Learning to Discipline

Phi Delta Kappan, Sept, 2002 by Margaret Metzger

At the start of her teaching career, Ms. Metzger confesses, she ricocheted between being a drill sergeant and Mary Poppins. Here she shares with new teachers the many lessons she's learned along the way about classroom discipline and classroom management.

Dear New Teachers,

No one is born knowing how to control 125 adolescents for five hours a day and teach the curriculum at the same time. Learning to discipline takes years. Mostly, it's trial and error. Nothing works all the time, and what works well in one class has no effect on another.

However, over time, our repertoire of responses grows; we learn what we can tolerate; we gain a sense of timing; we make alliances within a school. Trust me, you will improve.

When I began teaching, I struggled to control my classes. I did not yet understand the difference between classroom discipline and classroom management. So let me start at the beginning.

A Confession

I still wince at my early attempts to "control" my classes. Here's what I painfully remember about myself as a young teacher, trying in vain to control classes.

* On the first day, I told a huge football player to change seats. I was stunned when he obeyed.

* I identified emotionally with the students rather than the teachers.

* I pretended competence, certainty, and adulthood - though I didn't feel any. I was still working out my own issues with authority figures, so it was hard to be one.

* I ricocheted between being a drill sergeant and Mary Poppins.

* Kids liked challenging me, and it was fun for them to see me squirm. Kids attacked my most vulnerable character flaws, and they could undo my self-esteem in a matter of minutes.

* One critical comment could haunt me for days.

* I thought everything was my fault.

* The kids who behaved worst got all my attention.

* Desperate, I used the curriculum, grades, and my own education to coerce (bully?) students.

* I was so afraid to admit failure that I didn't ask for help.

* The very idea of discipline exhausted me. I hated it.

* I felt terminally vulnerable.

Some Progress

I hated disciplining adolescents. If I was going to stay in education, I knew I had to get past the discipline issues.

I tried to write down all my mistakes in order to find a pattern and not repeat them. That didn't help. I just kept making the same mistakes over and over.

More helpful was remembering my own recent high school and college experience. I wrote down what I liked and hated about my own teachers, so I could at least pretend to be someone who knew what she was doing. I remembered how much I wanted the teachers I adored to like or notice me; I remembered how criticism bruised my fragile academic ego; I remembered how I resented teacher power plays. Mostly, I remembered how much I hated the infantilizing nature of high school. Those memories got me through the first years of teaching. I reminded myself that I already knew a lot - just from the student side of the desk. If I could keep remembering, I could convey genuine empathy and have honest interactions.

My mother, an outstanding teacher, was the best help. She listened patiently that first year as I complained - or cried - that my classes never went as I planned. Finally, my mother said, "Look, you can't expect to know how to teach instantly. You wouldn't expect to do brain surgery in your first year of medical school. If you think you can learn this in one year, you degrade my profession.

"Now, let's look at your failures. First, you need to see failures as opportunities for you to learn. You need a theory for each problem. Why is it a problem? What do you bring to the situation? What could you have done differently? What other lens could you use to understand the situation? What does the student think happened?

"Next, you need to stop wallowing in failure." (My mom was tough.) "Once you admit that you are still learning, you can allow yourself to make some mistakes. You claim that every class is a disaster. I doubt it. What would be an acceptable level of failure for you and for the students? Let's say that each class could have one completely lousy day per week. Since you teach six classes, that would give you six expected failures a week.

"Tape a 3 x 5 card on your desk. At the end of each class, ask yourself if the class was a disaster. You can't count the class that fell apart in the last 10 minutes or a class where one kid seemed to hate everything. You can only count true, complete failures. Then put the score on the card."

My mother was right. That little 3 x 5 card gave me perspective and permission. I didn't have to get it right all the time. I could think about the difference between total failure and just plain not-so-good. I used the card for one month and saw that I didn't fail quite as much as I imagined.

Simple Principles of Survival

Once I quit "wallowing," as my mother so delicately put it, I began to think in terms of solutions. I didn't need a huge cookbook of discipline solutions. I just needed a few fast and reliable ones.

In the early years, I needed a few anchoring principles so that every problem didn't require a whole new philosophical debate with myself. Frankly, I didn't want to think about discipline, which I found - and still find - the most boring part of teaching. I wanted to dispense with the whole discipline issue as quickly as possible. As I recall them, here are my anchoring principles from those early years, with a few comments about each.