Disruptions by: Connor Grady

            One thing I’ve come to notice over the past few years is this: disruptions are always a part of every classroom.  This is not solely limited to the disruptions caused by students, but these are definitely the most common.  Obviously disruptions are counteractive to the learning that should be going on in the classroom, so how does a teacher eliminate the effects of disruptions in their class as they arise?

            Well to help, let’s look at a real situation that involved classroom disruptions.  In one of my classes, a group of boys (all of them friends with each other) are dispersed amongst the classroom, mostly by design to avoid any side conversations that might occur during the lesson.  They each compete to make the oddest noise without catching the attention of the teacher.  Whenever the teacher rebukes their noises and distractions, it just turns into a large joke carried out by the boys together against the teacher.  What my teacher did about it was surprising, but actually very effective and clever.  Instead of constantly correcting the unwanted behavior, they bought into the joke and brought it out into the open.  The teacher began to joke back with the students about how odd and ridiculous it was that they were making noises in class (these students being in high school), but not in an angry tone or with any kind of criticism.  One might ask, what was the result?  The students actually laughed along with the teacher about how ridiculous their noises were which seemed to put the teacher and the students on the same side, rather than on opposing sides.  The next week, the joke had almost completely died down (with one exception) as it had run its course, but I do believe that the students causing the disruption gained a new respect for the teacher as a person rather than just as an angry adult who happened to be the subject of their joke.

            This experience has convinced me that when a teacher lets their guard down with their students and relates with them, rather than attempting to force good behavior onto them, they in return are given the results that they want to receive.  I encourage the teachers reading this post to try this technique out in their own classroom if they encounter student disruptions because I have been shown first-hand that it is very effective.  The number one take-away for today is this: if your students regard you as a human being, rather than an instructor, they will be more likely to want to make you happy by eliminating any disruptions they might otherwise cause.