The number one thing you have to prioritize with the boys in your class is relationship above all else. It is not pedagogy, it is not lesson prep, it is not the structure of your classroom, although all of those things are important. You have to prioritize relationships. If a boy does not trust you, does not think that you believe in him or if he does not feel safe with you he is never going to learn from you.
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It does not matter how smart that boy is, if he does not perceive that you have his back and you are on his side, he is going to diminish his ability to learn based on the relationship that he perceives. So what we need to focus on with boys is to develop deep connected relationships and engagement and behavior will then tend to take care of itself. When a boy cares about his teacher, he will go out of his way to behave and to moderate his behavior in the classroom for the sake of the relationship.
Boys have a very strong affinity to maternal figures because you know, that for the first five years they are very attached to their mums and so when they perceive, especially with female teachers, a maternal figure, they go out of their way to protect the person that is protecting them and caring for them. They want to protect that relationship, so it’s really important that you take the time to build that deep connectedness with your boys.
John Maxwell says this, “They do not care what you know until they know how much you care.”
This has to be your number one priority. Get them to realize that you care about them, that you want them in your class, that you have their back and you believe in them. There was a study done with schools in Canada to prioritize relationships over control. What they asked their teachers to do was, to learn the names of each student and every time they came across a student, to have a 60-second encounter with that student by saying, “Hello.” They needed to greet them by name, ask them how they were and then stop long enough to hear the response. So they would say, ”Hi Johnny how are you?” Then wait for a response. It was not a long engagement but it was meaningful. The teacher actually took the time to take an interest in the student and what they found was that disruptive behavior in the class reduced by almost 80 percent. It had a profound effect on behavior when the students believed that teachers actually cared about them.
So, I want you to think about that for a moment. Think about all the interactions you have with your boys throughout the day and ask yourself, “Is this helping me build positive, mutually respectful relationships with my boys”? If it is not, then that is where you need to start to change the way you engage with your boys. One of the keys to building relationship with boys is understanding that boys are easily shamed. They are very sensitive to public humiliation and public humiliation can happen in a couple of different ways.
You have to be really mindful that you are not playing into this “shameophobia”. When you publicly humiliate, berate or single out a boy for their behavior, what you are doing is inviting them to respond. They have to save face -especially older boys. If they are concerned about how their peers perceive them, and if you humiliate them, they will go out of their way to humiliate you. This is often when boys can display some of their worst behaviors because they feel humiliated and they feel like they have to save face in front of their peers.
The other way that you can sometimes make a boy feel shame or feel embarrassed is by praising them too much in front of their peers. Very often boys do not like to be praised in public, they like to be praised in private. Praise is very powerful and it is very important to use with boys but you have got to be judicious about how you use it. Sometimes you can give a boy a certificate at assembly and he can come back to class and give you his worst behavior because that perception of, ” I am being favored by the teacher” can get him into trouble in the playground and so he does not want to stand out. Boys want to fit in. Just be mindful of this.
Sometimes you have got to use private praise; write a note, send an email home, call mum or pull him aside at the end of the lesson and let him know you saw what he was doing. Both with praise and with correction, try to do it privately. Sit down beside his desk when you want to talk to him about his behavior rather than calling out from the other side of the room. The same goes for praise. Go over to their desk and talk to them quietly so that they know that you see their behavior is good but they do not feel embarrassed. This is really important if you are going to build relationships.
Boys Need to Know Who is in Charge
Boys are also very keen to know who is in charge. They are attuned to hierarchies and they are always asking the question in their mind, “Who is the boss? Who is in charge?” If boys perceive or believe that you are not in control of the classroom or they do not respect your authority in the classroom, very often they will start to undermine your authority or try to take control. So you have got to be really careful that you are not inviting power struggles with boys because generally speaking there is nothing you can do that will be worse than what they can do to you.
These power struggles in the class can often end very badly and so it is really important that you learn strategies for dealing with power struggles in ways that do not escalate significantly. They want to know if they are safe with the person in charge, so if you are a relief teacher, do not walk into the class like a drill sergeant. If you walk into the class like a drill sergeant what you are telling them is, I am not going to take the time to get to know you or to respect you, I am just going to start barking at you and instantly you will attract the boys who want to control you.
Therefore, it is really important that you can be strict and be firm but take a kind and respectful approach with the boys. If they can see that they are safe with you, that you are not just going to tear their heads off the minute they speak up, then they will start to trust you and they will let you be in charge. You have to let them give you authority in the class; do not try and take it from them because if you try to, it will always end badly. Make them feel safe. Show them that you are going to protect them and they will give you the authority.
Back in the day when I was in school and some of you might be old enough to remember this too, we had the cane and this is what happened with a lot of boys who misbehaved; they would be sent to the principal’s office for the cane. I got the first cane when I was in Grade One and it continued through my school life. The school would call my mom and then they would tell her what I had been doing and so when I got home, my mom would have a conversation with me or my dad would have a conversation with me about my behavior. It did not matter how much I complained about my teacher or said “You know, I do not like my teacher” or “My teacher was treating me badly,” my parents always tended to say to me, “It does not matter whether you like your teacher, you must respect your teacher.
There use to be a sense of respect for authority that does not exist now. A great many kids come to school not being taught to respect their teachers but being taught that they do not have to respect their teachers unless the teacher earns it. So if you are from a similar time in schooling like I was, where you were taught to respect your teachers, maybe you expect children to respect you as well and that can be very counterproductive because when you are dealing with kids who do not understand respect the way that you do, you have to do something called modelling.
Respect for the teacher’s authority is not reinforced from home like it used to be and so you have got to take the approach that says “I have to earn their respect. I can not assume that they are going to respect me.” Now I will say this, you deserve to be respected and I do not actually agree that you should have to earn it but that is the reality of the world that we work and live in.
When you have the expectation that says, “I am going to have to earn the respect of my students by the way that I treat them,” you are not going to be so disappointed when they treat you in a manner that is less than you expect. Things like shouting continually, humiliating, making fun of a student, shaming them or making an example of them and giving them long lectures are all counter productive ways of managing difficult boys. All it will do is cause them to confront you, escalate the situation, refuse to listen and it does not teach them how to develop character.
The only thing that teaches character is “modeling;” for example, if you want to earn their respect you have to show them what respect looks like, even when it is not deserved. I am going to say that again. You have to show them what respect looks like even when it’s not deserved. That means you have to model how to talk to somebody who is upsetting you, you have to model forgiveness, patience or self-control because if you want your students to do that for you, then they need to see you do it for them first. So, to do that you have to be really careful that you are not taking the opinions of other teachers into the classroom and letting that affect the way that you teach these students.
You have to make sure that you give them all a fresh start. Boys have great BS detectors. They know when you care about them and when you do not. They want to know how much you actually care about them. Boys’ behavior is firstly driven by a need to test the authenticity of the person they are being asked to trust. If they do not believe that they can trust you, you will never have their respect, it is as simple as that.
You have to be trustworthy, kind and dependable for boys to respect you.
Boys Love Humor
The other relationship-building strategy that you can use is humor. Boys love humor, but avoid sarcasm. Sarcasm does not work, it is a form of humiliation, so be careful with sarcasm.
High Fives & Fist Bumps
Another strategy is physical touch; high fives, handshakes or fist bumps will work too. Boys are very physical when they communicate affection. This is why boys are always barging into each other and pushing each other over; they are communicating affection with their friends. So you can use appropriate physical interactions with boys to communicate that you like them.
Give Them A Heads Up
Also, give them the inside track; let them think that they know something special about what’s coming up, give them the secret source of what is coming up after the break and they will think that they are really special.
Let Them Be The Hero
Give them opportunities to get up in class and talk about what they care about; let them show how much they know because they will thank you. They all want to be important and if you can help them to feel important, even if the topic is not what you are teaching, they will actually reward you with good behaviour.
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