Administering consequences Teachers upheld behavioral expectations by administering one of

several consequences. Sometimes they gave explicit warnings to point out and reprimand students’ misbehavior so as to make students aware of what was and was not appropriate. During one class, for example, Mr. Frank cautioned a group of students, “Guys, last warning. Silently take notes and raise your hand if you have a question” (Recording, May 12, 2014). In this instance, he explicitly gave a warning to students who were not acting according to expectations; he then restated the expectation in order to quell subsequent, similar misbehavior. A warning often prevented further misbehavior; the self-consciousness associated with public recognition for their disruption seemed to encourage them to stay on task. Students who continued to misbehave or chose to ignore the warning typically prompted teachers to choose a more severe consequence.

Among more severe consequences, teachers sometimes moved students to another desk or location in the classroom. Teachers would instruct students to swap desks in order to separate peers that were distracting one another. For instance, Ms. Babkin had designed her classroom to include adjacent spaces away from the rest of the students but within earshot of the lesson. Ms. Babkin consistently sent disruptive students to this area because “certain kids…needed to be moved at that moment. I feel like all my kids care about learning so much that if they saw a student move [seats] like that, they would realize you’re wasting class time and maybe that would motivate them in the moment” (Personal Interview, June 23, 2014). She recognized that moving disruptive students sent a clear message to both them and the remaining students to behave appropriately but she wanted misbehaving students to still have opportunities to continue learning.

91 As part of this consequence, teachers typically had an individual conversation with the

disruptive students about their misbehavior before they were allowed back into their normal seating assignments. Teachers often used these conversations as teaching opportunities. For example, Mr. Sand recounted what he told a group of students that he had sent out of class:

[I told them] how they have a lot of power in the classroom. If I have to fight them, they're going to win. [We] need to pick the same side and we need to find a reason for that. I'll ask them, “Do you know where I am coming from in the lesson?” “Yeah yeah yeah, you're trying to teach us math,” the disruptive students would respond. (Personal Interview, June 23, 2014)

He tried to reason with the students, had them reflect on their behavior, and come to an

understanding of what their actions should look like before returning to the classroom. He wanted to prevent further disruptions and made sure the consequences positively impacted students for the future.

One of the most severe consequences for student misbehavior was when teachers notified a higher authority who could administer a harsher consequence than the teacher. One example was when teachers notified school administrators, who disciplined students frequently with a suspension or community service. Mr. Frank understood the severity of this consequence because “if anything, [administrators] go overkill, which is nice because I can play the good guy. I can send a kid out and [administrators] will want to write him up. ‘Oh, I didn't want that but once you leave this classroom I cannot control what happens,’” he would tell his students (Personal Interview, June 17, 2014). Mr. Frank and his students knew that administrators gave harsher consequences; therefore, Mr. Frank could threaten getting the school administration involved as a consequence in itself.

Parent involvement (or the threat thereof) was another consequence teachers would use. Teachers would communicate student misbehavior to family members at their home; in fact, Mr. Sand commented how he “should've done more parents calls…for some students I called at the beginning of the year they were fine forever” (Personal Interview, June 23, 2014). Teachers only used these consequences on occasions when students were defiant or completely unruly, and rarely as a proactive form of preventing student misbehavior.

Academic actions. While teachers used actions to prevent, stop, or discipline misbehavior, teachers also engaged students in content as a way to manage the classroom. The three kinds of academic actions they commonly used were planning specific learning activities, refocusing students to content, and checking students’ understanding throughout the lesson. Academic actions were

92 similar to pedagogical actions in being academically focused; however, teachers reported and I

observed teachers use these actions to intentionally manage their classrooms by increasing student engagement and preventing misbehavior.

1. Planning learning activities. Teachers chose an activity that they thought best conveyed

content and engaged students deliberately to maximize engagement with content and, thus, minimize off-task behaviors. Throughout their journals, for example, teachers referred to

instructional activities as classroom management strategies because purposeful planning engaged students; when students were engaged with content, it “denies students the ability to misbehave because they don't understand something, which generally increases their ownership of

misbehavior” (Frank, Journal, April 14, 2014). Teachers listed activities such as assigning homework, note taking, quiz review (Vante, Journal, April 28, 2014), guided notes (Babkin, Journal, February 24, 2014), and independent work as ways to keep students engaged with academic material and thus avoid classroom disruptions.

Ms. Babkin shared how she used “circulating stations” to manage the classroom, which she defined as “pacing the lesson, allowing short bursts of intensive critical thought;” this lesson activity put students in small groups for a short amount of time to learn about a topic. After some time, students would rotate to another “station” to learn about a different topic. She explained that this strategy, as it related to classroom management, promoted engagement and reduced misbehavior: “Students did not exhibit behavior problems or need much redirection” (Journal, February 24, 2014). In addition to being an instructional or pedagogical strategy for teaching academic content, Ms. Babkin used circulating stations as a way to minimize behavioral issues that could otherwise obstruct student learning.