Effective Classroom Management Strategies for High School Teachers

One of the most disappointing days of Steph’s teacher credential program was the full-day seminar on classroom management strategies.

It seemed so practical, something she could really use day to day, and something she needed help with. Lesson planning was no problem—she’s a whiz with a calendar, and creating engaging lesson plans about literature was fun, another academic assignment to be easily mastered. Classroom management strategies for managing a room full of people, however? Far less comfortable, especially for a perfectionist people-pleaser.

The seminar, however, combined all teacher credential candidates—primary and secondary—and, like many trainings on classroom management strategies, was really geared toward elementary school teachers.

At one point, the person leading the seminar broke out a train whistle and demonstrated how to use the unusual sound in the middle of a noisy classroom to get students’ attention.

Steph remembers staring in disbelief. What room full of rowdy teenagers is going to take seriously an adult who stands at the front of the room blowing a train whistle? Have you met any teenagers?!?

It was just as bad as classroom management strategies like “1-2-3, eyes on me” or the call-and-response clapping routine we’ve all encountered in the education world.

Classroom management strategies at the secondary level—middle and high school, but particularly high school—have to look different than classroom management strategies at the elementary level.

The issues that arise are entirely different, the level of accountability students can and should be held to is entirely different, and, most importantly, high school students are in the stage of development that precedes adulthood—they want to be treated as soon-to-be adults, not small children. Classroom management strategies are not one-size-fits-all.

That being said, humans of all ages are still humans, prone to the same kinds of “misbehavior,” and many classroom management strategies are based in human psychology, which means the basic principles are the same: positive and negative reinforcement shape behavior, consistency matters, and treating your students with respect—like the humans with dignity that they are—goes a long way.

But this looks different in practice, and after our combined three decades in the classroom, this is some of the accumulated wisdom Steph was looking for when she went to that classroom management strategies seminar.

Remember Where Your Students Are Developmentally

Before we get into specifics about the kinds of behavior issues you’ll encounter in high school and some practical classroom management strategies that help, it’s important to discuss the general posture that works best with high school students.

High school students are in a stage of development where they’re trying to figure out who they are, how they relate to society, and what their nearing adulthood might look like. This is hard work, and it deserves compassion, particularly when you consider the increasing importance of peers and the navigation of social dynamics that requires (not to mention the hormones and changes associated with puberty). 

This can, however, be difficult when you’re in front of a room full of 40 teenagers, it feels like the 5,000th time you’ve addressed a particular issue with a student, and you’re racing the clock to finish your lesson before the bell rings. We’re talking to ourselves here, too. Some of our cringiest teaching moments were times when we forgot this (like when Steph reprimanded a group of AP Lit students who burst into the last few minutes of a lecture with a surprise Christmas gift).

High school students want to be treated as adults, not children. But they also still are children in many ways. Effective classroom management at the secondary level involves a balancing act between giving students some independence and grace while still providing the guidance and training they need. Their brains—particularly the prefrontal cortex, key to impulse control and good judgment—are still developing, and we do them a disservice when we treat them as full-fledged adults.

Your General Posture Matters

When it comes to your general posture, there are three important elements to consider:

High school students still often act like small children: they still love Disney, and they’ll do more than you’d expect for a sticker. But in general, you’ll get further with your students when you treat them like young adults. In our experience, teenagers do not respond well to what they perceive as disrespect or condescension (read: anything they deem as too “elementary”), and many of them will rise to your expectations (or at least appreciate the opportunity to try).

Sometimes, this means letting your students make a bad choice if it’s not bothering someone else. If you have a student who refuses to do work but isn’t distracting others, of course it’s important to try to engage them, to talk to them about the problem, and even to contact parents. But at some point, this student is old enough to know that they are making a decision that has consequences, and so long as that student isn’t preventing others from learning, they may need to experience the natural consequences of their actions.

This also means that it can be worth having a one-on-one conversation with a student who shows repeated patterns of disruptive behavior or disrespect. Sometimes there are things going on in the student’s personal life that you don’t know about. Sometimes the student has an issue with another student in the class. Sometimes the student is willing to reflect about strategies that will help them behave more productively. Sometimes the student just doesn’t realize how their behavior is impacting others or coming across to you.

But. Those conversations are worth having once, not repeatedly. If a student continues to behave in disruptive ways (without showing an effort to improve—change doesn’t happen overnight), there have to be consequences rather than repeated one-on-one conversations. You don’t have time for that—you have too many other responsibilities.

When you work in a high school, you learn a lot about the other teachers at your school. Not so much from your own interactions with them (the division of high school campuses by department can feel isolating) but from listening to students.

When you’re a new high school teacher, it’s really tempting to befriend your students. If you’re fresh out of school, you’re fairly close in age, you want them to like you, and you remember what it was like to be in high school. And to some extent it works: students do like teachers who are “chill,” who don’t ask too much of them and let them get away with anything. 

But they also know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Listening to students talk, it becomes clear that they don’t respect “chill” teachers. They like them, but they know they’re easy to manipulate, and they sometimes express a desire for more discipline or more learning.

At the other side of the pendulum are teachers who try to manage with an iron fist: they’re strict, they have a lot of rules and severe consequences, and they never smile or show that they, too, are human. This approach is, in our experience, equally unsuccessful: students tend to respond to this kind of attitude with rebellion. They don’t feel respected, they feel a sense of injustice when the consequences are especially severe, and as a result, they often actively seek to push that teacher’s buttons.

The teachers our students respected most were teachers we knew to be firm but kind. They had boundaries and high expectations, but they also showed a genuine interest in students and a desire for them to be successful. They talked to students about their lives, extended grace to students who talked to them one-on-one, and believed every student, not just the top ones, could be successful. They also tended to be a little on the sarcastic side with a good sense of self-deprecating humor.

This balanced approach works well because our students are humans. They want to be respected, and they are generally more receptive to people who have taken the time to cultivate relationships with them. They behave better for teachers they like and respect.

It’s impossible to treat every single thing students do that you don’t like with the same level of consequences and severity. It’s also not fair: ask yourself how many times you’ve checked your phone or done work on your laptop during a staff meeting.

We’ve found it most effective to think through what is “zero-tolerance” for you, what merits a quiet reminder rather than serious consequences, and what just really doesn’t bother you. Do your best to differentiate between what’s actually a behavior problem and what just bugs you.

Once you’ve decided on your top issues, know that it’s hard to regain control after you’ve lost it. If something matters to you, you have to enforce it from the start. Of course there are times where you have to make changes in response to a particular group of students, but the more you can communicate and enforce the rules that matter to you from Day 1, the more problems you’ll avoid down the road.

One other tip: do your best to not undermine school-wide policies. Nothing causes more drama between teachers than inconsistent enforcement of school policies. And it makes sense: if something is a “school rule” but students know they only have to follow it in certain teachers’ classrooms, it makes life harder for everyone.

Proactive Classroom Management: Stop Issues Before They Start

One of the most effective classroom management strategies actually has little to do with how you handle disruptive behaviors when they happen. Instead, it involves proactively setting up your classroom in ways that make it less likely students will engage in these behaviors in the first place.

For starters, set up your student desks in the way that makes the most sense for your goals. If you do group work every day and don’t mind chatter, tables might work for you. If you do a lot of discussion, having students sit in a circle or facing each other could work. But if, like us, talking really bothers you, you have to do rows. (Did Kate try to tell Steph this? Yes. Did Steph have to learn this lesson for herself? Sure did.)

You also want to think about where you put shared resources in your classroom so that you avoid students gathering in one place or distracting the students who sit near the resource station. It might help to have a couple stations with things like hand sanitizer and Kleenex spread around the room. Try to leave some space between student desks and “your stuff,” whether it’s your desk, classroom library, supplies, or bulletin boards: fidgety students will play with whatever’s in reach.

If you want to provide power strips for your students to charge their devices (and we’ll tell you right now it’s so much easier if you do), space them out so students don’t have to change seats to access them and place the power strips just far enough away from student desks that a Chromebook charger will reach but students will have to surrender their phone to let it charge.

The more structured your classroom routine is, the more likely students will be to eventually fall into that routine without reminders. When students know what to do when they finish assignments, they have less “down time” to become disruptive. When students know you’ll start with a bellringer every day, they can sit down and get started without a reminder. Clear routines help avoid “dead time,” which is when most trouble starts.

We’re strong believers in the use of seating charts. It sounds nice, in theory, to let students choose their own seats. And depending on the course, it can work. For example, Steph always allowed her yearbook class to choose their own seats.

But seating charts were one of our best tools in dealing with all kinds of classroom management issues. Students who talked frequently weren’t allowed to sit together. Some disruptive students benefited from sitting front and center. Some made us less crazy if they were off to the side or in a row by themselves in the back. Needy students benefit from being near aisleways where you can easily check in.

Even in more discussion-based classes, seating charts can be a valuable tool. In our AP Lit class, we were less focused on discipline issues when we made our seating charts (though issues still arose). Instead, we used our seating charts to maximize productive discussions. We frequently mixed up students to give them new discussion partners and often intentionally placed students because we thought they would learn from one another. We might make sure our three quietest students weren’t sitting together, place a “growing” student with a strong but encouraging peer, or place a “loudly wrong” student next to an equally assertive (but more accurate) classmate.

Classroom management issues tend to happen when students have too much free time. Plan multiple activities in a class period to manage short attention spans, make assignments due at the end of the class period, and make sure students have something to do from bell to bell. We used timers frequently, giving students only 2–3 minutes to complete some tasks, 10–15 for others. Keeping them on short time limits kept the class moving and didn’t give students the time to get bored.

This is worth keeping in mind when it comes to projects or long-term writing assignments: students will generally get more done if you give them less time than you think they’ll need or break the task into assigned checkpoints they must show you at the end of class each day. If students have too much time, they’ll reprioritize and “save this for later” or finish early, and it can be a challenge to keep them working.

When you’re standing next to a student’s desk, they’re less likely to talk to their neighbor or be on their phone. When you’re actively walking around, students have fewer opportunities to engage in surreptitious behavior of all sorts. Students feel less safe cheating or playing games on their Chromebook when they never know when you’ll walk by. Changing your perspective allows you to see what students are doing in ways you might not from the front. 

This constant moving around nips a lot of disruptive behavior in the bud.

Proactive strategies will go a long way toward keeping your students focused. And for many issues, this is probably the best approach: it’s tough to “treat kids like humans” when you’re on them about every little thing (and you don’t have time for that anyway). But there are times when you need to take further steps.

Have a Clearly Communicated Progressive Discipline Plan

When disruptive behaviors do need to be handled, we recommend having a clearly communicated progressive discipline plan that you include in your syllabus and review in the first week of school and at Back to School Night.

We recommend something like this:

• Offense #1: warning
• Offense #2: parent contact
• Offense #3: 15-minute detention and parent contact
• Offense #4: 30-minute detention and parent contact
• Offense #5: referral to counselor/school discipline system

A progressive discipline plan allows you to start small but provides clear consequences for students who repeatedly disrupt other students’ learning. Do be mindful that each “behavior” should follow its own progression: for example, a student who has four tardies and then speaks disrespectfully to you for the first time probably shouldn’t be referred to the school discipline system. The disrespect would need to be handled separately from the tardies.

If you’re requiring students to serve detention, we recommend having a flexible plan (i.e., students have a week rather than one day to serve the detention). Many students have after-school obligations; some students rack up many detentions throughout the day. They’ll be more likely to show up if you give them a few options. You will, however, want to have a system for students who fail to serve and follow through with it: if detentions haven’t been served after a week, you might double them; if they still aren’t served a week later, you might refer the student to the counselor or school discipline system.

For small behaviors, you might consider smaller consequences that can be handled in the moment like moving a student’s seat, deducting a participation point, or confiscating a phone. This helps keep detentions more manageable: some behaviors need consequences, but assigning detention means you’re also assigning yourself to spend more time with a student who’s driving you up a wall. We’ll note, however, that this can actually be a good thing. We’ve developed positive relationships with many students through detentions and discovered that some students we couldn’t stand in class were real sweethearts in detention.

For frequent or big discipline issues, do use your school discipline system: it’s there, and you don’t have to manage repeated disruptions or disrespect by yourself. Taking advantage of this system does NOT mean you’re a teacher who can’t handle your students. In fact, if you’re judicious about using it, counselors and administrators will recognize there must be a real issue if you’re turning to them for help.

On the flip side of that coin, don’t be that teacher who sends 15 kids to the office every single day for every little thing. You’ll get better support from your administrators (and your students) if you save referrals for the big issues. You’ll also get better support if you’ve contacted parents at least once before bringing counselors and administrators in. This can be frustrating, but it does help avoid student-said-teacher-said arguments.

For any discipline issue, be sure to communicate regularly with parents and counselors (and administrators if it’s a particularly challenging student), and document everything. Issues surrounding student behavior can get messy, and if you get to a point where you’re having to conference with parents, counselors, and/or administrators, it will help you to have a record of both the student’s behaviors and your efforts to contact parents.

Applying the Principles to the Biggest Classroom Management Issues

Now that we’ve laid out the basic principles of our approach to classroom management, we can take a look at the biggest issues you’re likely to face in a high school classroom—whether you’re a new teacher wondering what you’ll encounter or an experienced teacher looking for new ideas.

Talking (so much talking)

In terms of actually getting things done on a day-to-day basis, student chatter is probably the biggest issue you’ll face. Students like to talk to each other, they like to talk to you, some even like to talk to themselves.

Because this is so common, it’s probably not an issue you want to treat with an iron fist. We’ve found it’s most easily managed by the tips we shared for proactively heading off trouble, your class participation grade, and the “I’ll wait until you’re finished . . .” refusal to talk over students (accompanied by the teacher look, of course).

There are, however, times when the behavior becomes so disruptive and consistent that a conversation with the student or your progressive discipline plan becomes necessary, but if you treat every instance of off-topic chatter as a major offense, you’ll spend all your time dealing with it and probably create a hostile classroom dynamic.

Off-task behavior

You’ll see a lot of students doing something other than what you asked them to do—completing homework for other classes, drawing (hopefully on paper rather than your desks), wandering around, poking the person in front of them with a pencil, the list goes on.

As with talking, gentle reminders tend to work best unless this becomes a significant problem with a particular student.

Disrespect and profanity

Profanity can be particularly challenging because many students use it so often that they don’t even notice it. We’ve had many students look at us wide-eyed, asking, “What? What did I say?” 

This is one that we’ll correct every time, establishing that it’s unacceptable in our classroom, but it’s also one where a firm but gentle reminder is usually sufficient. Of course, a student who goes on a profanity-laden rant, hurtfully directs profanity at a classmate, or makes no effort to stop using it may need to be escalated up your progressive discipline plan.

We also take disrespect seriously no matter whom it’s directed toward, though we treat disrespect toward other students more seriously than disrespect toward ourselves. A muttered comment might merit an “Excuse me?” while a clearly stated one might merit a firmer, “That is not an appropriate way to speak to me” or even a progression up the discipline plan, depending on the circumstances.

When disrespect is directed at other students, we stop it when we hear it and take steps when it becomes repeated or severe: it’s important that all students feel safe in our classrooms, and allowing students to speak disrespectfully toward one another severely hinders that goal.

Sometimes this can become a teaching moment for students: we’ve had students complain, “But Ms., that’s just how we talk to each other!” That may be true, but we’re also preparing students for the working world (and we’re in our working world), and they need to understand that there are contexts where that behavior is just unacceptable. Maybe it’s just us, but we include calling your 40-something-year-old female teacher “bruh” in that “lessons that need to be learned” category.

Frequent and/or lengthy bathroom visits

One issue that many of us don’t think of until it becomes an issue is the lengthy bathroom visit. Of course I’ll let my students go to the bathroom, we think. Isn’t it cruel not to?

And then you have the student who disappears for 20–30 minutes every.single.day. Worst case scenario, they’re doing something super problematic; best case scenario, they’ve found wandering campus to be a good way to escape the “boredom” of your classroom.

We used to address this problem by giving students two bathroom passes per six-week grading period. They could use them with no penalty, and if they didn’t use them, they would get extra credit at the end of the semester. If students needed additional bathroom visits, they would forfeit a few participation points.

This worked well for us for many years, but post-pandemic, we rethought things. Not only did we not feel comfortable limiting access to handwashing during a pandemic, but we were no longer really comfortable with not letting students take care of biological needs.

Instead, we let students use the bathroom as needed. If a student was gone for a concerningly long time, we’d probably let it go the first time: after all, stomachs get upset, periods start, and we don’t want to embarrass anyone. But the next time, we’d pull the student aside for a conversation, and after that, we’d limit their bathroom use or move through our progressive discipline plan as needed. Another strategy that can help is having a policy that bathroom use is only allowed during independent work time or that it isn’t allowed during the first or last 10 minutes of class (except, of course, for emergencies).

Not completing assignments on time

When we first started teaching, we saw this as a classroom management issue. We were at a school with a schoolwide discipline plan for tardies, missed assignments, and dress code violations, and it was our job to follow that policy.

And it does make sense: it’s incredibly frustrating (and difficult to move forward in your lesson plans) when students don’t complete homework assignments—part of the reason we shifted toward a mostly homework-free classroom.

But we came to see this as something best handled in the gradebook without additional penalties. If students never completed the assignment, they didn’t get credit, and if students completed it late, they lost points. Treating missed assignments as an academic issue rather than a classroom management issue helped us keep our detentions more manageable.

Coming to class late

This is definitely an issue you’ll struggle with, particularly for the first class of the day, the class that immediately follows lunch, and the last class of the day.

Whether you handle tardies as part of a school discipline system or within your own individual classroom, we strongly recommend having a policy and sticking to it. As two perpetually running late individuals, we were tempted to be generous with tardies, and it always resulted in students coming later and later to class. 

It’s one thing to be generous to the student sliding into their seat just as the bell rings or as you’re taking attendance, but you need to hold students accountable for being on time, or things will get rapidly out of control (particularly problematic when students’ grades start to drop along with their attendance).

Eating and drinking in class

Eating and drinking in class is one of those things that bothers some people more than others, but do be aware that if you don’t enforce an eating and drinking policy, the amount of food in your classroom will grow rapidly.

If it’s a rule you want to enforce, we recommend using the same approach as for talking: quiet reminders to put the food away unless it becomes an ongoing problem, at which point, we’d talk to the student or turn to our progressive discipline plan. 

If you do allow students to eat or drink in class, you might want to keep a roll of paper towels and some cleaning spray on hand and require them to clean up after themselves if they make a mess. If multiple students are regularly making a mess, the class as a whole might lose the privilege of eating and drinking anything but water.

Inappropriate phone use

Oh, the phones. This is a tough one (and one we should probably write a separate blog post about). 

If, like us, you’re not at a school with a schoolwide policy, here are a few suggestions:

• Communicate clearly when phones are and are not allowed, and where you expect those phones to be when they are not allowed.
• Have at least a little bit of compassion for your students: they have a highly addictive device literally in their pocket. 
• Most of the time, we recommend a “please put that away” approach, but students who repeatedly pull their phones back out may need larger consequences.
• Consider purchasing a locked storage box like the one Kate used for students who couldn’t control themselves: this allows you to take away the distraction without putting yourself at risk for financial liability if the phone is damaged or stolen.

Cheating and plagiarism

Cheating and plagiarism are enormous issues at the high school level, and they’re the issues we took the hardest line on in our classrooms. If you’re interested in hearing more about how we tackled these issues, check out our podcast episode and blog post on cheating and plagiarism as well as two posts about assigning writing in a world with AI (one more curriculum-focused and one more practical-focused).

The zero-tolerance issues

There are a few issues that are zero-tolerance: bullying, sexual harassment, drug use, weapons, and fighting. Any time students are doing something illegal, dangerous, or harmful to others, the behavior has to be dealt with immediately, likely through your school’s discipline policy.

Remember, It’s (Probably) Not Personal

Something that will help you keep your cool amidst classroom management issues is remembering that students’ misbehavior is rarely personal at the start. Much of it is human nature: students are asked to sit still for six hours a day and pay attention, they’re social creatures, and they have an addictive device buzzing in their pocket.

Even when their behavior moves toward disrespect, students are often reacting to your role as “teacher,” not to you as a unique human being. They don’t know the “real you.” Remembering this (and the fact that some personalities just go together better than others) can help you avoid the hurt feelings that lead you to lash out and make a bad situation worse.

That being said, classroom management issues can become personal, and we’ve got some tips in the next section for when that happens.

It’s essential that you don’t let students know they’ve gotten to you. This is easier said than done: sometimes we get frustrated or a student really hurts our feelings. But, unfortunately, teenagers can be like sharks: once they smell blood in the water, they move in for the kill. Do whatever you can to react later, away from students. Crying in front of students tends to lead to scorn more often than it leads to empathy.

Coping with Especially Challenging Students or Situations

We recorded a podcast reflecting on lessons we learned from some of our most challenging students, so if you’re dealing with a particularly frustrating situation, we recommend checking that out. But here are a few suggestions to keep in mind:

• “Challenging” does not always mean “behavior problem.” Sometimes students who aren’t doing anything wrong just bug you, often due to a personality mismatch or a need for frequent help and reassurance. In these situations, it can help to set limits, like “you can ask X questions per day” or “I will check one response per day”).
• Get support—yes, a friend who understands, but more importantly—from school resources (counselors, parents, and special education case carriers). You don’t have to manage particularly challenging situations on your own, and there are other people whose job it is to help you.
• If the student only has a problem with you, look into a schedule change; if the problem is with all of that student’s teachers, work together as a team to address it. Some teachers may have found strategies that are working; other times, it can help to enforce the same expectations throughout the day.
• Try to understand the situation and be willing to adapt your approach, but maintain firm boundaries. Sometimes the most difficult classroom management situations are rooted in really challenging personal lives, and sometimes that means taking a creative approach. But it’s important to avoid taking on more than your job and to forget that even our most struggling students benefit from boundaries.
• Find ways to comment on the good, even if it’s small. When all of your interactions with a student tend to be negative, it can really help to have a few positive interactions. Often, our most challenging students don’t receive a lot of positive reinforcement, and giving that to them can make a big difference.
• Consider whether there are small things you can do to show that you care. One of Kate’s challenging students who had a lot going on in his personal life started coming in daily to work on homework. She started storing snacks and supplies in the back cabinet for him, and it thawed out their interactions.
• Don’t seat challenging students front and center. Most advice for dealing with challenging students is to put them where you can keep an eye on them and where they don’t feel they have the freedom to cause trouble. This works in many cases, but in particularly difficult situations, it can be more helpful to not have a student who pushes your buttons sitting directly in front of your face for a 50-minute class period (or longer if you’re on a block schedule).

Classroom management at the high school level is, in our experience, one of the most difficult parts of the job, and it’s one that you have to learn by doing. Many of us became teachers to teach or to mentor students, and spending day after day dealing with discipline issues doesn’t feel like what we signed up for. But there are effective classroom management strategies you can use at this level, and it’s crucial to realize that you’re not alone and that so many of the challenges you’re facing are normal.

If you need practical tips and encouragement sent straight to your inbox every Monday, we encourage you to sign up for our Free Resource Library. Not only will you get our Monday morning email, but you’ll get access to resources like four email templates to use for contacting parents in common situations. If you’d like to hear us discuss the ideas we’ve shared here, we have a podcast episode devoted to classroom management strategies for secondary teachers.