How to Handle Bad Student

Behavior
1 year ago
 
Future Educators

A classroom brings together all sorts of students, both well and badly
behaved. The latter need special attention to usher them back on the path to
good behavior. If you’re having a tough time with certain students in your
class, try out the following strategies.

1. Bring difficult students close to you

Bring badly behaved students close to you. That is meant quite literally.
In a classroom setting, you’ll often find that the noisemakers and stubborn
elements tend to sit at the back of the class, which offers anonymity and gives
confidence to misbehave. Sitting such students at the opposite end of the
room, somewhere close to the teacher’s desk, makes them easily stand out
and deters such actions.

2. Talk to them in private

Calling out students in front of the class rarely proves helpful. It can breed
resentment and further indiscipline. Also, don’t blame or reduce students in
front of their friends. Rather, ask him/her to see you after the lesson, when
you can look to find out the underlying reason behind the behavior.
– Reasons for bad behavior –

Acting up can be indicative of family problems back home. For example, the
child’s parents may have divorced, meaning he or she is dealing with the
challenge of co-parenting arrangements or being separated from a parent.
Conflict can arise because issues to do with contact time and child support. Try
to hold back from judgment since the misbehaving child could be going
through some very difficult times in the background.
Children also misbehave out of a perceived need to impress peers. You could
tackle that with a real-life example of how acting out in class is not the best
solution. Rather, talking it out at the appropriate time is. While you’re at it, be
sure to explain why what they did is wrong and the negative consequences of
such actions.

3. Be the role model of the behavior you want

Enforcing rules in a classroom is hard if you don’t follow them yourself.
Besides having clear policies or rules in place, you should be the first to
practice what you preach. Otherwise, students will be inclined to follow your
examples instead of your words. If you reprimand students for lateness, for
example, be early every day.

4. Define right from wrong

At times, especially when dealing with young children, students might not
know what constitutes unacceptable class behavior. They might know that
playing “PokemonGo” in class is wrong or reading “Cinderella” in the middle of
a lesson is not allowed. Help make the line between right and wrong clear to
them.

5. Focus more on rewards than punishments

Students trying to avoid punishment is an effective strategy to ensure
everyone is on their best behavior. But rewards are a more productive
approach over the long run. Dangling the lure of incentives to students often
gives them that push to, not only steer clear of rule infringements, but put their
best foot forward.
Rewards could be anything from candy, a stuffed toy, or simple compliments
to acknowledge their efforts. You can also make classroom activities
so engaging that students don’t want to disrupt what is happening.

6. Adopt the peer tutor technique

No matter how friendly and accommodating you may try to be, sometimes a
misbehaving student needs the shoulder of a peer to lean on. That person
could be someone going through the same life experiences or simply a non-
authoritative figure.
Using the peer tutor technique, you pair the well-behaved student (the “tutor”)
with one not so well-behaved. While they are working on polishing their
academics, the “learner” can also be getting a lesson on proper personal
skills. It’s prudent you talk to the mentoring student and explain to him/her
what you aim to accomplish and what he/she can do to help.

7. Try to understand
Sometimes, a student may be construed to be rude when they are actually
abiding by a cultural practice or tradition. In some cultures, for example, it is
prohibited to look adults in the eye. So when you’re telling a student to do so
and is looking away or down at the ground, it might have something to do with
that.
Before you straight away label any action as bad behavior, first get to the root
of the matter. For all they know, you may be asking them to do something
contrary to what they believe is right or proper.
Last, but certainly not least, never give up on a seemingly stubborn student
who looks determined to work your every nerve. Don’t let up on the good fight
until it is won. Sometimes that takes minutes, other times it takes weeks. Be
patient and never let your frustrations get the better of you.

9 Reasons Why Students Misbehave

Author:
Yussif
Published:
June 8, 2019
Updated:
September 16, 2021

Affiliate Disclaimer

As an affiliate, we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases. We get

commissions for purchases made through links on this website from Amazon
and other third parties.

Effective learning takes place in an environment that is more conducive for

both the teacher and the students. But the actions and/or actions of students,
teachers, and other factors sometimes breed an environment that is not
suitable for effective teaching and learning within the classroom. In light of
this, we must understand why students misbehave in our classrooms. This will
help us improve our classroom management techniques.
Student misbehavior can be referred to as the actions and inactions of
students that distract the learning continuum in the classroom. Most
often these behaviors are negative attitudes such as students’ failure to
participate in activities, disrespect, excessive sociability, partial or
negated participation, etc. I believe that students misbehave because of
a student, teacher, and environmental/social factors.

Student and teacher behaviors, as well as other environmental or societal

issues, play an important role in effective learning in our classrooms. When
any of these is negated, then achieving effective learning will be challenging
for all stakeholders of education.

What is student misbehavior?

To move forward, I think it is proper for you to understand the meaning of
student misbehavior. This is necessary for you when putting your students’
behavior into context.

Student misbehavior can be defined as a student’s action or interaction

that disrupts or distracts the flow of the learning processes. That is any
behavior that is inappropriate in the classroom can be termed as
students’ misbehavior.

It is worthy to note that the issue of misbehavior is relative or a matter of

perspective. This means that it depends on how you perceive what
appropriate behavior is. Thus, what is misbehavior to you may be an
appropriate behavior to another person.

For example, what is considered misbehavior may largely depend on your

model of classroom management. Thus, an interventionist’s perspective of
misbehavior may be totally different from a noninterventionist’s point of view.

Also, your students are different individuals and therefore have different
personalities and backgrounds. With this, the concept of misbehavior may
vary greatly among them. For instance, students from different cultural
backgrounds will have different perspectives on misbehavior.

From the above, it is extremely important for you to clearly and

adequately define standards of behavior in your classroom. This is the
first thing for every teacher to do in his/her class.
Some Cases of Student Misbehavior
First, let’s consider the example below:

Mr. Fred is a grade seven English language teacher in a private school in

Turkey. His Friday lessons start in the morning between 8:40 am-9: 20 am.
He is always punctual in his lessons.

Levant is a member of Mr. Fred’s class. He always comes to school late. He

is always late to enter the classroom. When entering the class, Levant drags
his feet on the ground producing a disrupting noise in the class.

One day during Levant’s grand entry into the classroom, one of his friends
shouted: “stop what you are doing!” Hearing this, Levant rushed towards that
girl trying to hit her but his friends held them and stopped him.

This never seems to be the last from Levant. Now, Mr. Fred tried to continue
his lesson and asked Levant to bring out his homework. He replied, ‘I didn’t
do it’ Mr. Fred asked, ‘why?’ Levant said, “nothing.” Mr. Fred exclaimed, “that
is a zero.” Levant yelled, “I am not a machine; we have plenty of homework
from other teachers too.”

Mr. Fred continued his lesson. About 10 minutes later, Levant started
humming to himself. Mr. Fred stood in front of the class and shouted, “stop
making noise, Levant” and continued his lesson.

Levant stopped humming for a short while and started again. Mr. Fred
responded by shouting “stop the noise” and continue to answer another
student’s question.

This continued between Mr. Fred and Levant until the end of the lesson. And
this is how Levant has been behaving in Mr. Fred’s class. Mr. Fred is
frustrated and is looking for solutions to this behavior. What do you think are
some of the issues that account for the behavior of Levant? Leave your
answers in the comment section below.

Reasons Why Students Misbehave in Your Class

There are so many reasons why students misbehave in class. These are often
due to the following factors: a) student (b) teacher, and (c)
environmental/societal factors. These factors are discussed in detail below:
Student Factors

Student factors are those emanating from the student and his/her personality.
Some of these factors are;

1. Impulsivity: This is a personality factor that makes the student react

quickly to actions without much prior thought. That is, when the student faces
a situation, he/she spends less time thinking through it before putting up
responsive behavior.

This means the more prone students are to react quickly to issues without
thinking through them, the more they are likely to misbehave in class. Thus,
they are less likely to control themselves in situations.

Impulsivity is mostly caused by psychological disorders such as Disruptive

Behavior Disorder (DBD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD),
Attention/Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), etc. It is, however, important
to note that not all behavioral impulsiveness is a result of psychological
disorder.

2. Personal skill deficiency: This happens when the student lacks certain

skills that will help him/her cope with the classroom environment and/or other
students. For instance, when students lack personal skills such as empathy,
knowledge of desired social behavior, self-discipline, etc., they are more likely
to misbehave in the classroom.

3. Belief deficiency: The beliefs of students sometimes lead them to

misbehave in the classroom. These misbehaviors are classified here. For
example, some students believe that some courses/subjects are not important
in school, and because of that, they tend to put behaviors that are disruptive
against teachers of those courses. Misbehavior antecedents such as that are
considered a belief deficiency.

Teacher factors

These are the factors that emanate from the teacher’s actions and/or inactions
that result in students’ misbehavior. They are explained in details below;

1. Failure to teach effectively: I have mentioned earlier in my previous

articles that effective classroom management doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Of
course, you have to put in place a classroom setting that is conducive for your
students to achieve their educational and emotional needs.
Failure to do so will result in chaos that will impede all your teaching and
learning efforts. One of the ways to promote an environment that is suitable
for learning is for you to teach effectively.

For example, if you don’t plan your lessons adequately you will lose the expert
power you exercise over your students. This will reduce your control and
influence over happenings in your classroom.

For instance, if you don’t have extra materials to engage students who are
quick to finish their activities, they may get space to distract the class or their
colleagues. But if you plan to teach effectively, you will be able to find a way to
engage those students who will likely finish their activities quickly.

2. Inaccurate expectations: First, I have come across colleagues who just

expect the student to accept blindly all that they are saying. With this, some
teachers are quick to blame external factors like the parents of students for
their children’s misbehavior. This is inaccurate. Why?

Because this prevents you from actively thinking of a solution to your students’
behavior. It also degrades your relationships with students’ parents who
otherwise could be your partners in finding solutions to students’ misbehavior.

Second, you aim to train your students to become strong adults. But how do
they become strong adults? Most teachers’ perceptions of this question are
wrong. This is because strong adults don’t accept all that people tell them.

Students develop this behavior in their childhood. Thus, they will always try to
defend and stand for all that they believe in.

So, if you think your students are deliberately trying to frustrate you by not
listening to you or standing for what they believe, you will lose control of
yourself and your classroom. Now, the onus lies on you to work hard to find
ways of managing these behaviors effectively without squelching your
students’ development processes.

3. Inaccurate judgment: I think you want your students to grow to become

smart, well-adjusted, and strong. Thus, you want them to become
independent adults who can think and make decisions for themselves. But
you have to understand that these qualities are developed in the early years
of the student.
So, be careful not to exercise wrong judgment on your students’ behavior. For
example, don’t always scold your students for expressing their own will. Else,
you will squelch their strong will to become strong adults.

Also, don’t punish your student for an initial refusal or reluctance to do what
you have asked him/her to do. This is because they might end up making the
right choice of behavior if you insist on them.

Finally, if your student doesn’t listen to you it doesn’t mean you have failed as
a teacher. To be successful you only have to teach appropriate/proper
consequences. Thus, you are not to force your students to listen to you but
you are going to teach them the consequences of listening versus not
listening to you.

Therefore, your job is to determine beforehand the consequences for each set
of behavior in the classroom. This will guide your students in their behavior. If
you fail to do so you will likely lose the battle in the classroom. Also, if you
exercise wrong judgment and punish your students for everything they will
rebel and that will be more frustrating for you.

Environmental/Societal Factors

These are factors that are societal in nature but promote students’
misbehavior in the classroom. Below are some of these factors:

1. Family: Your students’ family setup affects their behavior in school. This

could be a reason why one of your students will misbehave in the classroom.
For example, a student from a broken home is likely to misbehave more than
any student whose parents are still together. Also, students from awful and
poor upbringing are likely to several problems that will make them misbehave
in the classroom.

So, your knowledge of all these should help you understand your students
and to manage their behavior appropriately.

2. Sociability: The desire of your students to interact with others may lead

them to misbehave. This may occur due to peer pressure and/or a desire to
impress others. With this, students are more interested in their friends such
that they will choose to misbehave. Also, due to their interactions with others
during break time, their communication will continue into the classroom.

So, understanding this will help you put in place adequate steps to limit the
tendencies of this factor.

3. Other responsibilities/works: If your students have other responsibilities

to carry out outside school, it may become a reason for their misbehavior.
Thus, these students will have other things to worry about and this may limit
the attention they give to classroom activities and tasks.

For example, a heavy work schedule, relationships, and/or financial problems

may force your students to misbehave. These responsibilities will put much
pressure on students to misbehave.

Therefore, you need to understand and be aware of these behavioral

tendencies to help your students cope with the classroom environment.

How to Deal with Student Misbehavior

I think it is possible to prevent student misbehavior in the classroom. This can
be done through the following:

 You can effectively reduce student misbehavior by giving effective

single-action commands.
 If you are capable of giving effective warnings, you will effectively
prevent student misbehavior.
 There is no classroom without flare-ups and tantrums, so your ability to
handle them will reduce misbehavior significantly.
 Instituting behavioral contracts is an effective way to help you improve
your management of behavioral problems.
 Your ability to manage and reduce misbehavior will highly be dependent
on your ability to manage transitions effectively.
 You will also have to discourage interruptions effectively.
 Improved behavior in out-of-class settings
 Develop an effective homework routine.

I will discuss how to achieve all the above in my subsequent articles. So,
make sure to follow me, and don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter.

Conclusion
It is clear from the above that several factors account for the misbehavior of
students in the classroom. These factors could emanate from the actions
and/or inactions of students, teachers, and external factors.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]