It always starts the same.

A little noise. A small plastic flick. A few curses. A thwop. A burst of laughter. A myriad of ways for Student X to distract themselves from the classroom activity of the moment.

I put up one finger, give myself a three-second time out and say, “I’ll be patient with you.” Student X does Action Y again. “That’s twice now and I’m asking you to please focus on the Do Now / Objective / Lesson for now.” But, but, but … “I’m not blaming you or anything like that, and if you’d like some time to discuss, we can make time for it during classwork, but not right now.” Then Student X does Action Y for the third time. “Aight, cool, let me finish what I’m doing now and I’ll deal with it then.”

The students start taking out looseleaf or get handed a sheet of problems to work on together and I look back at the student who thought I forgot. “Can we speak outside?” My firm and dulcet tone belie my sharp and directive eyes. The student usually obliges out of respect and, for a moment, we’ve suspended the routine for a quick relationship refresher.

“OK, you first. How you feeling, you good?”
[silence]
“What’s up today? How are we doing?”
[puts their head down or paces around a few tiles in the hallway looking like they just learned another pee-pee dance]
“You have nothing to say now?”
“OK, Mr. Vilson, so what happened was …”

He did. She did. They did. They shouldn’t have. I was just trying to. I don’t know, it’s just that.

“I hear you, and I don’t want to take away from your concerns. Can we address it in a better way so that all of us can learn?”
Yes, Mr. Vilson.
“Can we do better?”
“Oh, aight.”

The student goes back to their seat and attempts to return back to Action Y to which I respond: “Remember the conversation we just had and how you said you’d try?” The time spent with one student for three minutes probably saved me another 15 minutes with the whole class trying to sort through the eventual escalation. In turn, I also saved face for both students and maintained our dignity in the work we’re doing in the process.

The first few weeks of school always feel less like a honeymoon and more like a circle dance, where people are learning how to read one another. The teacher’s charge and the students’ needs tug at each other even before the dancers come into contact. The teacher has a few dozen coryphees to do this dance with 45 minutes at a time, some competing with the objectives you’ve set out, others willing to follow the choreography.

In those moments that don’t show up in the lesson plan, it’s important to pull students to the side, primarily because for us as teachers. The student is doing what they do, which is not necessarily what they had to do or need to do, but what they do. In middle school, that often means acting out in ways that don’t comply with school norms, regardless of whether the teacher believes in those. The teacher isn’t necessarily asking for compliance, but, just underneath that, the understanding. What did the student react to? Is it us? Is it something before or after us? What are we as educators missing?

We don’t know until we ask.

Then it’s about the student and helping them with their metacognition. Students, like us, need time to think in the moment. Sitting around 30-40 people trying to achieve a similar (and often individual) goal can feel daunting whereas, in the hallway, it’s just us and the one (or two depending on who threw / said what).

But the story that comes out of that conversation isn’t that Mr. Vilson was mean, disrespectful, or terse, but was kind, generous, and accommodating. As I hope they are with me. People think classroom management is about relationships, and that’s true. Being mindful of how we build the relationships and the soul we put in behind these impositions is critical.

And when the one or two students want to call me mean in front of the class, I just pull out the “Oh, you remember when …”

They’ll say, “You got it, you got it …”

Oh, aight.