Chaos in Your Classroom? Why Systems and Procedures are Your Best Friend

My Personal Brand of Chaos

There’s a reason I came up with the description of my personal brand of chaos - what I call being “Ish.” My definition (One who has humorous grace with herself when messing up or flaking out. Again.) works because I mess up (and flake out) on a regular basis.

It’s not because I throw my hands up in the air with an attitude of “that’s just how I am.” Quite the opposite – I really struggle to not beat myself up on the many occasions when I mess up.

Whether I’ve lost my phone or keys for the thousandth time, set the kitchen on fire because I forgot I was boiling a chicken (true story!) or made a banner for my daughter that wished her a happy “birtday” instead of birthday, calling myself an Ish girl has been my attempt to not anguish over my mistakes. To take myself less seriously and to be able to laugh at myself.

Obviously, there are times that are easier to do that than others – the harder times are when my actions have affected someone else, like my husband or my kids.

CHAOS PREVENTION AND PROTECTION

I’ve embraced my Ish-ness, but I also have learned that there are ways to prevent some of the chaos and protect myself and my loved ones from the consequences of that chaos.

Especially in my classroom.

During my first year of teaching, I struggled with a lot of chaos. It was more than a little overwhelming, and in the midst of it, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was causing all it.

Was it classroom management? Planning lessons? Getting up to speed on the standards and benchmarks of the curriculum? Dealing with the surprising amount of clerical/administrative-type things I was responsible for?

TIME MANAGEMENT VS. CHAOS

That chaos is what we’re going to talk about today because it relates directly to one of the things I shared with you in the last episode of In the Middle of It: the top three causes of teacher stress. We defined them as classroom behavior, performance assessment, and time management.

Time management is such a broad term, and we’re going to start to break that topic down a bit today. If you, too, are struggling with chaos in your classroom and you don’t know what thread to start unraveling first, this episode is for you.

I’m focusing on managing our time because it’s the one resource that can’t be replenished. And if you’re like me, it may perpetually seem like you don’t have enough of it.

So, how can we manage our time so that we can control the chaos in our classrooms?

The answer is simple, but certainly not easy.

By implementing systems and procedures, consistently.

THE ORIGIN OF CLASSROOM CHAOS

Teachers need to be exceptionally organized but receive little training in this

There is a disconnect between what education students are learning in their universities and initial job placements and the expectations that administrators have for them in those first few years of teaching. There is a “business piece” to teaching. This, unfortunately, is not taught.

New teachers might be experiencing thoughts like: “How will I figure all of this out on my own?” or “They expect me to know this...I need to act like I know what I’m doing.”

Those thoughts are valid; administrators' expectations can be potentially unrealistic, especially if they have a “figure it out” mentality. That lack of help from administration can cause a lack of transparency among new teachers, and result in new teachers feeling like they are “lacking” in skills when really, they just haven’t acquired the skills yet.

New Teachers May Have a Fixed Mindset Around Systems and organization

Organizational skills and systems CAN be learned. This is evident in how teachers organize and streamline their workflow as they gain experience.

Not knowing these skills creates stress (and that can profoundly affect their students, as we talked about in the last episode of In the Middle of It.) Deciding to learn these skills requires a growth mindset.

However, you can’t grow these skills if you have any of these limiting beliefs:

I should already know how to do this

I’m too busy, I don’t have time to get organized

As long as the students are learning my systems don’t matter.

SUCCESS IN THE CLASSROOM HINGES ON DEVELOPING SYSTEMS

What are systems? Thought through procedures for how you do things.

Our knee-jerk impulse as teachers is to focus on curriculum/plans first. It’s what we know, and with standards-based learning, it’s what is drilled into us. However.

Learning will be difficult if you are chaotic and disorganized.  

Why? Because organization, clear expectations, schedules, and boundaries create predictability and safety for students.  This makes it easier for them to focus on learning.

If students feel your chaos, they have difficulty focusing and learning

Now, you might be thinking (as I once did) that as long as the students are learning, organization doesn’t matter. But I would argue that if there’s no organization, it’s going to be very difficult to answer questions like:

     How are you sure they are learning?

     Are they learning to their potential?

     Can that be improved through your organization?

Can your lack of organization and systems impact the performance and well-being of students? 

I’m going to flip this on you. Has someone else’s lack of organizations and systems ever impacted your performance or well-being?

I know as teachers, as professionals, you’ve gone through a tremendous amount of training, be it as a university student or through professional development once you’re in the classroom.

When you’ve gone to those classes and trainings, think about the environments you were in. How did you respond when the presenter/professor was disorganized? Maybe they were setting up their technology at the last minute and running into problems that delayed the start. Maybe they couldn’t find the notes they wanted to use in the stack on the podium.

My Own Experience with Chaos

I can vividly remember a seminar I went to where the woman was trying to use props that she *thought* she’d brought with her. She was distracted and flustered and launched into an explanation that she’d just returned from a week-long cruise and hadn’t really looked at her notes since before she left.

You can imagine how that made us feel. And if you can’t, well, let’s just say that was where she lost me. From that point, I was cynical and suspicious of everything she shared, because clearly, she didn’t value me (or the rest of the audience) enough to respect our time by being prepared.

When We Let Chaos Reign

When I flipped that line of thinking to myself, and to my own students, I must admit that it stung. Because just like me, my students will come to the conclusion that I don’t value them if I’m chaotic. They won’t be motivated to do their best if they sense we aren’t giving attention to all the facets of their experience of us in the classroom.

We may be working hard – really hard – but what you’ll be communicating is that you don’t value them if you allow chaos to reign in your classroom.

And none of that even touches on the fact that chaos inspires mistrust and uneasiness.

A Chaos Caveat

Now, the caveat here is that of course, we all have bad days when we’re disorganized and unprepared. The question to ask yourself is: what is characteristic of me?

THE OPPOSITE OF CHAOS

On the flip side of this, when you implement systems and procedures, the opposite is true. When your systems and procedures are effective, you build trust with your students. And when you build trust, you can build relationships and foster connection.

So, before you do anything else, build those relationships. Build community.

And the best way to do that is to foster routine and predictability for your students. To teach them your systems and invite them into your procedures so they know what to expect and can relax the part of their brains that is constantly on the alert of whatever is coming next.

When they know what’s coming next, the brain energy that would be alert and focused on the anxiety of trying to predict what’s coming next can be spent on learning instead.

PREDICTABILITY KILLS CHAOS, GROWS TRUST, AND FOSTERS CREATIVITY

The structure you provide gives them the freedom to lean into relationships with you and with each other and positions them to learn much more effectively. And in a paradoxical way, that structure gives them the freedom to be creative as well. One of my favorite concepts around this is from Madeleine L’Engle. She talked about the freedom in structure using the analogy of a haiku. This form of poetry is very structured – it’s made up of three lines with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. But although the structure is very defined, you can create whatever you want within it.

The same is true in our classrooms.

By providing that structure and those systems, we’re modeling organizational skills for our teens. Because we expect them to be organized, and for them to value those skills, too. They’re much more likely to adopt that philosophy when we set the example for them. When we mentor them on how to be organized.

Because teens need us - the adults in their lives - to be their mentors.

If that’s something you’d like help with, I’d love for you to join me for my upcoming Meaningful Mentor Workshop.  If you’re interested, be sure to join the waitlist!