Is Classroom Management...DEAD???!

Charles Alexander
Jan 12
6 min read

The experts that publish the Oxford Dictionary define management as "the process of dealing with or controlling things or people". I would have agreed wholeheartedly with this definition as it applied to a classroom full of students and other teachers when I first started teaching "a century ago" (as I say to my middle schoolers in the hope of boggling their minds around the idea that I began teaching before the year 2000!) But is it still a valid concept in 2025? Let's take a closer look.

First of all, the concept of classroom management relies on three core assumptions.

The use of differentiated instruction and other best practices means that we have classrooms where all students do what we expect all of the time.

First, classroom management strategies tend to center around instructional frameworks. Student choice, do-nows, differentiation, accommodations, protocols are all excellent and important ways of engaging students. What happens, however, if there is a student (or a handful of students) that loudly refuse(s) to start the assignment? What if students are late to class, then stop to talk to their friends instead of finding their seats and getting to work right away? I'm sure that you all can imagine any of a wide variety of scenarios that could quickly flip your carefully-crafted classroom narrative to the negative at the drop of a hat.

What happens then? In the moment, we are managing the situation, being careful not to say or do anything that can cause it to escalate, projecting calm to the class so that others stay focused, and trying to manage our own emotions all at once.

You may be thinking "But, there are consequences for these actions." Of course there are. Do students respond to them in a way that gets them to change thinking and behavior in and of themselves? Do we feel like good "managers" when we need to resort to the same interventions multiple times and the behaviors persist?

There is a binary of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" classroom behaviors.

The cover of the book MADNESS by Antonia Hylton.

I just finished reading the book MADNESS by Antonia Hylton. The book is a powerful history of a mental health hospital that was set up in the early 20th Century in the state of Maryland. In the racially-segregated southern United States of the time, the hope was that all patients of color could be housed in the same facility. While the grim realities of the books' time and place made this a profoundly difficult read, two stories echo some modern-day classroom challenges.

First, a Crownsville staffer Hylton interviewed said that she was walking on hospital grounds one day talking with a patient, when, out of the blue, the patient punched the therapist in the face. The staff member, who was left physically and emotionally hurt by the incident because she thought she had been making inroads in their treatment, asked her patient why they had attacked her. The patient calmly answered that in their upbringing, they were regularly beaten by parents and other caregivers. The patient shared that after the beatings they were told, "I only hit you because I love you", so their punch was meant to be a sign of affection.

Second, several stories were told about people with no histories or diagnoses of mental illness were detained at Crownsville. People could be "committed" for public drunkenness or, simply for being "noncompliant". One involved a black Londoner who was a professional jockey. He ended up being put in a car by police in Baltimore and taken to Crownsville because he was on the streets "looking confused" and "was believed to be using a fake accent". The driver that brought him there for detainment bragged that he had been given $25 to bring him to the hospital. He stayed at Crownsville for 27 years.

We spend a lot of time working on classroom norms and expectations, particularly at the beginning of the school year. In fact, we often revisit and review them after long breaks away from school, like the one many of us just enjoyed. This, of course, is extremely important and well-spent time. However, doing so may set the expectation that every possible scenario or outcome we might see in our class spaces has been accounted for. Unfortunately, our students' lived experience may be, and often differs widely from our own. This means, of course, we can't possibly cover everything we will encounter throughout the school day in our classrooms. Suppose a student, every time they travel somewhere in the building, does so by running as fast as they can? How often have children gotten in trouble in our classes because they were "noncompliant" with our directions? At its worst, the paradigm that "good kids" do what they're told and "bad kids" don't is harmful and needs to change.

Teachers know everything they need to know about "where a student is" in terms of their physical, social, and emotional needs as classes begin.

We take everyone to the bathroom and are sure to let everyone get a drink of water. We have breakfast. Calming tunes lilt from our whiteboards. Then...someone who we didn't notice has turned ashen is suddenly vomiting on the classroom floor. Another may be throwing and breaking their materials because they just found out that we have indoor recess today. Still another sleeps on a mattress on the floor in their home with a toddler that kicks them all night, so they've had no rest. Attempts to control student behaviors almost universally backfire, because many behaviors are the result of students' unmet needs. And, since me telling them to "get to work", "sit down", or "try to focus" rarely meets those needs, the behaviors may often escalate. Add trauma, brains that decode language differently than ours do, and sensory needs the children themselves might not yet be aware of...and we may have several students that simply aren't ready to learn in spite of all of our planning.

Children have the same range of emotions that we do, without the full maturity needed to manage them, so there will be disproportionate emotional responses to the things already mentioned that we see with mature brains as innocuous. Treating children the way we would adults is often a recipe for dysregulation."Management" as we know it, does't work. Very little in my collegiate teacher training prepared me for this kind of day-to-day classroom work in 2025. Fortunately, Social and Emotional Learning programs and other interventions are helping students to have language and appropriate strategies when they may not be sure what they need, or how to respond in that moment. What "worked for me when I was in school" doesn't fly anymore (if it ever actually did...!). One thing I'm absolutely sure of: "classroom management" doesn't describe what I do. For some of our kids, the seemingly simple act of "just" sitting and listening quietly for a few minutes is a monumental challenge for a variety of reasons. How do we get to a place where our understanding of student needs allows us to center learning rather than managing?

We need new language around what we do to engage, empower, and enable all students to do their best learning our class. Something beyond New Age-y euphemism or toxic positivity buzzwords. Something that more accurately acknowledges and honors 21st Century educational practices--what we're already doing day in and day out. More importantly, how can we shift our thinking to this understanding if we're not already there?

What can I do right now?

Let me say that I am still learning how to do these things consistently and well. I am not an expert. But, I'm making inroads and I'm noticing positive changes, which is why I'm sharing my insight. Like anything that involves human nature, these will take time, patience, tweaking, and reflection. OK, here goes!

First, change any thinking that needs adjusting around why behaviors happen in your classroom. It's rarely about us, but our reaction to it can often cause escalation. Students that act out need our help in ways that they may not be able to express in words for a variety of reasons. Start to replace the idea of "so and so is just a BAD KID" or "they're just doing that to get attention" in any internal dialogues with "what can I discover to help so and so in situations like this?" as much as possible. Second, pay attention to what happens in your body when your emotions start to escalate in response to classroom behaviors. I'll talk more about this next Sunday, but take deep breaths and ask for a colleague to step in if you need a break. Lastly, think about the questions you ask. If they start with 'why' ('Why did you hit that student with the toy?', 'Why haven't you started your work?', etc.), try leading with 'I' statements ('I notice...', and 'I wonder', for example), then add supportive questions. "I noticed that you haven't started your work. Is there something that you need (I had a student that simply didn't have a pencil when I asked this question--how often in the past would I have let that student have it for not having a pencil?!) or something I can help with?' 'How is your morning going? Do you need a minute? How can I help?' go a long way. Often, when a student hears from a teacher, they expect that they are "in trouble". Fortunately, we are in charge of that narrative!