Classroom Management for Teaching Online

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So your classroom is moving online. For many instructors, this shift poses technological and pedagogical challenges, but for K-12 instructors, it also poses behavioral challenges. As a former middle school teacher, I’d imagine that upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers are having visions of Zoom bombing, inappropriate camera usage, private chat gone awry, and annotation tools used like spray paint. Even though it’s already springtime, starting online school may feel like going back to September: students will need to learn a whole new set of routines and norms.

But there is good news: many virtual classroom platforms offer a whole new set of classroom management strategies. You may be able to optimize your settings to allow quite a bit of control over how your students can participate. Before you teach online, familiarize yourself with the virtual tools in the platform you’ll be using:

 

  • Mute: Have you ever wished you could point a magic wand and yell “Silencio!” to quiet the side conversations during class? This is your moment! Some free virtual classrooms for online teaching and learning, like Zoom, allow you, as the host, to mute participants by just hovering your mouse over their camera displays.
  • Video: If your students will be on camera, it’s likely that a few of them will use the camera as an opportunity to goof off or distract other students. Don’t worry! Chances are you’ll be able to turn off their videos in the moment. You may even be able to change the settings in advance to disable their video (though of course, there are certainly perks to seeing their faces!).
  • Screen Sharing: Before your first class, consider whether you’ll need your students to share their screens. If not, you may wish to disable screen sharing for participants (in Zoom, you can even adjust this setting during a meeting).
  • Chat: While chat can be a great way to encourage participation, it can also lead to distractions and side conversations. In some virtual classrooms, like Zoom, the default settings allow participants to chat with the entire group or other individuals, including their classmates. Consider, at first, setting the chat so that students can only communicate with you.
  • Annotation: Will your students need to be able to write or draw on the screen? If not, you may wish to disable this option to avoid graffiti on your powerpoint presentations. If students do need to annotate, remember that you will likely have the ability to quickly clear annotations if needed.
  • Removal: In the most extreme situations, like when a student is displaying inappropriate content, it may be possible to remove the student from the room. Zoom’s security tools allow you to either hover over the student’s name and click “remove,” or send the student to a waiting room (if you have one enabled). Keep in mind that you’ll need to go through several steps to re-admit a student that you’ve removed. 

 

 

Still, kids are kids, and they’ll find ways to misuse things. Plus, at some point, you’ll likely want to loosen up the settings so that your students are empowered to actively participate. So how can you help things go as smoothly as possible? Simple: use the same classroom management strategies you’re comfortable with in your regular classroom. 

  • First, set clear expectations. Just like you would in your regular classroom, take the time to tell your students how you expect them to use the camera, chat, and microphone. Explain why those expectations are needed, and what the consequences will be if they’re not met. Make sure that the students know that their fun participant tools are privileges.  A natural consequence of misusing the chat, for example, would be to have your chat privileges revoked!
  • Handle incidents quickly and discreetly. Use private chat, breakout rooms, or individual mute options. Try not to blow incidents up or let them distract from your teaching.
  • Put student engagement at the forefront. Create engaging projects, opportunities for students to work together, and opportunities for students to share. Though it’s harder to switch modalities often in an online classroom, keep in mind the same time limits that are age appropriate in the physical classroom. If you wouldn’t ask your students to spend more than fifteen minutes on one activity in-person, be sure to switch things up every fifteen minutes or so online. Switch from whole-group instructions to breakout rooms, run a quiz through Socrative, or post an assignment on Google Classroom and give students some time to work on it.
  • Find ways for students to meet their social and emotional needs. This is a stressful time for everyone, including students. You’ll be able to get more of your students’ attention if you let them know when and how they’ll get to interact with their friends. Be sure to build in some less structured time for students to connect with each other and share how they’re feeling.
  • Give students leadership opportunities. Just like in an in-person classroom, empowering students is a great way to create buy-in. What roles can your students take on that will be genuinely helpful? Some of the same roles you use in the classroom, like a timer or a group leader, will naturally transfer to the online classroom. But there may also be new opportunities for leadership, like a chat monitor who answers questions or a note-taker who keeps track of the day’s homework on a shared Google Doc.
  • Create routines. Do you have a start-of-class routine? Maybe a quiet journal activity or a warm-up? What about an end-of-class routine, like a share-out or an exit ticket? Build similar routines into your online teaching, and introduce them to your students the same way you would in-person. For example, you might consistently start class by asking everyone to take five minutes to journal in a Google Doc, or by putting up a math problem for everyone to solve. And you might consistently end class with a Google Form exit slip, or by having a student explain what the homework is. Knowing what to expect will help students excel.

 

 

Finally, take a deep breath. Things will go wrong, but they do in the in-person classroom, too. At the end of the day, what makes a good teacher online is the same as what makes a good teacher “IRL.”  Your students are incredibly lucky to have your ongoing support in the midst of a world-changing crisis. Stay strong, muster up your most formidable teacher glare, and teach on!

Ally Bell is a Manhattan Prep Instructor who lives in San Francisco, CA. Ally served as a public school teacher for nine years, teaching primarily middle school English, history, and reading. Along the way, she earned a master’s degree in Reading Education from University of Virginia, served as the department chair in two schools, and presented at the National Council for Teachers of English annual conference. She now uses her experience as a teacher leader in her roles as the Manager of Training Programs and Instructor Manager at Manhattan Prep.