Note from Dave: In the article that follows, educator Lynsay Fabio walks through how she would approach classroom management during distance learning. She gives us a glimpse into how her mind processes planning for and implementing classroom management. Few kinds of writing were as enlightening, in my early years of teaching especially, as looks into the thinking process of educators who are well accomplished (as Lynsay is) or who seem to just “get it.” What such glimpses afford us is a chance to see, unfiltered, the way the mind of the given teacher works.

Among the many nuggets below, I appreciated these:

• Classroom management is about protecting every child's right to learn and enjoy amazing academic experiences.
• Students are not oblivious when a teacher is exerting authority in a classroom for the sake of the whole group's experience — they are plenty perceptive to discern between control for control's sake and control for the sake of maximizing autonomy, purpose, and mastery.
• It is easier to add freedom in your classroom than it is to remove it once your school year is under way.

I hope this look into Lynsay's beliefs, thought process, and practices can inform, encourage, and deepen your own work and thinking as it has mine.

Best to you,

Dave

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Recently, I reached out to about 700 educators — 200 who have already taken the Classroom Management Course plus 500 of Dave's newer subscribers — and I asked them what their top concerns were this fall. Most of them responded that they were teaching virtually this year and they weren't certain how to approach that from a classroom management perspective.

(My own school is in Orleans Parish, all of which is starting the year virtually. I'm on extended maternity leave, so I missed the Spring of 2020 and the upheaval it wrought, and I'm watching this bizarre school year begin from the sidelines.)

These questions from colleagues caused me to think — what exactly would I do if I had to teach virtually this year?

Now, if you know me, have seen my classroom, or have taken the Classroom Management Course, you know that I strive to run a tight ship. It is organized and orderly. It’s clear that I’m in charge and that students feel safe in my space. And it’s also clear that I love my students and my content — most recently, ninth grade writing. 

(Now, credit where it's due: these things are true because I have had phenomenal professional development to teach me how.)

Here's why those things matter — I would want all of them to be true this year no matter what else is different.

So, how?

I would start with an airtight classroom management plan. But before I can get there, there’s a bit of work that has to happen. 

I’m first going to sit in my quiet, empty classroom to get my head and my heart right. I can't skip this. I don't want to make decisions from a place of anxiety or chaos.

Then, I’m going to walk through every minute of an early lesson, thinking, what does this look like? What does this not look like? What are the students doing? What am I doing? And importantly — how will I check mastery as it is happening and not just in the end products?

(That last question deserves an aside. Teaching is A) assessing the gap between “I taught it” and “they learned it” and B) responding in a way that gets students closer to “they learned it.” If we get through all this classroom management stuff, but students haven’t learned anything new, then we’ve actually failed. The goal isn't a tight ship — it's learning. But that’s another post.)

These questions would lead me to produce a classroom narrative — a minute-by-minute description of what's happening and not happening in an ideal lesson. 

And then we're ready for the PMPW goodness that we explore in-depth in the Classroom Management Course:

• An airtight classroom management Plan that I will follow to the letter, no exceptions.
• Teacher Moves that I will practice and execute in order to prevent and respond to misbehavior.
• Procedures that I’ll teach in explicit detail and make students prove they can do independently.
• Warmth for my students, for my job, and for myself. Teaching remains the best and most important job in the world. I’m going to do whatever I have to do to actually feel that and then convey it to my students and their families. 

Now let's examine all this in greater detail.

Step 1: Get my head and my heart right.

I’m simply not going to work as hard if all the while I’m thinking, “This is impossible,” or, “I can’t do this,” or, “Maybe Master Teacher of the Universe could do this, but I can’t.” So I’m going to spend some time rehearsing these truths:

1. I am the right person for this job. There is no one with a cape flying in after me. I’m the best we’ve got right now. I am not perfect, but I am enough. None of this is about me. It’s about my students and the education they need.
2. We've got some brutal realities this year. It’s likely that some of my students and colleagues will get sick. I might get sick, too. Remote or in-person or hybrid, masks and social distancing, planned and unplanned closures — there are bound to be disruptions.
3. I will have an excellent classroom this year, be it remote or in-person or some mixture thereof. I still know what excellent teaching looks like, and I have faith that I can make that happen for my students. Education is an essential service without which our society cannot thrive. We have to be able to teach students well in these circumstances. I believe that my classroom can be excellent.

When I can say most of this to myself in a mirror, without sneering or crying, I’m ready to move on. 

Step 2: The Walkthrough

In my live classroom, long before the kids showed up, I used to walk through my classroom door just as a student would and envision: Where exactly do I walk? What do I pick up? Where do I sit? Then I’d think of all the possible ways that a student’s misbehavior might interfere with the entry to class running as smoothly as possible.

In my virtual classroom, I’d do the same. It might seem weird, but look: you have to have a crystal clear vision of what it looks like (and what it doesn’t) before you can effectively create a Plan for classroom management or write Procedures. 

Now I'm at a disadvantage here because I have little experience with Zoom — I missed Spring 2020 while on leave. My Zoom experience amounts to my aunt's wedding — true story. I attended remotely, muted my screen when cued, used the chat feature to say, “Congratulations!!! XOXO,” and even danced to Tina Turner along with the family, spread across the globe, who now resembled the Brady Bunch in our sixteen boxes side-by-side. It was a tiny glimpse into the challenge and possibility of taking something so personal — like a wedding, like a learning community of young people — and trying to make it work in a remote format rather than just…not getting married.

But if I was getting after it in the classroom this year, that’s what I’d do first. I’d set up my online classroom with Zoom or Meets or what-have-you, I'd set up Google Classroom or Canvas. I’d think through each part of my in-person teaching game and modify each for an online format. How can I deliver instruction that my kids can see and hear? Check the class for understanding before releasing to independent work time? Check individual student work and give feedback as the work is in progress and not after? 

Then I’d set up a sample student login and walk through the entire system from the perspective of a student. 

• Where do they find the link to the session?
• The materials?
• How long does it take to log on, and what does “Ready” mean?
• What should they be doing and not doing while I deliver instruction? 
• How will they respond to my checks for understanding?
• What should they be doing during independent work time, and how should they expect to see my feedback? 
• And importantly, what are all the misbehaviors that would interfere with students’ right to learn and with my right to teach?

Again, I wouldn’t just guess or hypothesize — I’d actually walk through and practice as a student. Then, I’d have a colleague log on and play a student while I was teaching so I could see how these interactions might actually unfold.

Now, I’m ready to make the four elements of solid classroom management happen — the PMPW I mentioned earlier:

• Plan: This is the list of rules and consequences my students and I will live by. 
• Moves: These are the physical and verbal techniques I’ll use to prevent and correct misbehavior.
• Procedures: These are the routines I’ll teach students so that class flows easily and efficiently. 
• Warmth: This is the beating heart of the approach. My class has to be more than just rules and consequences, so I’ll use the CARE framework (which Dave and I discuss in Module 4 of the course) to become a teacher my students love and trust, even as — especially as! — I hold out for excellence.

Step 3: Revise the Plan

A Plan for classroom management needs rules and consequences. Keep it simple. If it wasn't broke during in-person learning, I say don’t fix it. I wouldn’t start my plan from scratch. I’d revise what I already know works. For me, that’s a variation of Michael Linsin’s list of Rules. 

Here are Linsin's:

1. Listen and follow directions.
2. Raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat. 
3. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.
4. Respect your classmates and your teacher. 

These are simple, definable, enforceable, expansive, and prominent in my live classroom. But how can I make them apply in an online classroom? I’d think through each one carefully.

1. Listen and follow directions.

I’d keep this one. This is the one that empowers me to keep the wheels on the bus no matter what happens. In an online forum, it still applies. I can hear myself saying, “Ok, class, it’s time for your mini-lesson. Please click “Mute” in the top left corner of your screen, take notes in your virtual notebook, and be ready to answer the two Checks for Understanding at the end.”

When I give that direction, I can and should expect all twenty-something of my students to click the button, open their documents, and take notes (assuming that I’ve taught them how to do each of these things — I would devote time in the first week of school to teaching them each of these skills the first time each skill is required). My dear friend Vicky is a math teacher — if she says, “Class, please hold up your answers for me to check in 3…2…1,” she can and should expect all of her students to hold up their papers to the camera just as she taught them. Anyone who doesn’t is violating Rule 1 and, in my classroom, will have a consequence. 

2. Raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat.

This one looks much different in an online forum. As I said, I actually know very little about Zoom right now, so I’m going to have some courage and think through this organically rather than text all my friends or use Google to find some answers first.

In many classrooms, uncontrolled talking accounts for a huge percentage of all lost learning time. There’s calling out; there's talking to neighbors. But in an online forum, how much of this is really a problem? Can I as a teacher force-mute everybody’s screen so that I can’t be interrupted? (Yup.)

Can I direct students if they have questions to drop their question in the chat box so that they aren’t even tempted to call it out? (Yup — and this might be one way in which teaching online might actually be easier.)

Let’s talk side conversations. Can I temporarily turn off the chat function so that there isn’t a distracting dialogue while I’m teaching? (Not during a meeting, but before a meeting you can.) If I can't do it during a livestream, I'd still probably start the year without chat, to set the focused tone and unified academic experience that I’m going for in my classroom. If I do that, then I’ll have to revise my expectations about students dropping their questions in the chat box. Rather, my understanding is that Zoom has a “raise your hand” feature, so I would start off the year using that in the same way I would in my regular classroom — teach students to write their questions down while I’m teaching, and hold their questions to the last 5 minutes of direct instruction, because there’s a good chance that I’ll cover their question or that their brain will sort it out if they just have a bit of patience.

But what about students having side conversations via text or email while we're having a synchronous meeting? I have very little control over what texting or emailing that students do with each other while I’m teaching remotely. So any rule I make about that, I can’t enforce. What I can do is set the rule that I don’t want side conversations occurring in the Zoom platform, either verbal or in the chat box. I can also stipulate that if I become aware of non-Zoom side conversations (i.e., I see them on the screen pick up their phone and text someone, or an email gets forwarded to me with a time-stamp that’s during class time), then it’s enforceable under Rule 2, and they’ll get a consequence. This is the best I’ve got, and I’d go with it at the start until a few weeks passed, after which time I'd revisit the policy to see if it needs revision. 

What about leaving your seat? This one is tricky. In a live classroom, this rule states that for the duration of the lesson, you must be present and in your seats. The online proxy of this is that students need to be present and “in their seats” (i.e., visible on their screens) for the duration of the lesson. Should this be a requirement? 

My first answer is ummmmmm OF COURSE. Are you kidding me? How is this even a question? Without video I would be teaching in an invisible cave where I can’t even see how many students are in there with me, let alone see if they’re understanding their material or read their feelings about how the lesson is going. Their faces could be getting chewed by bats or by pop-up ads, and I wouldn't even know.

But that’s fear talking. So I’ll educate myself on why anyone anywhere would not want student video. Oh, I see…This article explains that people are concerned about “poor bandwidth, not wanting visual distraction, or not wanting to share their current environment.” Well, those seem like legitimate concerns. 

My answer is still yes. Students have to be visible and remain on screen during the lesson. My most basic responsibility as a teacher is to check for their understanding of the lesson as it’s happening, and without video, I can’t do this — all “hold up your answers” and all hand gestures can’t happen without video. I’ll never know who’s with me and who’s lost, and the students who need me the most will fall devastatingly behind as a result. Further, as a student, the most basic responsibility of a synchronous lesson is to be physically present, albeit separated by distance, and without video, I can’t hold students accountable for this. Video is non-negotiable for me. 

Addressing the above concerns: I’m not really worried about visible distraction. Our brains are amazingly adaptable and very good at picking and choosing what’s relevant through any kind of noise, visual or auditory. It will get easier for students to attune to what’s most important over time and practice. For students with poor bandwidth, they can try it out so I can see for myself if it’s as much of an impediment as it seems, and if it’s still a problem after two weeks, we might find an alternative solution for that particular student. For not sharing the environment, I would ask these same students if they’ve ever shot and posted a video on their cell phones. If their environment is good enough for YouTube or Instagram, then it’s good enough for our class. We’re not asking to see their whole homes. We’re asking to see a 4X4 foot space in which their face can reside while we teach them. That space can be secured by anyone, anywhere if it’s deemed important enough. And it is. So move a table, hang a sheet, do whatever it takes.

Now, what about getting up in the middle of class/the lesson? I know students are in the comfort of their homes, but I do not want them to just get up and walk to the refrigerator while I’m teaching or while a classmate is giving an answer. Just like if they’re in class and they raise their hand to go to the bathroom, I would expect the same in an online forum. Maybe I would start off the year that they need to notify me to get permission before leaving the screen to use the restroom or get a drink of water, just as they would in class.

Can I enforce that? Is that reasonable? What would the logistics of that look like? In class, a student uses a hand signal, I nod at them, and then they go. Or I hold up five fingers to indicate, “Wait 5 minutes,” and then when the time is right, I nod at them to go. But how would that work in an online forum? Those non-verbals would be projected to everybody simultaneously, so how would a student know that I was, in fact, speaking to her and she’s got the OK from me? 

Hmmmm…Sheesh…Honestly this is all so complicated that I want to just give up right now…but NO. 

The fact that this one rule is complicated does not mean that the whole system of online learning is crap and I should just give up until next year. That’s my fear talking. That’s me abandoning the helm of the ship and letting it crash into the rocks. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to figure it out.

Okay, so I need to learn more about how to manage students leaving from their screens during synchronous sessions. I’m going to ask a few teachers who have done this before (like Dave) and I'm going to make a decision. My bent leads me to err on the side of more control, not less, because it’s way easier to allow more freedom once I’ve got the tone I want than to suddenly start taking away freedoms that once existed.

I’ve already got an idea for a little place card students could hold up that says, “Be back in 5,” to which I give a thumbs up, maybe even saying their name: “Jamyri, go. (thumbs up)” at a volume way lower than my direct instruction. I don’t even need to know *why* they need to be back in 5. I don’t actually care if they’re going to the bathroom or getting water or moving away from the dining room table because their little sister just spilled something sticky. I just need to know that they were present and paying attention to the lesson, but they won’t be for the next 5 minutes, and they want me to know that, and they’ll be back. That is something I need to know and hold them accountable for. 

So if I don’t hear back from any of my teacher friends, the place card is what I’m going to try first. And this right here is a micro-example of how I’m going to handle any and all sticky spots with digital learning classroom management — quell the panic, form my best hypothesis system, err on the side of more control knowing that I can always loosen up later, teach that hypothesis system to kids, and hold them accountable. 

So, yeah — that was a lot. This is all a lot. Take a deep breath, maybe a walk, and let's move on to the next rule.

3. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.

Welp. This one’s easy. It’s impossible to kick your neighbor if he’s over at his apartment two miles away. I can ditch this rule entirely. Yay! One more way in which virtual learning might be easier than in-person learning. 

4. Respect your classmates and your teacher.

Definitely keeping this. Some of the disrespect methods from live teaching, like eye-rolling, talking back, and rude comments about classmates, will definitely still happen in an online forum; this rule is my sword and teaching tool against these common problems. I’m sure there will be new ways in which disrespect will rear its ugly head now that we’re online — sometimes people get more comfortable being cruel when they aren’t in person — and as they come up, I’ll apply this rule, and I’ll use the lessons learned to teach its nuance better going forward. 

Things I would not include

I wouldn’t include things like, “Arrive to class on time,” or its online proxy, “Sign into our Zoom session on time,” even though a student’s failure to do so would drive me crazy.

For rules like this, I line up with Michael Linsin's logic:

Classroom rules must reflect behavior expectations only and kept separate from academic expectations. Including a rule like ‘Turn in homework on time’ is confusing to students and doesn’t belong alongside rules dedicated to protecting the right to learn and enjoy school.”

Amen.

My initial draft list of rules, based on the list I used before

At long last, we arrive at my draft list of rules for my virtual classroom:

1. Listen and follow directions.
2. Click “Raise your hand” before speaking.
3. Remain on screen and visible at all times during the lesson. 
4. Respect your classmates and your teacher. 

What about new rules just for an online forum?

Now, what new rules do I need in an online forum? Well, what behaviors might I see now that students are at home that I wouldn’t see in my classroom? I’m thinking about cell phones and television — that it would totally interfere with everyone’s right to learn if my students were blatantly picking up their phones and texting throughout class, or if a kid’s phone kept ringing, or if there was a television blaring in the background while they were trying to give an oral answer. 

In light of that, I might try the following:

Rule 5. Keep all alternate technology (cell phones, television) silent and off-camera during lessons. 

Here's a big caveat: I’m not certain that this is enforceable. What if Mom is home and watching news in the background or if it’s actually her phone that keeps going off? I might try talking to some teacher friends about their experience before setting this rule in stone. But again, I’ll err on the side of more protective and more control, and I'll loosen up if I have to — that’s going to be the shortest path to the most learning this year. Students are not oblivious — they can tell when their teacher is trying to protect the learning environment rather than just exercising mindless control. All these rules are in exchange for some mind-blowing academics — I believe that and I prove that every day.

Okay, so that’s the first half of the Plan — the Rules. What about the Consequences? Again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m going to take Linsin’s consequences and what worked for me in my live classroom and tweak it to make it work for the online forum.

Here were my consequences when I taught live:

1. Warning
2. Seat change
3. Letter home

(Side note: When looking up the Consequences article to reference and link, I just discovered that Linsin has in fact ALREADY WRITTEN a Zoom Classroom Management Plan! I’m super tempted to read it, download it right now, and do whatever he said, but I’m going to think through this myself, to illustrate the fact that yes, I’m the right person for this job, and if I use what I know and think through these problems like Linsin would, or like Lemov would, then I’ll come up with an adequate solution.)

So here I go. 

First consequence: the warning

Ok, so in my live classroom, when a kid first broke a rule, I gave them a warning. Specifically, I verbally delivered the warning (“You have a warning because you ____.”) and I wrote that warning down on my daily sheet. I would do this as privately as I could but as publicly as I had to. If the behavior was private — i.e., not in front of the whole class — I would walk over and say it low. If the misbehavior was public — i.e., a loud comment — I would say it publicly (but still lower than my instructional tone) so the whole class would know yes, I saw and heard that, and no, I’m not rattled, and yes, that student got a consequence. 

If I’m remote teaching, I can’t walk over to the kid when I want to. But I can use some of those principles to guide my decisions on how to give warnings. Is there a way to message students individually via Zoom? (Yes.) That’s how I’ll give my private warnings. And I’ll still record them on my daily sheet. I’ll stop my sentence, hold up my sheet so it’s known that I’m adding a consequence, and then type out a message to the student: “Racquel, you have a warning because you didn’t follow directions.” (This will probably become my most frequent rule broken, now that calling out is obsolete.) After a few days or weeks, I’ll create a short list of the most frequent rules broken so that I can copy/paste and revise faster. You may think this is nit-picky. But this is the beauty of the warning. It’s like the rumble strip on the highway — Watch out! You’re going off the road! But nothing has actually changed in your life yet. So drive more carefully, starting now. Please and thank you. 🙂

And if the misbehavior is public enough such that I’m worried about perception from the rest of the class, I’ll stop my sentence, say “Herbert, you have a warning because you showed disrespect to your classmate,” loud enough to hear but lower than my instructional volume, then pick up my clipboard and record it on my daily sheet and move on with the lesson. I will teach students exactly what this will look and sound like when I teach my Classroom Management Plan so they are not surprised or thrown off when it happens to them or their peers. (Or at least, they’re less likely to be.)

Notice: I’m not trying to call them out publicly. But if the misbehavior is public, then the whole class is going to wonder what I’m going to do about it in order to protect their right to learn and enjoy school, so the whole class better see me making good on my promise.

And if the typed private warnings can’t happen or become cumbersome, then I’ll just say those publicly too. When I roll out my plan, I’ll tell students that I wish I could do this privately, but I can’t, and it’s never personal, and it’s to protect everyone’s right to learn and enjoy school.

So, that's settled. The first consequence will still be a warning. Moving on…

2nd consequence: the seat change

In live teaching, Linsin calls this Time Out and Dave Stuart calls it Relocation. I call it Moving Your Seat. Whatever you call it, when teaching live, the kid has to move away from the class to a location that you prescribe but still in your sphere of influence (i.e., not the principal’s office). This serves a few purposes:

• To be more than the last consequence, which is verbal, and therefore to demonstrate that things are getting more serious
• To give the student physical space away from you and the learning environment to feel a bit left out so that they want to be part of the action
• To give you physical space away from the student so that you can remain calm and do your job, which is teaching the other students in the room

Zoom allows me to mute the video and audio of a participant — this could serve this purpose for me in an online forum. I could just say, “Zev, you’re being muted because I need you to refrain from calling out,” and then set him to muted for, say, ten minutes. I’d mark that on my clipboard, and I’d have an actual timer nearby my computer so I didn’t have to start an online one, moving around a bunch of tabs and risking closing out my entire online classroom (eek!). Maybe I’d buy two timers, just in case this happened for multiple students. When the timer went off, I’d simply allow the student to unmute. Again, when I roll out my classroom management plan, I’ll teach students exactly what this will look like if it happens to them.  

There's also the option of using the waiting room function for this consequence, but from an equity perspective I want students to be able to receive instruction or hear the class discussion even if they're on the second consequence.

So the second consequence will be Audio/Video Muted, not Seat Change. Fine. I can handle that transition. 

Now I've got just one more decision to make and my Classroom Management Plan is complete. 

3rd consequence: the letter home

In my real classroom, when a student breaks a rule a third time, I give the student a physical letter to take home and get signed. I use Linsin’s form letter that I print a bajillion copies of and stick on my desk so there’s very little transaction cost. In the moment, I walk over to my desk (not the student), pick up a letter, write their name, check some boxes in a flash, sign it, walk it over to the student, and say, “Kim, you have a letter home because I need you to follow directions.” Then, Kim is responsible for bringing that form letter home, getting it signed, and returning it to me the next day. It’s a physical gesture that is the student’s responsibility to carry out. I almost always give a courtesy call to let the parent know the letter is coming, as described here. 

During remote learning, I don’t plan to be mailing these from my kitchen table. I think email will be best. Now, some element will be lost because I send the email, not the student. But this is the best I’ve got, so I’m going with it. I’ll draft a form email that’s worded exactly the same as the form letter. I won’t bother with school letterhead because I’ve read that in email, people associate letterheads with marketing and are much more likely to open and read a plain email. I’ll begin the year by sending them all a welcome email with my syllabus and my Classroom Management Plan and ask them to reply to the email to confirm receipt. Then, when it’s needed, I’ll have their email addresses so I can execute my consequence. I will continue to give a courtesy call for every consequence email I send. That way I know it isn’t just lost into the ether. 

And that’s it: my Classroom Management Plan for my virtual classroom.

Classroom Management Plan for Distance Learning

Here it is in sum:

Rules

1. Listen and follow directions. 
2. Click “Raise your hand” before speaking.
3. Remain on screen and visible at all times during the lesson. 
4. Respect your classmates and your teacher. 
5. Keep all other technology silent and off-camera during lessons. 

Consequences

1. Warning
2. Audio/Video Muted
3. Notify parents

(Here's a common question I'm hearing: how do you make sure students actually show up to synchronous sessions in the first place? I might try this point system strategy — again, from Linsin. The man has a coherent way of thinking about these things. I'm thankful for him.) 

My last step is to update my daily sheet so that it reflects my new consequences and point system. 

Want an editable version of the daily sheet I use to keep my classroom management plan implented and organized?

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After all, if we don’t keep track of the consequences we issue, we’ll fail to hold students accountable. 

Is this everything it takes to run an excellent online classroom? No. First to round out my online classroom management, I'll have to think through the other three elements of PMPW of Classroom Management:

• Plan: This is the list of rules and consequences my students and I will live by. Check.
• Moves: How will I prevent and correct misbehavior online, other than issuing consequences? Some moves (like Give Clear Directions) will transfer well while others (like Circulate) will have to be modified.
• Procedures: What routines do I need to teach students so that class flows easily and efficiently online? Not just how to log on and take notes, but also how to respond to checks for understanding so I can actually teach instead of just stand and deliver.
• Warmth: This is doubly important from a distance. How can I become a teacher my students love and trust, even as — especially as! — I hold out for excellence?

But with my Plan set, I'm off to a good start. It's a foundational document, and I've examined it thoroughly. Like 7,500 words thoroughly. And the Plan creates the space for me to teach and my students to learn, free from distractions.

Is good classroom management enough to run an excellent online classroom? Still no. I’ll have to plan some excellent online lessons in order to reward students for buying into the Plan. Running a tight ship is only great if students want to be on the ship and if the ship is going somewhere worthwhile. I’ll have to give them something worth all the sacrifices they’ll encounter while following my Plan. In fact, I’ll give them that nugget of killer academics on their very first day. 

Doug Lemov once compared classroom culture to “setting the table” for learning, and he’s right. Imagine making a gourmet meal and walking over to serve it to your loved ones, only to find no plates on the table. The plates aren’t the nourishing part — the meal is. Never mistake good classroom management for the meal itself. But without it, your delicious lesson is going to go to waste. 

So that’s why this Classroom Management Plan is my first step. I hope it helps you in your work.