Like most secondary teachers, I’ve struggled with finding the right high school discipline strategies for my classroom. If I’m honest, discipline has never been my strong suit, but I have learned (sometimes the hard way) some techniques that actually work for me and have made my teaching life easier. I’ll share my insights on these high school discipline techniques below and I’d love to hear feedback from other teachers on their go-to classroom management strategies.

1. Build Relationships – Show You Care

This may be an obvious strategy to most teachers, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to build a positive rapport with your students. When students know you care about them, they respond better to your teaching and classroom rules.

Obviously, this strategy is proactive and will require you to make a daily effort to really get to know your students. I try to walk around every class period and ask personal questions of each student. I try to make the questions specific because teens can be vague and elusive. Instead of asking, “How was your weekend?” I might say, “What was the last good movie you saw?”. I also look for conversation starters based on the student’s possessions. For instance, if a student has a Cubs shirt on, I may ask if they’ve ever been to a game or if they have a favorite player. If they are reading a book, I may ask them what types of books they enjoy reading or would recommend. Showing you care about their interests and value their opinions is a great way to build relationships.

I also make an effort to inject humor into my interactions with students. Whether it’s through funny memes or groan-worthy jokes, I want to make the classroom a space where it is safe to be a little goofy. That also helps students feel relaxed and more willing to open up.

Finally, I make sure my students know I am here to listen to them. I’ve been a shoulder to cry on and an open ear to many of my students who were going through issues from a bad break up to a parent’s passing. I always let them know they have a safe space to talk through these things with me, but I also stress that any serious issues will need to also be shared and followed up with our administration.

Relationship building is so essential to the success of every other initiative in your classroom, but it’s even more than that. It’s also so enjoyable to get to know your students and to build the kind of mentoring relationship that will allow you to help them grow and succeed both in and beyond high school. It’s as rewarding for a teacher as it is for the student.

2. Don’t Jump to Conclusions

You know that old saying about what happens when you assume? Well it can apply to teachers as well. Sometimes we are hard-wired to assume a student is trying to pull one over on us because, often times, they are. Jumping to conclusions, however, can possibly damage positive relationships and create an embarrassing situation for you or the student. For example, one time I heard a digital notification in my classroom that sounded like a phone. I immediately stopped what I was doing, walked to where I heard the sound, and demanded the student turn over their phone. As it turns out, it was not their phone that made the sound, but rather a digital insulin monitor. Even though it was an honest mistake, I felt horrible and I know the student had to be embarrassed.

Here is how I could have addressed the situation better: I could have reminded the students as a whole that phones needed to be off. I could then pull the student aside when the class started to work and ask them if they accidentally left their phone on. This would show that I don’t automatically assume the worst of my students and it avoids the embarrassment of disciplining in front of the other students.

Now, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean you always believe anything a student says. If you’ve given a student a warning, they are doing something dangerous, or are chronically abusing a rule, they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt. That said, it doesn’t hurt to start from a position of trust.

3. Use Classroom Management that Puts the Student in Charge

This is a strategy that requires a leap of faith, but whenever I’ve implemented it, my life’s gotten easier. This strategy recognizes that students are capable of self-discipline and can handle the responsibilities and privileges that go along with that. This is not to say that there won’t be certain students who still can’t manage themselves and will lose the privilege. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t monitor students. In fact, this strategy can often create more detailed records of student activities and behavior with less work on your part.

You can give students more responsibility in a number of ways but you can get the greatest success through the establishment of classroom norms and routines. It might be as simple as having a work portal on your learning management system that they are responsible for checking daily and can refer to if they missed a day. You may even structure each class period the same with scheduled activities the students need to accomplish before the end of each day (a checklist works well for students to track this). You may flip the classroom and make students responsible for watching instructional videos outside of class before addressing a topic in class. Whatever you do, make sure there is a record that they can keep and that you periodically check.

I’ve found a lot of success from a bathroom pass policy I’ve implemented that allows students to monitor themselves. Even though they fill out a sign-out form, I monitor it to make sure students are gone appropriate amounts of time and aren’t abusing the privilege. Because they can choose to leave at any time it’s made for less interruptions during class time and students like the extra freedom.

4. Allow Emotions but Not Distractions

No one is perfect and we’ve all had rough days. For teens who lack impulse control and may not understand how to process their emotions, this can result in somewhat melodramatic reactions and even anger and lashing out. It’s important as an educator to remember not to take this personally, but still make sure the student knows what is acceptable behavior in your classroom.

If a student responds in an irrational, angry, or rude way, don’t immediately cut them off because it can make them even more argumentative and defensive. Instead, calmly allow them to finish their thought before responding. Then acknowledge that they are feeling frustrated and that is okay, but remind them that it is never acceptable to to be disrespectful, even if they are upset. Once they are calm, ask them why they are upset and remind them that you are here to listen, or offer to contact their counselor if they don’t want to talk to you. If discipline is necessary, follow through, but make sure they know their actions were the problem and not their emotions.

It’s important to remove a student whose emotions cause them to be a distraction or students who are overly rude and aggressive. Depending on the case, you may choose to send the student to guidance or the principal’s office. In less extreme cases, you might just ask them to take a walk to the bathroom to clear their head.

5. Don’t Argue but Do Follow Through

It is pointless to argue with a teenager. Let me say that again. It is pointless to argue with a teenager. If you try, you are just wasting everyone’s time.

Instead of arguing, have clear and consistent consequences for student’s actions. If they want to argue over those consequences, calmly state that it’s not up for discussion. Don’t take a sarcastic or angry tone, but make sure to model a calm and respectful demeanor. You may have to repeat yourself, but make sure you just calmly reiterate that you will not argue over the issue.

If the student won’t take no for an answer, send them to the office. You can’t take time out of your class to argue. You will hopefully only have to do this a few times before students realize you intend to follow through on rules and it’s pointless to argue about it.

High School Discipline Strategies

So there you go, my top five strategies for managing discipline in my classroom. As you can see, most come down to respect, caring, and consistency. It’s also important to stress that no one strategy will always be successful because we’re working with people and people are complicated. Adjust your techniques and reassess situations as needed.

It’s also important to realize that you’ll probably make mistakes as a teacher because you’re only human as well. Don’t expect perfection from yourself and go easy on yourself if you make a mistake. As long as you keep trying, that’s all that matters. And anyway, the beauty of teaching is you always get another chance each year to improve what you do.

I hope you find some of these tips encouraging. I’d love to hear from you other seasoned teachers about what works best in your classrooms. Feel free to comment below and good luck on another upcoming school year. Hopefully this will be your best yet!