Student Engagement as an Aspect of Classroom Management

I like to think of management and engagement as a relationship. I need classroom management to effectively engage a room full of kids. But I need to effectively engage the room to efficiently manage the class. If all I care about is engagement, with little to no regard for management, things fall apart. On the other hand, if all I care about is order, I get a compliant classroom of on-task but not necessarily engaged students.

In my experience, I see teachers struggle far more with the latter. It’s not easy to let go of control. However, letting go gives room for independence of thought and creativity. Phillip Schlechty documents this as moving away from authentic engagement toward ritual engagement and passive compliance.

Expectations are not set and met in a vacuum. Rather, the best classroom management affirms a committed relationship with intellectual engagement. When these not-so-strange bedfellows understand their codependent natures, we can demand more from students. Here’s how.

Frame a new understanding of classroom management

As Harry Wong says, “Classroom management is NOT discipline.” Effectively managing a classroom is not just about rules and expectations, but also about organization and systems. Additionally, classroom management includes motivating students: When kids are not engaged, boredom happens. And boredom can lead to off-task behaviors like distraction, disruption… sometimes, disrespect.

In this regard, systems do not just apply to how students enter the room and get seated or how materials are distributed. Systems also apply to learning activities—like student discourse, group work, gallery walks, stations, etc.

When rules and expectations are overemphasized, classrooms become less engaged and more compliant. When I first started teaching, my class rules looked like the Ten Commandments. Today, my expectations are clear and concise: respect the class as a community and be on task with technology. On day one, we discuss what respect as a community (including the use of profanity) and on-task technology does and does not look like. I also task the students with creating expectations for me. These community understandings create a shared starting point for the intellectual walls we will scale together.

norm learning structures

Experienced teachers spend the first week or two of school laying the foundation of a structure. Students rehearse all of the rules and expectations until behaviors are normed. Classroom expectations, hallway expectations, fire drills, lockers, and so on. Why? Because systems create the organization needed to effectively meet learning goals. Systems also free up processing space.

Why is it that we easily understand how to norm systems for behavior, but we don’t apply the same logic to norming learning structures? Over the years, I have spoken to countless teachers who share stories of frustration about complex activities that fall apart. Sometimes, I’ve even heard a teacher or two say, “The kids aren’t ready for that” or “The kids can’t handle that.” My default response has become, “Did you teach and norm the activity?”

I teach, rehearse, and norm every learning structure before fully employing it in a lesson. I don’t take for granted that students understand my expectations for activities, even something as simple as a turn-and-talk. I expect that on my prompt for a turn-and-talk, students will do the following:

• Engage through discourse
• Stay on the topic
• Expect me to listen in
• Wrap up on my countdown
• Be prepared to share out after—sometimes through a warm call, other times from a cold call

Now, for me to teach and norm my expectations, three things need to be true: I must know and understand what I expect, so I know what to look for, and I must know how to provide feedback that will allow students to understand and meet my expectations. Sometimes, we not only expect students to do the thing we are telling them to do without showing them how to do it, but don’t take the time to fully flesh out what exactly we expect and why. I know what a turn-and-talk should look like in my class. I set the expectation, and then we practice to get it right.

Candy before vegetables

I always practice a new structure with low-stakes topics of student interest. I call this approach candy before vegetables. For instance, even before teaching the structure of a Socratic seminar, I norm expectations around student discourse using sentence stems. If I want to get students comfortable with sharing out and disagreeing with one another, we practice with Stranger Things, Squid Games, Bad Bunny, Blackpink, school lunch, or whatever else I have noticed the class is interested in.

I provide the class with sentence stems that prompt each student to agree while thinking about nuances and layers or disagree with evidence and reasoning. Ultimately, I want students to synthesize the previous lessons and engage in thoughtful discourse on whether systems or the actions of an individual play a greater role in affecting life outcomes. I cannot risk the discussion either falling flat or not digging deep enough.

Enter Bad Bunny.

In my class of Black and Hispanic students—some sports fans, some music fans—it only made sense to talk about Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl. Target your students’ interests—this relevance mitigates the behaviors that spring up because of boredom or inauthentic assignments.

“Should Bad Bunny have headlined the Super Bowl halftime show? Why or why not?”

As students discuss, I assess.

Are all students talking? If not, set the expectation in a low-stakes environment. Are all students actively listening? I give feedback and prompt synthesis of student points and perspectives. Are students responding thoughtfully using the sentence stems I have provided them?

The key throughout this exercise is practice and norming. It’s OK if we don’t get it right the first time because the focus is figuring out a learning structure, not rules. As such, my feedback throughout is critical in setting the bar and naming what success looks like for the heavier content I can’t wait to unbox with the class.

Once we start to get it right, we can move on to the heavy lifting. Now I don’t have to worry about the learning structure itself breaking down. We’ve freed up student processing power and we can focus on content. Fast-forward a month later: When we discuss whether Americans should face jail time for drug addiction, kids are adamantly disagreeing with one another without the need for sentence stems. The discussion spills into the hallway with little respect for the bell that normally brings class to a close. If you find that an activity breaks down, don’t be afraid to revisit it. Managing the class includes norming instruction just like you norm expectations for student behavior.