Classroom Management Tips for High School

• Students who understand what you are saying tend to behave better. Make yourself comprehensible. Slow down. A lot. It may seem easy to you but that's because you already know the material. If you convince your kids that you care that they understand, that it's their job to show when they do and don't understand, you'll win over a bunch of students.
• Students behave better if they have roles: ask your students to help by slowing you down when you go to fast, answering frequent checks for meaning.
• Students who believe you are sincerely interested in them will behave better. Talk to them like actual people, especially before/between classes. One, it's a nice thing to do. Two, you can build their lives into examples. One way many teachers accomplish this is by having kids fill out interest surveys at the beginning of the year: our job is then of course to read them and put that knowledge to use, relationship building.
• If you put your students and their learning ahead of an imposed curriculum, they will tend to behave better. If you are obeying a curriculum, make sure you always tie it to the kids' perceived needs somehow. If you are slogging through a text-book chapter by chapter, please reconsider.
• Keep your "rules" simple, and don't set up too many pre-established consequences. Every misbehavior is its own weird animal and deserves its own response. Your response doesn't have to be immediate, and the remedy shouldn't tax your resources or energy. Put the responsibility for the rectification of any misbehavior on the student. If a kid caused the trouble, the kid should fix it, on his/her own time. (Straight out of Fay and Funk's "Teaching With Love and Logic")
  

Need a Ride Home from Work?

The Alameda County Guaranteed Ride Home Program

If you walk, bicycle, carpool, vanpool, or take the ferry, bus or train to work . . . this is a really great resource. It's great for parents that take public transportation. If an emergency comes up, we can get home quickly and efficiently.

You can use it if

• You or an immediate family member suffers from an illness or severe crisis.
• You must work unscheduled overtime (supervisor authorization is required).
• Your ridesharing vehicle breaks down or the driver has to stay late or leave early.