How to Discipline Students as a Substitute Teacher

A substitute teacher has many of the responsibilities of a teacher who sees the students on a daily basis, but not the advantage of knowing the students or being in charge of grades. Students may use the presence of a substitute to see what they can get away with. As a substitute, it's important that you go into the classroom fully prepared to deal with discipline issues.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. After greetings, roll call and an overall introduction, let the students know the rules and consequences of your class. Be clear that it's your class today, and what the teacher normally does will probably differ from the way your class is run.

2. Speak in a confident, commanding voice. Practice your teaching voice several times into a recorder. Make sure that you sound in control. A weak, mousy voice will give students the wrong idea about how the class will run. If you speak like someone in authority, students often realize that's the case.

3. Start whispering the assignment if a classroom is loud. When students refuse to be quiet or pay attention, this is a great attention grabber. Those who do not hear your whispering lose out on the assignment and the grade. The discipline should be followed through. Don't repeat anything whispered after the first 30 seconds. That provides the students with plenty of time to be quiet.

4. Write a sentence on the board at the start of the day. Tell the students that, if any part of the sentence remains of the board in the last twenty minutes of the day, you will all play a game together. If the sentence is no longer on the board, the students will be required to copy sentences or other less fun task. Stick to your promise. Start to erase letters from the sentence anytime the class gets loud or if anybody misbehaves. You'll be surprised how students will start to discipline one another in this scenario.

5. Try positive reinforcement. Give praise and attention for good behavior. Those who act out in order to gain attention will have to go about it another way.

6. Ignore students who are doing something silly that doesn't cause too much of an interruption to working students. You'll soon see if the person is someone who will continue to worsen in behavior until corrected.

7. Announce to the students that you are taking names of the badly behaved to give to the teacher. You can choose to leave that list for the teacher or throw it away at the end of the day, depending on how the class behaves.

8. Reason with students. If someone is writing on his desk, explain how that damages property. Explain who pays for the desk, the trees that were sacrificed to create the desk and why it should be respected. Chances are, this will bore him or awaken him to realize the truth. Sometimes students will do things without even thinking of the consequences. If you explain things to a student in a way that she can understand, she will treat you with more respect.

Tips & Warnings

• Praise students who are well-behaved. Giving the good kids all the attention will inspire others to act accordingly.
• No matter how bad it gets, you'll lose your job--and the respect of your students--if you lose your cool.

Who Can Help Sponsored

• Earn your degree from industry experts at University of Phoenix. Take the next step in your career.

[pandalove]

on 9/9/2009 VERY GOOD TIPS!