Cell Phones, No Cell Phones. Gum, No Gum. Food, No Food. Every teacher has their own set of rules and their own expectations. Some make sense; don’t talk while the teacher is talking, while others, you thou shall not eat on the third Wednesday of every other month, not so much.

Without enough rules chaos ensues in a classroom. With too many rules chaos ensues. So what are teachers to do? Some decide to take a laid back approach with few rules in the hopes of gaining the students respect that way. Others go to the opposite extreme with finicky rules dictating every move you make while in their classroom.

Yet do either make a real difference in classroom dynamics? Can the rules of the teacher change the behavior of the class?

Ultimately it’s up to the students to want to learn and to want to behave in class so rules shouldn’t be necessary. Yet we all know that’s wishful thinking.

Students complain about teachers policies, teachers complain about student behavior, not much is going to change that.

Obviously something has to be done to negotiate good behavior in students but teachers have been going about it wrong.

When teachers try to be a student’s best friend they lose respect. When teachers remove themselves so far from their student lives they inspire dislike from their students towards themselves.

While teachers always seem to go to one extreme or the other, those that are truly successful are those that find the middle ground. The teachers students love are the teachers who can relate to the students and can manipulate their class policies in such a way as to play up the cooperation between class, school, and life.