I wrote an article a while back where I discussed things going wrong in the classroom. A few people, rightly, challenged me to say what I believed a teacher who has lost control (or has never had it in the first place) might do to gain it. In the next couple of articles, I want to try and address that question, from my own humble experience.

I’d like to start by discussing something that has been at the heart of my own classroom management since I was a newly qualified teacher: assertiveness.

Children love routine. They love consistency. In the rules that are enforced but even more so in the manner in which they are enforced. When things are going wrong, it’s so easy to resort to more human instincts. Fight: shouting at fever pitch with little control, or firing through a sanction system uncontrollably. Or flight: sending a student out, or in extreme cases, running out yourself. These things are often kneejerk reactions, usually out of frustration that a particular student or set of students won’t behave. Used sparingly, some can provide the “shock and awe” that has fallen out of fashion, but whose theatre has been the ace in the pack of many a classroom veteran (I’m not talking about running out of the room).

Confront and challenge behaviour

Assertiveness is a measured and clinical response to fight or flight. In its most simple form, it is where a teacher uses a set of skills to confront students and challenge them strongly to change their behaviour. In a truly assertive approach, student behaviour is dealt with by teacher’s skills, not by a system. A whole-school sanction system is the Alamo, the last resort, not the natural go-to every time there’s a behaviour issue. Assertiveness and the skill set behind it should form the buffer before any sanctions are used. As teaching experience is gained, the “assertive zone” should get bigger and bigger while the “sanction zone” shrinks. In some cases, it might vanish completely.

But you need both to start with. And that’s the mistake that many new teachers make, either relying solely on a system of warnings to manage behaviour or relying solely on building relationships and refusing to touch the warning system at all. Both are crucial and to get a good balance is a challenging task for even a seasoned pro.

What does assertiveness look like?

So, we know what a warning system is (first warning; second warning - detention; third warning - referral and after-school detention; fourth warning - the senior leadership team is called in and so on). But what exactly is assertiveness?

Let’s take an example: a student in class misbehaves. Assertiveness is about dealing with that misbehaviour with a set of practised skills and executing it with a fierce consistency for all students. It might be something along these lines, which is taken from Paul Ginnis’ book, The Teachers Toolkit.

1. First, take an assertive stance - stand upright, make eye contact (although don’t insist they do the same) and face the class or individual. Don’t invade the student’s space, don’t look mad, don’t threaten. Show that you are in total control of your emotions.
2. State the change - start with the phrase “I want…” Be specific about what you are trying to achieve, don’t generalise and avoid starting sentences with the word “you”.
3. Repeat and strengthen the change - say it again, calmly and firmly, if you don’t achieve your goal after the first time of asking. Keep it factual and avoid sarcasm.
4. Listen to students - hear what they have to say and then restate the change again, like a broken record.
5. Confront them with a choice - if you get to this point, then offer the student, calmly, the choice to do what you have asked. If they are still refusing, it’s on to the sanctions.

Developing relationships

This technique shouldn’t, in my view, be applied as a rigid set of rules of engagement but rather a general approach. In saying that, I personally worked tirelessly with students in this way, and it paid dividends in the long term. In fact, by committing to assertiveness in my interactions, I developed the kind of relationships with the students that allowed me to be much more flexible in my approach; to inject much more humour into my classroom management. But we are talking about months, maybe even years before I felt confident enough to do that. I had to go through a lot of pain to get there.

The temptation is to blast into warnings straight away when things aren’t working and behaviour isn’t changing. Of course, this isn’t a disaster but, again, this is about long-term thinking.

A lot of educationalists talk about relationships with students being the key to successful classroom management. But to build any kind of relationship, you need respect: the students need to know where the buck stops in the classroom but also that the custodian of the rules is fair, firm and fiercely committed to upholding them.

Once this is sorted, the relationships that can make teaching such a joy will follow.

Thomas Rogers is a teacher who runs rogershistory.com and tweets at @RogersHistory

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook