How To Take Individual Responsibility For Classroom Management Success

As in all areas of success, how successful you are in the classroom is directly related to how much control you take over what you do, on a daily basis, to be successful. All successul educators take individual responsibility for their own success, even though they must also take account of the circumstances they find themselves in and the conditions that impact on their role. The only control successful teachers can really guarantee is over themselves, so that's the place to start.

When setting personal goals, teachers can use the principles pyramid to map out a route to success. The middle section of this pyramid shows us the principles to follow when deciding the actions we can take to be successful and for which we have individual responsibility. These principles are self awareness, imagination, the freedom to choose, and independent will.

As self aware beings we can rationalise our actions in the classroom. We can visualize and rehearse what we can do for success in the classroom. We are free to decide to do what we believe will be successful. In other words, we are free to choose a response to any situation we find ourselves in as teachers. Not only do we exercise our individual responsibility by being responsible but also by showing we are response-able, in other words, we are able to make the response we think is likely to be the most suitable response, whatever the circumstances. This is a uniquely human attribute, and one that gives us real power to control our environment.And all of these actions are controlled by us because we have an independent will to do as we choose.

How can we use the concept of individual responsibility in practical situations?

As with any 'concept', teachers will find their own ways to be responsible for the actions they take. Often it's through trial and error. We know we have to take individual responsibility for what we do in the classroom, and we also know that the process for experimenting and finding out from experience what works and what doesn't can be valuable, even essential.

Over a period of years, and with much trial and error, I have found a strategy that helps me take individual responsiblity for whatever I try to do in the classroom.

My strategy is based on the acronym CEBDATE.

What is CEBDATE?

C is for Choice [and also for Commitment]

E is for Expectation

B is for Belief

D is for Decision

A is for Action

T is for Test

E is for Extend or Explore

Let's go into a little more detail.

C is for Choice and Commitment.

The starting point for taking self responsibity is the acceptance that we always have a choice. We may not be able to control the circumstances or the conditions, but we can choose how we react to the circumstances and the conditions. So as a teacher, I may be faced with a really difficult class, I can't change which students are in that class, but I can choose to react to that class in specific ways.C also stands for Commitment, so I can choose to commit to finding the best ways to be successful with my class, a commitment that may well be tested daily.

E is for Expectation.

Studies of success show that people who become sucessful demand more of themselves than people who are less successful. So I can demand more of myself as a teacher, and do whatever it takes to get success, not just for me but for my students also. Raising expectations also means that I ask my students to raise their expectations of themselves. Therefore it becomes important to explain to my difficult class what the standards are for our classroom interactions, and to communicate to them clearly that I see them as successes not failures.

B is for Belief.

If I don't believe success is possible, it probably won't be. Henry Ford said, " Whether you believe you can, or you believe you can't, you're probably right." This is not just blind faith. I need to plan success carefully and commit to it, but all plans have to start with a vision of success, and a belief that success is possible to achieve. With my difficult class I would use the Henry Ford quote and display it in the classroom. Clearly some of the difficult students won't at first believe "they can", but persistence can and often does help them come to a more positive view about believing in themselves.

D is for Decision.

What exactly do I need and want to do in order to achieve my goals?

Now is the time to think carefully and identify the specific action steps it is now my individual responsibility to take. The decisions are the result of careful consideration and research, but I must eventually decide to do x and y, rather than a and z, because I believe these are the best steps for me to take. A is for Action.

This is where the talking stops, metaphorically, and the 'doing' takes over. We only really achieve classroom management success by what we do, not by talking about it, although if we talk about it in the right way the action we take has more chance of success.

With my difficult class, the actions I take might include:

• modelling the behaviour that will be acceptable in the classroom
• explaining what success looks like, sounds like and feels like
• introducing a system of assessment that makes success more accessible for all learning styles, not just for verbal/linguistic learners
• choosing a programme of study that challenges students because it promotes the kind of learning students need but have not so far experienced

T is for Testing.

Not testing just in the limited classroom sense of assessing student knowledge, although this will often be appropriate. It also means that I have to assess how successful my overall strategy has been. With my difficult class I might look at criteria such as:

• how engaged the students have been in the learning
• how many activities allowed all students to take part in a meaningful way
• what the students have learned about cooperation, working as a team, or taking individual responsibility for their own learning
• how far the 'return on investment' has been worth the effort,in terms of learning, both on my part and on the part of the students

E is for Extension and Explore.

If, as we hope, the actions for which we have taken individual responsibility have proved successful, we may have a blueprint for success that we can 'rinse and repeat' and extend to other contexts. If what we have tried and tested turns out not to be as successful as we had hoped, we can explore other ways to be successful. There will be a way to be successful in everything we try, although we may need to redefine how we go about the D A T parts of the CEBDATE strategy. It's important not to give up, just find another way. One of my favorite quotes that I use with my students is:

"Every wrong answer takes me nearer to the right answer"

A final thought.

No one pretends it's easy to take individual responsibility for classroom management success. It's anything but easy, which in an odd way underlines just how important it is to try to get this right. If we get it wrong, we should have enough faith in ourselves to think that we're only getting it wrong temporarily. We will get it right if we're smart about how we go about taking individual responsibility for our classroom actions.

The old saying that reminds us of the challenge of doing difficult things is:

"If it was easy, anybody could do it."

I think the saying is only half right. Taking individual responsibility is certainly not easy, but everybody can do it, if they know the right way.

Return from Individual Responsibility to Setting Personal Goals


Return from Individual Responsibility to Classroom Management Success

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