You are using the web browser we don't support. Please upgrade or use a different browser to improve your experience.
"icon arrow top"
Back to blog articles

The Ten Most Important Classroom Rules…

01 Dec 2020

The Ten Most Important Classroom Rules…

By Alan Peters 

 

Teachers do rather love a rule, but the best classrooms exist almost without them.  They are places of mutual respect, and as such do not need a list of what is and isn’t permissible.  That mutual respect is, of course, engendered by great teaching. 

Still, I suppose that this respect in itself has to look like something, and those characteristics form the backbone of a set of rules:

  • Listen when others are speaking.
  • Allow everybody to learn.
  • Don’t shout.
  • Work hard.
  • No talking…Ever.

Pretty much common sense, really.

 

Nerve Agents are banned (except on the last day of term).

Beyond the very obvious, but very important guideline of engendering an atmosphere of mutual respect, comes a list of increasingly ‘stating the bleeding obvious’ type diktats.  Users must be particularly careful to insert inappropriately placed capital letters and punctuation marks (to demonstrate that you are self-deprecatingly ironic about having to set rules in the first place). 

  • Do your Homework.
  • Remember your Homework.
  • Hand in  Your Homework!!!!!!
  • Never claim the dog ate your homework.
  • The joke about Homework never works. (But it is a funny one: ‘Sir, you wouldn’t give me a detention for something I haven’t done?’  ‘No’  ‘Well, I haven’t done my homework.’)
  • Don’t write all over other people’s Homework, just so you end up with the highest mark!***!!???!
  • Don’t copy other people’s Homework, or if you do, make sure that:
    • You don’t get caught
    • You copy from somebody who is cleverer than you.

Personally, I also tended to hold the rule that knives or other offensive weapons were banned in my classroom (I left a shoebox outside the door), but generally didn’t feel the need to be explicit about this.

 

Too Prescriptive and it Becomes A Question of what is Missed Out

The danger of coming up with too many rules is that the misdeeds not explicitly stated tend to become legitimised. It’s like the swimming pool:

  • No running
  • No diving
  • No bombing
  • But drowning is fine…

 

Beware the Plain Stupid Rules…

Ever more conscious that I am a bit of a dinosaur in a rapidly changing social media world, nevertheless I have always been conscious that students are there to learn, and any rule that detracts them from that really is somewhat stupid.

The most obvious, and annoying, is the ‘Stand Up when an Adult/Visitor/Teacher enters the room,’ rule.  What can be more disruptive to a pupil engaged in a piece of creative writing than to be dragged out of their seats when a ‘visitor’ disturbs their lesson?

We know that Goody Two Shoes Gary and Annoying Annie will be sitting there, three quarters of their attention on the classroom door so that they can be the first to leap to their feet when Mr Williams comes in to borrow a board marker, yet again.  (Board markers, by the way for those of a certain youthfulness are pens used to write on white boards.  They are the ones older teachers use to wreck the interactive whiteboard.  Whiteboards, for those who work in privately owned schools, are what happens when chalk is now longer allowed to be thrown at Biggs Major in the back row.)

Other rules that are enjoyable, in a perverse sort of way, include:

  • Be polite…best to be clear that being impolite is unacceptable;
  • Use a fountain pen to write with…as we definitely want to slow down your creative spirit;
  • Have a reading book out if you finish…because I am certainly not going to do my job and make sure that I provide you with enough challenge for a whole lesson;
  • Line up silently outside the classroom…because that way I can delay the start by a good ten minutes, then spend another ten lecturing you on your behaviour, spend another five ‘practising coming into the classroom’ and that will only leave me another ten minutes to fill before the bell goes;
  • And…no technology…we don’t want you to have anything that might improve your learning.

 

Let’s Choose The Rules Together…then I’ll tell you what to do.

Now that’s a beginning of term filler if ever there was one.  Teacher and class sit down and decide on the rules for the year, then the deputy who devised the task sends out his classroom rules.  Still you can always dig the list out of your desk when Jimmy Jones transgresses.  ‘Look Jimmy, it says here “No Chewing Gum”, in capitals.  And that was YOUR rule, not mine.’  ‘Actually,’ Jimmy wants to reply, ‘I said we should be allowed it, but you didn’t write that down.’

Seriously, though, it does come back to respect.  Respect from the teacher towards the class, collectively and as individuals; respect from the students towards each other and respect from the pupils towards the teacher.  Achieve that, and everybody is laughing (without having to be told that the ‘Joke’s over now!’)

 

Rule Number Two:  No More Rules.  That’s an order.

I am aware that I am being flippant here, and some teachers really do like to set a list of rules; some students need it explaining explicitly what is acceptable and what is not.  But for all that, a classroom where respect is mutual and constant really needs nothing more to be spelled out. 

In ‘The Lord of the Flies’ Jack states: ‘We have got to have rules and obey them.  After all, we’re not savages.  We’re English, and the English are the best at everything.’  Golding was employing irony, especially as Jack becomes quite the savage later in the book, and anybody following the English football team knows we are far from best at everything.

But his words have a serious meaning.  When we make too many rules, we create the opportunities to break them.

Just like teaching itself, keep it simple and the complex list of rules sent by your under employed Deputy Head can end up where they belong.  In the bin.  Or for making paper aeroplanes.  Unless that’s against the rules.

 

RELATED TOPICS

1- 6 Tips to Help with Classroom Management

2- What is the secret of your classroom management?

3- How to Be an Outstanding Teacher without Classroom Management Skills?

4- How to Handle Classroom Conflicts?

5- How teachers should review and reflect on their classroom practice

 

We encourage our readers to share their knowledge.

Do you have an idea, view, opinion or suggestion which would interest others in the education sector?

Are you a writer? Would you like to write and have your article published on The Educator?

If you are connected with the education sector or would like to express your views, opinion on something required policymakers’ attention, please feel free to send your contents to editorial@theeducator.com