Managing Your Class Without Collective Punishment

Silent lunches, bathroom lockdowns, and making a line walk back to try again are some of the things I’ve seen in schools as adults attempt to establish order. It’s highly likely that if you’ve worked at a school, raised children, or babysat, you too have wandered your way into trying collective punishment. I certainly have.

I’m not proud of it, and it was ineffective, but I did it. Yes, I had the classes make community agreements in the beginning of the year, held restorative conversations, and worked diligently to build clear structures that would support student success, but I also made mistakes and lost my temper. It’s what happens when we are tired, fed up with repeating directions, or not achieving the outcomes we had planned.

While there is a mountain of data on the ineffectiveness of collective punishment and a myriad of articles on how to ensure that you’re leading a classroom with positivity and structure, it is still quite possible that, at some point, you will fall victim to this decision.

However, there is a moment right after you’ve just done the thing you know not to do that you have an opportunity—a gift born from this very mistake: an opportunity to reset and, in front of children, make a change. You have a chance to model for them what it looks like to recognize that you’ve made a mistake, address it, and move forward. After all, school should be a place where we can all make mistakes and be secure in the knowledge that we’re always working toward the version of ourselves that we aspire to be.

To do this, we must push ourselves to understand that we’re not walking an action back, we’re walking ourselves forward. Here’s how you can be the educator you want to be while showing compassion for yourself.

When You Notice The Disruption Occurring

Before you move to enacting collective punishment, there is likely an opportunity to address the disruption before it gets out of hand. You can lean on your classroom expectation system and leverage your relationships with students. You can also use your body as a proximity influencer, getting closer to the student who is on the verge of causing a disruption and getting on their level to check in with them. You can also reach out to other staff in your building for support if you know another adult may be better able to help the particular student in the moment.

When You Feel Your Patience Waning

Stop, breathe, survey, and question. What is the expectation not being met? Who is not meeting it? Is it impacting the group, or is it impacting your perception of how the students and you are doing? Look around; if the behavior is impacting how you feel and not how things actually are, then you can choose to address the individual who is breaking the norm immediately or later. You can choose to attend to all the children doing the expected activity at the moment, not using a collective punishment on the entire class.

Stick to your school’s PBIS or core values. If your organization has a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) system, this is a good time to use it on the students who are doing the right thing. You can provide calm reminders and positive reinforcement to all the students meeting expectations and tie it to specific praise. If your school has shared values, you can name those and connect them to individual behaviors. In this manner, you focus on all the positive actions that are occurring in the space and give no air time to the limited negative ones.

Interrupt the behavior by switching the activity. Depending on the context and level of disruption, you can change the activity without publicly shaming a child or letting the kids know that “we have to stop because Sam isn’t following directions.” A change of activity is a simple way to interrupt individual behaviors—you can just move on to the next activity.

When You’ve Wandered Into The Threat Of Collective Punishment

Breathe and stop. If you’ve just heard yourself give a whole class punishment, pause and recognize that you’ve made an error. You’ve acted in a way that you wish you hadn’t and that doesn’t align with best practices. You collectively punished a group of students when it wasn’t the entire group’s fault. Be easy on yourself, breathe, and stop the action immediately. Whether you’ve threatened to hold the class late or to remove their recess, you can choose to change course.

If you are already in the midst of the unreasonable consequence, you can choose to end it—stop forcing the line to walk back or take the “silent timer” off the screen.

Name it and discuss. Model your decision-making like a read-aloud or think-aloud. Tell the people in front of you that you’ve made a mistake. “Everyone, I’m sorry. I was frustrated and made the wrong choice. I shouldn’t make you all experience a consequence when only one or two people aren’t meeting expectations. That’s on me.”

Being able to stop a poorly thought-through decision that you’re already making is a huge growth point for students—ask any middle school teacher. By showing students that you can do this, you demonstrate how it’s never too late to choose the right path. This act of honesty and vulnerability will help build trust with your students who will see that their teacher is a person just like they are.

Make an adjustment and announce it. Next, explain what you’re going to do instead and make the adjustment. If possible, address the individuals who haven’t met expectations individually and separately from the class. Even if it’s not immediate, ensure that you do it as soon as you can. Show students that you’re not looking to shame anyone, even those who don’t meet your expectations. Then, move forward with the activity you planned.

Clear, strong structures are important when building the school communities that we want for our students, but they are not as meaningful without trust and relationships. For any of us to truly build trust with each other, we must be vulnerable and honest. There is nothing more honest than a teacher who stands in front of their class, shares that they have made a mistake, changes course, and continues to work to be the person they aspire to be.