Level 2

Students will eventually step out of line. It is an inevitability. However, the classroom needs to be a place where healthy recovery occurs. In essence, when students step out of line what are some effective techniques for regaining control?

1. Proximity - A teacher's presence can do a lot in recovering behavior. It is non-punitive and is based on a respect factor. When a student is off task, increasing the proximity to the student allows the instructor to regain control without drawing unnecessary attention to the situation.

2. Eye contact - While lecturing, it is not uncommon to find students who are off task. A lot of this sort of behavior can be solved through non-verbal techniques such as making eye-contact with the student. If the foundation of the class is built upon mutual respect, then the eye contact will serve as great way to fix behavior.

3. Affirming positive behavior - Another way to recover behavior is to affirm the behavior that you like seeing in the classroom. Instead of drawing negative attention to uncouth behavior, you can instead draw attention to the positive behavior, which sets the example for behavior (Denton, 2018).

4. Offering access to classroom materials - Not all forms of recovery involve negative behavior. Sometimes recovery options need to be available to students who missed information, whether via absences or some other form information gap. Giving students access to class materials like PowerPoints allows for students to recover on their own time with the guidance of classroom support (Albert, 1996).

5. Offering time outside of class - While all instructors need breaks of some sort, it is important to remember that their primary purpose is to serve students, and sometimes that can manifest itself in the form of offering time to work with students outside of a given class period. This can function similarly to office hours at the college level, but the important thing is that students need to feel like they have extra access to the instructor outside of class if they need to.

6. Acceptance of late work - A single instructor is contending with the 5 other instructors for the attention of a single student. If a classroom is built upon the notion of mutual respect, an instructor must sometimes check their ego. Late work is often the product of multiple assignments given in multiple classes at the same time. An instructor should not feel slighted if an assignment is turned in late if it meets the standards of the assignment. An understanding should be observed that sometimes time does not work in favor of the students.

7. Offering alternative assignments - Not all assignments are adequately designed to meet the needs of every type of learner. Often times that can be reflected in a grade, but it can also open a dialogue between the instructor and the student to help create assignments that are conducive to their learning. Measurement of learning outcomes is the most important aspect of learning, and if an objective is demonstrably met, then an appropriate grade should be given regardless of the original assignment. (Curwin and Mendler, 1999).

8. Offering forms of remediation - An instructor's purpose is to ensure that content is being learned. Often times content can be esoteric to certain students, but accessible to others. When a concept builds upon a prior concept, the last thing an instructor should want is to dissuade a student from pursuing mastery over a concept. This compounds the initial problem and does not allow a student to adequately recover. Options like test retakes allow a student to demonstrate content knowledge and allow a student to actively participate in new learning even if the old learning took longer than expected (Kagan, Kyle, Scott, 2004).