4 Characteristics of Outstanding ‘Warm Demander’ Teachers

More than a decade ago, on the first day of school, the parent of an incoming kindergartner named Luke told Principal Jessica Cabeen that her child would probably never graduate. 

Born into a family of fifth-generation Minnesota farmers, the 5-year-old wanted to work on the farm with his dad and “was adamant that he wasn’t going to attend school.”

Undaunted, Cabeen placed Luke in the Red Frog kindergarten classroom, telling the teacher, “Heads-up, this kid’s coming in, and he wants to be in the fields, not in your classroom.” Immediately, Luke’s new teacher—also from a family of farmers—found creative ways to connect his learning to his passion for agriculture. To Luke’s surprise, she held the academic bar high, expressed interest in his life, and slowly managed to change his mind about school.

In June of this year, Principal Cabeen traveled across town to attend Luke’s high school graduation celebration at his family’s farm, where he proudly showed off a tractor he’d reconstructed from the ground up, along with years of farming-related awards and accolades. “In the classroom, you get maybe 1 percent of how amazing that kid is, but spend five minutes asking him about tractors, and you get this whole bigger picture—and then you want this kid to be successful,” Cabeen says. “That’s where really getting to know your students pays off in the long run.” 

The warm demander approach to education—exemplified by Luke’s first teacher—is characterized by consistency, compassion, and high expectations for every child. Warm demanders “care enough to relentlessly insist on two things: that students treat the teacher and one another respectfully and that they complete the academic tasks necessary for successful futures,” write researchers Elizabeth Bondy and Dorene Ross in a seminal article about the technique. 

The disposition isn’t about being a kindhearted pushover. Instead, it’s about the subtle alchemy that occurs “when students feel teachers care about them,” write the authors of a 2022 study, which in turn motivates kids to “work harder, engage in more challenging academic activities, behave more appropriately for the school environment… and meet or exceed their teacher’s expectations.” Paradoxically, it’s the caring part that opens the door for greater rigor.

1. The Right Kind of ‘Demanding’

Formulating an early blueprint of the approach, the MacArthur Award–winning education scholar and author Lisa Delpit describes warm demanders in her 2006 book, Other People’s Children, as teachers who “expect a great deal of their students, convince them of their own brilliance, and help them to reach their potential in a disciplined and structured environment.”

While the “demander” part may sound rooted in strictness, becoming a warm demander in the classroom isn’t about compliance, insists school administrator Jessica Wei Huang. 

“It’s a common misunderstanding that demandingness is the same as strictness,” writes Wei Huang. Instead, it’s less about “controlling and demanding outcomes” and more about seeing “young people as whole human beings with desires, agency, and critical thinking.” The demanding aspect is closely aligned with the core belief by educators that “every student can grow to be the best version of themselves.”

Making the work challenging and insisting on high standards is ultimately a show of respect for the student, writes veteran educator and school leader Matt Alexander. Warm demanders set a tone of seriousness and mutual esteem in the classroom, asking students to “demonstrate self-discipline—not because they seek compliance but because high standards communicate respect,” Alexander writes. 

2. Getting to Consistency

Consistency is a critical part of a warm demander’s effectiveness—and this can be tricky for teachers who, like students, are juggling a range of responsibilities and challenges, in both their professional and personal lives. Still, setting and steadfastly enforcing classroom rules and standards is a key part of what makes the approach work.

“Consistency is one thing that, as educators, we’re not great with, especially if we’re stressed,” says Cabeen. “Maybe some days the kids can talk before the morning meeting, but other days they can’t. And if they don’t know how to read your cues to understand that today is not a day to goof around, it’s really unfair to them and can damage that relationship.” 

Keeping rules clear and focused helps build a sense of consistency and trust, says Rebecca Alber, a teacher trainer at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. “Rules have consequences, and routines have reminders. What worked for me was far fewer rules and many, many more routines and procedures.” 

Once a rule is established, stick with it. “Students will expect a warning, a second warning, and then a consequence.” If being on time and in their seats ready to work is one of your classroom rules and a student walks in three minutes late, for example, “we can’t say, ‘I reminded you yesterday about being tardy.’ We have to say, ‘This is a warning, and a consequence will follow.’ And then a consequence has to follow if they walk in late two days later,” says Alber.

This consistency holds true for academic standards as well. In Stephany Neptune’s third-grade classroom at Success Academy, communicating high expectations and holding kids accountable means using every opportunity to reinforce and model expectations. Even for everyday classroom tasks like essay outlines, Neptune insists that students get the details right. “A lot of people might think: ‘Oh, they’re 8, it’s OK if they didn’t use a capital letter.’ We tend to think that’s not a big deal,” she says. “But that’s not correct grammar, and I don’t back off because that’s not helping the scholar. When you’re insistent and consistent, that is holding them accountable. And yes, it takes time and patience, but they will get there.” 

3. A Touch of Empathy

After one of her high school students began accumulating first-period tardies, Cabeen set up a meeting with his mom. The parent, who needed an interpreter to communicate with the principal, was upset. This new habit was out of character for her son. 

After some discussion, Cabeen discovered that the student was relying on an older brother for the drive to school each day, but the brother worked a night shift and often overslept. “I think the teacher felt that he just didn’t like her class, just didn’t want to be there,” Cabeen recalls. “But no, he’s actually trying to wake his brother up to get here.” Finding out what was going on behind the scenes helped “shift that assumption of why we think kids are doing what they’re doing” and allowed Cabeen and the teacher to identify a proactive solution. 

Similarly, the researchers Bondy and Ross note that highly effective warm demanders don’t jump to conclusions when students misbehave or miss the mark, but instead get curious and seek to learn more. “Warm demanders reach out to students for help in understanding behavior problems, which many well-intentioned teachers neglect to do,” the researchers write. Especially when students and teachers are from different racial or cultural backgrounds, Wei Huang notes, warm demanders strive to understand “the cultural nuances of teacher-student relationships,” so they can adjust the “pedagogical and relational approaches to create an environment where students are comfortable and relaxed enough to learn”— without sacrificing academic standards.

We’re wired to make snap judgments about people, and teachers are no exception, but knee-jerk reactions can be wrong. When University of Aberdeen researcher Jackie Ravet asked a group of disengaged students why they were disengaged, they told Ravet they were bored by the lessons. Asked a similar question, the kids’ teachers “blamed perceived deficits in students’ attitude, ability, personality, and family background,” note Bondy and Ross. If the educators had asked and listened to the students, “they would have gained insight into how to intervene” and keep everyone moving forward academically.

4. Celebrating Wins

Last year, faced with underwhelming attendance and credit attainment at the Austin, Minnesota, alternative education school she leads, Cabeen decided that one part of her improvement plan would include what she calls “micro and macro celebrations” when students met goals. “We don’t stop to celebrate our wins enough,” she says, and that’s a mistake, especially when it comes to kids in the classroom. Consistently acknowledging student achievement—the end product of hard work—is essential to the warm demander’s practice. These often-overlooked  rituals are a chance to revel in a successful outcome, and they inevitably deepen the student’s motivation to succeed again.

As attendance and credit metrics slowly ticked upward, Cabeen and her staff followed through, celebrating successes with small hurrahs in the classroom or, for the big wins, trips to amusement parks or lunch at local restaurants. “You would think: Does a 17-year-old want to go to an amusement park, or out to lunch with peers? Yes, they absolutely do,” she says. “Did we scaffold that, because a number of our students had never actually gone to sit down in a restaurant? Yes. And it was amazing.” 

Pausing to celebrate and genuinely recognize student successes helps kids look back and recognize how much progress they’ve made, building confidence that they can tackle hard work again. Without a pause and a cheer, says Cabeen, “you may throw everything out and quickly move on to the next thing—and we can’t just keep trying the next thing in education, because that’s exhausting to teachers and kids.”