We made it to spring! Many of us are returning from spring break with the last chunk of the school year in sight. As most teachers know, tricky student behaviors can spike at this time of year. This can mean more talking, less focus, lower frustration tolerance and more social conflict. Maybe it’s spring fever, wanting to break free from the routines we’ve followed all school year (for more on that, check out my recent post on simplifying our teaching life). Maybe it’s being a step closer to summer freedom. The last few months of the school year can be hard because change is coming. The thought of new teachers and new classrooms can prompt student overwhelm. No matter the reason, it can help to consider simple adjustments for a calmer, more engaged spring classroom. 

Build agency instead of compliance

One of the biggest classroom management mistakes is focusing on rules and compliance. Agreements? Great! Cooperation and collaboration? Excellent. Respect? Yes, please. But compliance? Too low a bar. By the time we reach spring, our students have grown so much, even if their behaviors might suggest otherwise. It’s an ideal time, then, to focus on agency. 

Why give students more agency if their tricky behaviors are spiking, you ask? A more traditional approach often means attempting to control much of a student’s day. But this approach, especially without meaningful student choices, can backfire. The more we attempt a top-down approach, the more students may push back. It’s not disrespect, it’s surfacing a need — often for agency and independence. So lean into the new beginnings of spring and shake it up! 

Getting out of your routine and trying new things can be intrinsically motivating. This doesn’t mean abandoning boundaries and structure. Rather, focus on how novelty can spike interest, Some meaningful ways to build agency that can positively affect students behaviors:

• Spend time building connection and belonging, similar to the beginning of the year, but go deeper
• Incorporate more choice and voice in big and small ways
• Explicitly teach metacognitive skills, which will support self-management
• Lean into every opportunity to play, explore, and problem-solve!

Talk less! 

When students’ behaviors begin to impact classroom learning, we often talk to them about what’s not working and how to change it. This can be grounding and helpful, especially if it gives students a voice and revisits class agreements. However, we may accidentally be talking at our students way more than we should. Talking a lot is exhausting! It can also backfire with regard to behavior, especially in the spring. Finding ways to talk less can help students having trouble focusing and gives teachers a moment to step back — to observe, breathe, and take a moment to appreciate how far students have come. 

For some teachers, talking less could literally mean simplifying the way you’re speaking:

• Talk more slowly
• Shorten your message
• Use simple sentences (no long strings of subordinate clauses!)
• Repeat key messages (rather than restating or giving longer/further explanation).

For other teachers, it could mean finding ways to let the students take over a lot of the talking. If they’re going to be talking anyway, it might as well be about thinking and learning! This might include things like letting students become the experts through student-led projects. They could even create and run workshops for each other!  Basically, you should meaningfully adjust the balance of teacher-directed and student-led learning. 

Attend to your needs

We have all likely experienced a spring with students that felt overwhelming or unproductive — annoying, even! This means that along with student behaviors potentially being harder, we as teachers may more easily get activated. This can make student responses and behaviors even worse and is taxing for us. Therefore, it’s essential to attend to your own needs. Some of our basic needs, like drinking water, taking breaks and having time to use the restroom are certainly important. But we can also tend to ourselves in much more meaningful ways.

More and more teachers talk about wanting their students to have stronger self-regulation skills. Spot on! The first step toward helping our students regulate is making sure we ourselves are regulated. Conscious Discipline addresses the needs of teachers as a cornerstone of meeting the needs of students. Their Seven Powers for Conscious Adults include: 

• Offering compassion to others and ourselves
• Remembering we can only change ourselves
• Staying in the “higher centers of our brain so we can consciously respond instead of unconsciously react to life events.”  

This deeper approach to meeting our needs can help us pause in moments of frustration. It can help us not take students’ words or actions personally. It can help us be present and respond to tricky student behaviors in ways that are more connective and effective.

Ride the waves of spring

We can count on student behaviors going up and down all spring. Though this can wear on us and make teaching and learning harder, it’s also an opportunity to make changes. We could double down on more traditional classroom management approaches. Or we could try focusing on agency over compliance, talking less, and meaningfully taking care of our own needs. If we do, maybe we can learn to more easily ride these waves until June. Happy surfing!