By teacher guest blogger Kathryn Rose

Most teachers have watched the “ripple effect” in action even if they don’t recognize the term.

Let’s paint a picture.

It starts with a day that feels off. It’s the middle of the year and the school day is in full swing. The students know all your classroom rules and procedures but everyone has gotten a little too comfortable with each other. Masks are itchy and math feels like a slog. On this day it is a student who just can’t take it anymore. Math is not their favorite subject and recess is just too far away. The disruptions begin. It could be whining. It could be giggling in the back or spitballs from the corner. Other students begin to laugh and you sense a potential classroom management crisis. You immediately try to root out the problem, disciplining the disruptive student quickly.

The behaviors might stop for a spell but your quick response doesn’t quite have the intended effect. Other students have now taken up the torch and instead of having one disgruntled or giggling student, you have a pack

What went wrong?

This is the ripple effect, a term coined in the 1950s by psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump. In their study, they observed that when teachers respond with strict disciplinary measures in response to one student’s behavior it may encourage other students to exhibit the same misbehaviors.

I know from firsthand experience that the ripple effect is a classroom management monster that loves to rear its ugly head in the dead center of the school year. It also happens to be a surefire way to watch a carefully crafted classroom management plan crack and crumble.

For the record, I completely understand that classroom management is a sensitive subject for teachers at any point in their careers. According to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, more than half of new teachers do not feel prepared to deal with disruptive students, citing a lack of preparation in their university classes and training programs. The truth is that for many new teachers, classroom management is a skill that is acquired through the lived experience of their first few years of teaching.

However, this lack of preparation comes at a cost with some teachers, who report that they lose over 144 minutes of instructional time due to dealing with weekly behavioral disruptions. A lack of classroom management leads to quick burnout for both students and teachers.

So, how can this observable phenomenon be avoided?

In my experience, the answer lies in how teachers try to foster relationships with their students and how they balance that relationship against discipline and content requirements. The good news is that relationships are always a work in progress and classroom management can always be redirected when student connections are a central value to the educator.

Greet students at your door each morning. It might seem like a small thing, but by individually greeting students first thing every day, teachers can set a positive tone for each of their students. It’s also an opportunity to check in on students who might be bringing outside frustrations into your classroom. A quick conversation in the morning may just keep a student from completely derailing in the afternoon.

Maintain and nurture personal relationships with your students. Relationships that are not actively nurtured deteriorate over time. It can be hard to not be burdened by the constant demands of classroom teaching. It is a hard job. However, maintaining the foundational work you put into getting to know your students at the beginning of year will carry them through to the end.

Find ways to regularly nurture these critical relationships. This maintenance might look like one-on-one time and encouragement when a student shares important creative work or ideas. It could be encouraging student-led activities that are enriching and that allow them to share their personal interests. Or maybe it’s asking open-ended questions at the end of the day that require reflective listening and validation from you. Most importantly, make sure to always acknowledge good behavior in a consistent and encouraging way.

Contact guardians when problems persist. If a student continually struggles with disruptive behavior, it can weaken ongoing day-to-day interactions and breed misunderstandings or unnecessary conflict. When this happens, it is important to be in contact with their guardians and to focus on student-led solutions that can bring both of you into a better relationship.

Empathize. It can be beyond hard to show empathy for a disruptive student when your own nerves have been twisted into knots over the course of a day. Trying to acknowledge your own stress and frustrations while still deeply listening to the student is an important part of building a solid relationship.

Start fresh each day. As with any profession, teachers have the option to let go and start each day with a fresh perspective and attitude. I will be the first to say that this can seem like an impossible task -- especially during these particularly stressful times. But when it comes to classroom management, I have realized that a mid-year approach has to look different than how I show up at the beginning of the year.

Entire classrooms can have bad days and sometimes a gentle nudge in the right direction, a little bit of extra recess, or a student-led project that brings everyone joy can do an awful lot to change the direction of a year. Effective classroom management starts when students feel like they belong. When students feel like they belong, they are more likely to succeed academically- and that’s a ripple effect we would like to see!

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About Kathryn Rose

Kathryn Rose is currently a virtual tutor and a museum resource teacher. She also freelances for businesses and startups in the education field. She has taught at her city’s botanic garden for 12 years and has been a Social Studies teacher in both private and public schools.