you need to get very clear with yourself before you’re even talking to your students about it, about what needs to change. You need to do an audit of your classroom management and the procedures you have or do not have. Okay, I’ve said this also a gajillion times on this podcast, and I’ll say it again. I believe that individual behavior issues are best managed on a relational level with students one on one. And I believe whole class behavior issues are best managed on a procedural level. So oftentimes, if you have a classroom management problem, it’s most likely comes down to something relational or something procedural.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:03]:
Now, I can’t get into the nitty gritty of the relational stuff today, but I do want to touch on this procedural aspect because this is really important. I want you to make a list of everything in your classroom that feels hard when it comes to classroom management, or things that feel chaotic, things that feel like time wasters. Like places where you’re like, oh, we, like, lose so much time doing this or doing that or whatever. And I want you to write all of those pain points down. And then next to each of those, you need to write a procedure for each one to kind of combat that pain point. You need to come up with a procedure or a routine or a system that you can then train your students in so that some of these things become automated and more efficient and you’re not wasting time, you know, dragging your feet on them or wasting your breath re explaining the same thing over and over again. But this all starts with you as the teacher going first and assessing and auditing what needs to change. You need to make all of those decisions on the front end.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:05]:
And maybe if you write down, like, 50 things and you’re super overwhelmed, then, okay, we’re gonna pick, like, the four biggies, and that’s where we’re gonna start. Like, what our procedure is when we come into the classroom. Cause you’re so annoyed with having to always raise your voice to get everyone to sit down and start working. Or maybe you’re so annoyed with your test days and how you waste 10 minutes getting everyone settled and starting their test. And then students complain they can’t finish their test on time. Or maybe it’s the bathroom procedure, makes you want to poke your eyeballs out, or your cell phone policy, or I don’t know what it is, but you’re going to pick just a few things from your list that you’re going to download and start there if you don’t want to do, like, a massive overhaul of all the things. So pick the major pain points. If you need help with this, I highly recommend my culture mini course.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:50]:
It’s a virtual professional development course. It’s the third unit in my full secondary science simplified PD bundle. I’ll link it in the show notes. Okay, but that’s what we’re doing. First. We are getting really clear with ourselves as to what the pain points are, what the problems are, and we’re writing down the solutions. We’re writing down the plan for combating each of these things. The second thing you’re going to do is we’re going to have a come to Jesus talk or just a hard reset.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:18]:
Okay? And this is where, call it a powwow, call it, you know, a faculty meeting with your students, whatever you want to call it, but this is where we sit down with our students and we get very open and honest and just direct with them, and we Say the what, the why and the how. We say, hey, here is the deal. State of the Union. That’s another way to say it if you don’t like the other ways I phrase this. Okay, we’re going to have a State of the Union address. Here’s the problem. I’m not going to make it through the year if our class keeps running the way it is. And you guys don’t want me.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:50]:
I know you don’t want me to be raising my voice and freaking out and losing my temper with you or being impatient or whatever. Like, no one is happy in this situation. So this is the. The lay of the land. And here’s why we have to change it, because I want to make sure we end on a high note. We have a great end of the year. We get you prepped for this AP exam, whatever. Whatever your why is.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:11]:
Explain it and then say, okay, here’s how we’re going to do it so that the expectations are super clear. Like, we’re all gonna put our hands in and stack. Hands on. Like, I’m letting you know, like, from here on out, here is a new precedent that I am setting. So you have to have that conversation with them. You can’t just, like, all of a sudden just, like, throw up some posters on your wall and be like, we’re changing things, and then just expect them to understand. I think it’s really clear that, like, this is your factory. Reset is coming to them and telling them we’re doing this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:43]:
Like, when you walk in tomorrow, maybe you’re using the last 10 minutes of class and saying, hey, on a Friday, and you’re saying, hey, when y’ all come in on Monday? I’m just letting you know I’m gonna be treating it like it’s the first day of school. I’m not going over a syllabus, but I’m gonna retrain you in all of these things. We’re gonna slow down so that then we can speed up the rest of the school year and just have a smooth end of our year together. Okay? So one, you on your own are assessing what needs to change, identifying the problems, articulating the solution so you are ready for that. Second, you’re having your State of the Union address, your come to Jesus talk, your hard press of the reset button with your students so you’re all on the same page. Third, and this happens at that come to Jesus talk, but it also happens on a daily basis, is you are now very responsible for clearly communicating your expectations to them. And you can do This a lot of ways, obviously we’re going to be doing this orally. I also recommend maybe making some signage, like putting a sign by the pencil sharpener with that procedure, or putting a sign by the door for where they’re going to check out for the bathroom, or putting a sign by the cabinets where the lab equipment is to refresh them on like what the procedure is going to be for cleaning up labs and things like that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:57]:
Putting a sign on your door or outside your door on test day of like, here’s the expectation and then really drilling it into them. You can also, I’ve before given my students a printout of procedures, like a literal one pager of like, if this happens, then this is the expectation. Or if you need this, then you do this. Like, truly I have done that before. And then also, like I said again orally, we’re going to repeat things over and over. I highly recommend also even writing down some refrains, like some things that you will say the same way over and over so they can really start to memorize that phrase. Phrasing. For instance, when students just complained in my class, okay, I didn’t write a procedure for this, but anytime I just heard complaints, I’d be like, ooh, sounds like a personal problem.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:45]:
And sometimes if I wanna be more positive, I’d say, ooh, sounds like a personal problem, but you’re a problem solver. Or if I wanted to be even more helpful, ooh, sounds like a personal problem, but you’re a problem solver. Let me know if you need help with the solution, okay? So you can kind of, you know, choose your fighter there in terms of like, how kind versus sassy you want to be with your students. But I had refrains like that. So then it got to the point that I said them so often that if anyone complained in my class, someone else would say, ooh, sounds like a personal problem. Like people would just speak it for me, okay? We want them to be so ingrained in their head, cuz we’re communicating it so clearly. And that leads me to the fourth thing you’re going to do. Not only are you clearly communicating, you’re also consistently reinforcing.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:28]:
This is the most important part of this factory reset on your classroom management being successful. It’s that you hold the line. You, the teacher, have to be committed here. I think I’ve made this connection to potty training on the podcast before, but I have to bring it up again. I read so much potty training literature before I potty trained my oldest. This was Back I potty trained him when the pandemic started in March 2020, because that was back when we thought like, oh, we’ll be home for two weeks. So I was like, oh, I’ll use this time that he’s home to potty train him. I read all these books, started it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:06]:
Then we know where we were home for forever and everything was changed. But I read so much potty training literature and I’ve now potty trained three children successfully. And the one thing I tell anyone who’s about to potty train their child and I got from several books is like, I don’t even worry about, like child readiness signals. I think any child can learn to be potty trained as long as you, the parent, are committed to teaching them to be potty trained. Because I truly believe, like 90% of the potty training battle is like mental warfare with your child. And like you needing the mental fortitude to push through the constant repetition, the constant cleaning of soil, clothes, the constant cleaning of dirty things on your ground, the constant spring of a car seat or pulling over on the side of the road when they tell you they have to go potty. Like, you are the one that has to be committed to your child learning this. And I use the same methodology with all three of my kids that I potty trained.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:07]:
One child took about two weeks of it and then it was very like a gradual thing. One child, it was overnight, literally 24 hours, got it. The other child showed absolutely zero progress for a full week. No progress. It was like nothing was being absorbed. Woke up day eight, never had an accident again. And this is several years later. Like, so funny how they all responded differently.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:33]:
But I say all this to say the reason all of them, I believe, were successful in potty training was because I, I held the line and I was committed to the bit. You in your classroom with, whatever you decided to do, classroom management wise, you need to commit to the bit. You have to decide that this matters enough for you to uphold it. It’s so easy, day three, day four of potty training, to get tired and just want to give up and put a pull up on them, or to say, we’ll do this next year, just like it’s going to be so easy for you. Week three, week four to start kind of letting the line go slack again, letting the lines be blurred again, letting the boundaries be crossed again. And then in another month, you’re back to where you are right now. You’re frustrated, you’re exhausted, and you’re just counting down to the end of school, you have to hold the line and consistently reinforce again. I think it means slowing down and reteaching these things over and over and clearly communicating it, but that is how you’re going to have progress here.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:36]:
Now, if you’re like, I need really practical tools for classroom management. I need hacks, I need to know what methods you’re using, how are you punishing, rewarding, whatever. I have done so many podcast episodes about classroom management. I’m very passionate about classroom management. I think I have almost 20 episodes on it. And so I’m going to link in the show notes or you can find it by typing it in, but it’s bit ly ssspodcast episodes. And I made a spreadsheet earlier this year and I updated at the end of every month, but it has all these different tabs and I organize all of the secondary sciencelimified podcast episodes on these tabs. So there’s like a beginning of the year tab and an end of the year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:25]:
There’s a pep talk tab. There’s teaching, practice, grading, lesson planning, classroom management, work, life balance, student apathy, like all these different categories so that you can really, really easily access anything I’ve ever said about this topic. And so I’m going to link that spreadsheet for you and I want you to find the classroom management tab and look at the 20 episodes I’ve done on this. I even bold the ones that are the most popular. So that way you can kind of be like, oh, that’s one that like, a lot of people listen to. That must be a good one to kind of help you get started. But that’s going to give you so many practical things here. Okay.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:00]:
And that’s my take home challenge for you. Obviously, I want you to do these four things, assess what needs to change, come to Jesus, talk with your students, clearly communicate expectations and consistently reinforce those expectations. But also if you’re like, but I need the tips, then take the culture course for sure. But also just go to that spreadsheet and maybe listen to some more episodes that have some more specifics to help you. Because I don’t want to keep, like, rehashing the same thing. For those of you that are my writer listeners who’ve listened to like every single episode. Okay? But I hope sincerely that this has helped you and you can find that link plus all the others, as always, at it’s not rocketscienceclassroom.com Episode 217 because that’s the episode we’re on, which is crazy. And if you have yet to leave a rating or review for the podcast.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:48]:
Whether it’s on Apple or Spotify. Wherever you’re listening, I would love it if you leave a five star review, rating and review. Especially if you’ve listened to this episode and you’re ready to do like a mid year reset for your classroom management. Then please leave a review for the podcast. It would mean so much. All right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com challenge to grab your class Classroom Reset Challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:23]:
Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.