Accountability Without Escalation

Kids want to know, when they do something wrong, that they can recover. I've found that it's important for me to remind myself of this truth lately to help keep me responding in constructive ways while also holding students accountable for their actions. Here are two concrete strategies for de-escalating a situation and helping students to solve problems, while still acknowledging and holding students accountable for problematic behaviors: one for classes as a whole, and one for individual students.

Whole Class Response: The Reset Count

There's a good chance you've heard of this strategy or seen another teacher use it- maybe, like me, you used to use it and forgot about it- but I pulled it out with a second grade class a couple of weeks ago on a whim after not using it for a few years and it has been amazing. When there are a lot of students that are "off" in one way or another (a bunch of kids start calling out at once, kids are playing instruments when they're not supposed to, they're all distracted, a bunch of them are not controlling their bodies, etc), I say something like "wait a minute this isn't right, I gotta turn around and count to 3 and when I turn back around I'll have my star students back", then turn away from the class, count to 3, then turn back around. I have done this when I seriously thought there was maybe 1 student who actually heard me, and it still worked- and it turns a situation into an opportunity for them to get each other back on track instead of me telling them to. This one works best with younger students but depending on the age, I would recommend it up through 3rd grade at least.

Individual Response: Whoops

Sometimes the answer is as simple as me saying "whoops!" to assure a student that you don't hate them while acknowledging that whatever happened wasn't right. So imagine a student goes to the bathroom in the middle of class and when they return, comes running back into the room and crashes into their chair, swinging their arm and hitting the person next to them in the process. One response I have given, in my moments I am less proud of, is something like "what do you think you're doing running in here, you know you're supposed to walk, look what you did- you hurt so-and-so! you need to say sorry, then you need to go sit out and don't you ever ask to leave the room in the middle of class again!". That generally results in the student getting angry, and often ends up with them getting more escalated, leading to more problems I then have to address. A whoops response, in my better moments, goes more like "whoops!", then I wait. Most of the time the student will apologize to the other student, apologize to me, then walk themselves back over to the door and enter the room appropriately (sometimes they don't and then I point out what happened, and again, they are usually much more likely to apologize on their own). Then everyone moves on. The same response works when a student blurts out something rude, plays an instrument without permission, etc- and this strategy I find effective at all ages.

Neither of these are groundbreaking new ideas, but they can be life changing, and when patience runs thin it's important for us to remind ourselves that these responses will always produce better results long-term than immediately "coming down hard" on someone (and believe me, I'm saying this to myself just as much as I am to others!).