Misbehaning in classroom

Every student will misbehave in one point or another in her time of education. Sometimes misbehaving is not intentional; students just do not know the right way of behaving. In my description, misbehaving is an action in the school that disturbs others from learning and makes the classroom environment tense. However, how to address this issue, makes a huge difference. First, teachers should know why this occurs, then how to control it. Why children misbehave may vary. It can be simple; for example, they do not know what to do; or it can be more complicated such as family problems or society problems. Unfortunately, sometimes teachers are too busy with teaching the subject that they forget to identify the root causes of misbehaving. Also, as described in Classroom Management, teachers need to know what student will achieve by miss behaving: “attention, power revenge or assumed disability”.

As Barrie and Smilanich state in Classroom Management, “winning over” which “refers to what teachers say and do to maintain and enhance their social relationship with students so that students are more inclined to work with teachers rather than against them” (p.63). I remember when I was in grade eight, in my chemistry class I had a teacher who really knew how to establish “winning over” with her students. Not only we did not misbehave in her class but also we would feel ashamed if we did not do well in our studies.

Misbehaviour

What is Misbehaviour?

Along with everyone else I also agree that classifying problem behaviour (misbehaviour) depends on the dynamics of the students and the teacher. Every teacher conducts their classroom differently; therefore what one teacher considers unacceptable behaviour another may deem appropriate.

As many have already said, teachers must establish clear expectations and consequences in their classroom – which should be done first thing in September. Teachers should avoid pointing out students who often misbehave because this will make them feel embarrassed and singled out. When I read to the grade 1's during my practicum I often said comments like: “Thank you Ashley for sitting nicely on your bottom so everyone can see the pictures in the book!” Meanwhile there would be another student sitting up on their knees blocking other students view. I would make eye contact with the “misbehaving” student to make sure he/she corrected their behaviour. I believe it is important to redirect the attention of the misbehaving student to another student who is modeling appropriate behaviour.

At my practicum school I also learned the importance of establishing a target behaviour goal every month for the students. The target behaviour was outlined and placed in every classroom where the teacher was expected to explain it to their class. When I was at the school the current month’s target behaviour was empathy. It was obvious the grade 1’s would not understand what empathy meant so the teacher provided examples of what it looked like so they could learn to recognize it in their own behaviour. I thought it was a good idea to have the entire school focus on a target behaviour together because it established a sense of community among the students and teachers.

What is Misbehavior?

When thinking about misbehavior in terms of education, like everyone has sought to define it, I would say that misbehavior is classified as actions which disturbs the activity of the classroom. I’d say that these actions, however, are completely subjective. While some people may agree on which actions are actions of misbehavior, I don’t think that there are any universal or overarching classifications of actions that are deemed as misbehaving.

An example of misbehavior—or what some may classify as misbehavior—that I would like to examine under my above claim is what is commonly addressed as speaking out of turn. In certain settings, multiple students/people speaking at once can be seen as something disruptive. In a case where a single voice is needed to be heard, this would be defined as misbehavior. Nevertheless, in a setting which encourages constant dialogue between the people in a classroom, this would not be seen as disruptive or an act of misbehavior. Furthermore, this action can be seen as misbehavior in the same classroom with the same people. Depending on different settings and what an activity, PLO, etc. prescribes, either method of conversation could be seen as beneficial or detrimental to a classroom.

While there are actions/events which are more clear cut in terms of definitely being misbehavior (ie. bullying) I really just wanted to display the notion that misbehavior is a thoroughly subjective notion. Of course in our role as teachers we are going to face the ominous “school rules” that may not conform to our own beliefs. This is something I surely see myself struggling with in my future as a teacher. Given my background in World Literature, I find that I am more accustom to a classroom that does not adhere necessarily to the regular norms of classroom conduct; things like sitting on tables, interrupting others, questioning teacher’s authority on subject matter were allowed and encouraged at times.

As much of this topic has been fleshed out by others, I shall leave the rest of my contributions to this issue in comments to others’ thoughts.

What is Misbehaviour?

I think the simplest explanation of what constitutes misbehaviour in the classroom, is any action that would result in a disruption of the dynamics and functioning of the class regardless of whether this disruption is the goal of the behaviour or not. There are four motivations for misbehaviour outlined by B&S. Their assertion is that children misbehave in order to get attention, to gain power and control over a situation, as a means of revenge, and because of feelings of disability resulting in lack of effort. My mother and aunt are both teachers in the North Vancouver School District and I also have two jobs teaching dance (One at a rec center and the other in an afterschool program in the district) to children ranging in age from 2 years old to 12 years old, and from this experience I have personally found that the most common misbehaviours performed by children results from an attention seeking motivation. These actions consist of all those things children do that are not harmful or cruel but simply rude, silly, irritating, or disruptive. B&S pointed out several times the importance of understanding the motivations behind a misbehaviour in order to prevent and to respond effectively to those behaviours and I strongly agree with this point. For example, when discussing the performance of attention seeking behaviours B&S discussed the tendency of teachers to respond by saying things such as "How many times do I have to tell you?..." or "If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times..." and these responses not only do not serve to stop the behaviours from taking place but actually serve to encourage its continuance. The reason for this is that it rewards the student with an immediate dose of the attention they want so badly and so they stop, but only until the high they got from this first misbehaviour begins to wan and they respond by repeating their earlier misbehaviour as history taught them it would have the desired effect on the teacher. The teacher continues to respond in this way because doing so gives them a temporary high from stopping the behaviour, however, impermanent it may be. Thus the result is a cycle of self-gratification by the teacher and student both without any possibility of long-term fulfillment of their needs. By understanding that the reason for this behaviour is to gain attention a teacher is better equiped to respond in a way that is likely to reduce the occurance of the behaviour. One such way this can work is through attempts at prevention. If a teacher can identifiy students that are prone to attention seeking misbehaviours they can organize part of their lessons and classes so as to be able to give those students the attention they crave but for behaving in positive ways rather than negatively. Similarly, understanding that a motivation for the behaviour is to gain attention could allow a teacher to make the decision of whether or not to respond at all to the behaviour. ALthough depending on the behaviour ignoring it is not always possible, by not giving in to the child's demand for attention from bad behaviour we are discouraging the continuance of that behaviour as its use does not achieve the goal.

As I stated earlier I completely agree with B&S in their opinion on the importance of understanding motivation as a means of prevention and response to misbehaviour. However, it is not only important to understand the motivations behind the misbehaviour, but also the situation that precipitated the behaviour in the first place. What happens when a good and normally well-behaved student suddenly lashes out with a revenge type misbehaviour? What could have prompted this reaction? What is the best way to discipline the student and make sure the behaviour will not happen again? When I was in elementary school we had a number of problem students in my grade. Several of them were rude, offensive, disruptive, and sometimes violent, but we also had a number of very good students who were sweet and well-behaved and understood and respected the rules of the classroom. One day when we were in gym class we were outside playing soccor when a little girl who had always been one of the classes best students jumped on one of the other boys in the class (a boy who had been a little monster from the moment he came to the school) and started to hit him. The girl was taken to the principal's office and sentenced with an in-school suspension for fighting because that was the school's policy and standard punishment. What no one took into consideration though was that the boy she hit had been tormenting her for four years by teasing her and calling her names, hiding her stuff, or pushing her down on the playground. There is no doubt that the girl's reaction was wrong and that something needed to be done to prevent such action from being taken again, but what about the actions of her tormentor? Why should he go unpunished for his involvement in the situation?

I think one of the things that struck me most in reading B&S was their statement that "all children will misbehave". This is true and I believ that having this frame of mind does truly lead to teachers that are calmer and more effective at both preventing and responding to misbehaviour. However, does having this belief also mean that we will respond to misbehaviours like the one I described above as standard and to be expected regardless of the normal temperment of the child? Will we automaticlly be inclined to dole out the standardized punishments developed by past precedence rather than trying to understand if a situation is perhaps more complicated than it first appears? I hope not, I hope that as teachers we will try to make the distinction between the everyday and the disturbing and allow for flexibility in prevention and response because from what I've learned thus far from my experiences teaching children, is that to a certain degree teaching to a group of children that outnumbers you twenty to one is one part planning and organization, one part past experience, and one part improvisation.

What is misbehaviour?

Misbehaviour is defined as people (such as children) behaving inappropriately and there are several reasons why people misbehave. For children I feel it’s because they either want attention, power, are bored or just frustrated with a situation. I had an experience with a little girl misbehaving when I was volunteering at a preschool. It was clean up time and everyone started to put away the toys, but this girl didn’t want to clean up. She continued to play with the toys and when the teacher confronted her and asked her to clean up the girl pouted and said no. Then the girl continued playing and after a few minutes I went up to her and asked her to put away the toys, but again she said no. Finally the teacher decided to pull her aside and speak with her and then the girl began to clean up. In this situation I don’t feel the girl was crying out for attention, but I think she was frustrated because she didn’t know how to transition from play time to clean up time. And if the teacher gave up and let the girl continue to play, that would have given the girl power and she would feel like she could always do this.

This is why teachers need to calmly sit the child down and find out the problem. Once the teacher and child have talked through the problem, teachers needs to tell the child why the behaviour was wrong. This will help the child understand and hopefully help them avoid another situation from happening. But if the misbehavior continues, teachers may have to give warnings and then consequences to the children for them to understand and learn that their behaviour was wrong.

What is Misbehavior?

Misbehavior, the word cannot be defined with just a meaning. The standard of justifying whether the student’s behavior is misbehavior will vary from person to person and on individual situation. For example, interrupting lecture and asking question between the topics of the lecture can be a misbehavior that is not accepted in some class, but that can be encouraged behavior in other class.

Misbehavior can be classified depends on the intensity of misbehavior. First, there are certain misbehaviors that never allowed in any class such as lying, using violence, stealing, etc. Those must be justified as misbehavior and teacher is responsible to point out the behavior and correct them. Second, there are misbehaviors by student who has psychological disorder. Their inappropriate behaviors are seen as misbehavior in every people’s eyes but it is difficult to conclude whether their behavior is actual misbehavior. But, it is certainly true that teacher should point out the behavior and correct the behavior in special way. Third, there are behaviors that are really difficult to justify as misbehaviors. For example, a student is very interested in the subject that she is learning and keeps questioning. Sometimes she can be an example of good student to other students but other times her uncontrolled asking disturbs a lecture in class. Is her behavior misbehavior?

In my opinion, except the misbehaviors that I mentioned first, we should not justify their inappropriate behavior as misbehavior because every behavior of students is meaningful. Teacher should educate them as they study and understand their every behavior in natural way rather they label the children and force to correct the behavior.

What is Misbehaviour?

Misbehaviors are behaviors that disturb the classroom’s learning environment. There are many different types of misbehaviors, but most of them occur for the same purposes. According to Bennett and Smilanich, these four goals are “attention, power, revenge, and assumed disability.”

The most obvious one would be gaining attention through misbehaving. Students misbehave in order to gain attention because they believe that when others are paying attention to them, they are being acknowledged by others (B &S.) “Power” means students continue misbehaving even after the teacher asked them to stop. These students feel the need to be in control of a situation in order to feel important to others in the classroom. They also want the teacher to lose the authority in the classroom, therefore, they try not to listen to the teacher’s instructions. They want the teacher to feel embarrassed. According to Bennett and Smilanich, revenge means that the student only feels important when s/he is hurting someone physically or emotionally. The student hurts others in order to balance his/her own feelings of being hurt. Lastly, “assumed disability” refers to student’s feelings of helplessness. S/he is basically “invisible” because s/he does nothing except show up for the class (B&S.)

In order to prevent misbehaviors in the classroom, the teacher should create a belonging environment for all the students. When a teacher can successfully create the feeling of belonging for every student in the class, students would be able to connect to one another fairly well. Hence, the relationships between not only the students themselves, but between the teacher and the students would improve. By improving the relationships between everyone in the classroom, the students’ self-recognition should be improved as well. Once a student has improved his/her self-recognition, misbehaviors would not be the only way to “gain attentions.” Soon, s/he will realize that the best and most effective way to gain attention from the class is to behave good and have good relationships with one another.