Managing Students During the Holiday Season

If you have taught more than one year you've experienced it before. I'm referring to the behavior of your students around the holiday season. For some reason when students know that the holiday break is approaching they began to misbehave. I've seen even the best of students began to break the rules around Christmas time. While you will still experience some of this behavior regardless of what you do, there are a few things you can do to help keep students focused during this exciting time of the year.

1. Review and reteach the rules. If you are only going over the rules at the beginning of the school year, you are bound to have some misbehavior. Rules need to be reviewed and retaught throughout the year. This is never more the case than during the holiday season. Remind students of what is expected of them in important areas like the hallway, during class and other situations. Do role playing activities to show students why it's important to follow these rules. If you review and reteach the rules you are going to help prevent misbehavior in your classroom..

2. Enforce consequences. Now that you've reviewed the rules review the consequences for breaking the rules. Then make sure you enforce those consequences. If students know that you are not going to truly enforce consequences, they will continue to break the rules. Make sure you follow threw and stick to your guns. You need to be tough even though this is a fun and exciting time of the year.

3. Give students something to look forward to. Whether its a party, food or something else, you've got keep students motivated and looking forward to something. If you present a possible reward to them, they are like to stay motivated to behave appropriately. Sometimes all you have to do is simply remind them of their party or movie and they will quickly change their behavior.

4. Surprise your students. Surprise your students around the holidays. Bring a treat. Cupcakes or Cookies. You can even look for lots of ways to incorporate such surprises into your lessons. Food has a way of making even the worse behaved students straighten up. Just bring your surprise in, sit it on your desk and don't say a word. Watch the reaction you get.

5. Keep students busy and engaged- One of the biggest reasons for misbehavior in any classroom is that students are not engaged. Yes Christmas is approaching but school is still in session. You've got to send the message to students that 'we still have work to do.' You can have fun but keep your lessons meaningful and engaging. if you fail to do this you are opening the door to misbehavior.

These are just a few of the things you can do to weather the storm of the approaching Christmas holiday.