Substitute Teacher Quiet Tools

This episode explores effective strategies for maintaining quiet in classrooms without resorting to yelling. By sharing anecdotes and practical tools, we aim to help teachers create a positive and engaging learning environment while managing noise levels.

• Importance of follow-through in discipline 
• Symbolic gestures promote quietness in elementary classrooms 
• Auditory cues like clapping help student engagement 
• Sharing personal experiences in classroom management 
• Dealing with energetic students through seating adjustments 
• Establishing quiet time with clear consequences 
• Humor as a tool in managing classroom disruptions 
• Encouraging community feedback on classroom strategies

Chapters

• 0:00 Effective Tools for Quiet Classrooms
• 10:19 Effective Classroom Management Strategies

Transcript

Greg: 0:00

Greg Collins. Substitute Teacher's Lounge, episode 278 for February 11th 2025. I'm talking softly for effect. We're going to talk about today some tools I've seen used in schools trying to keep students quiet. I'll let you know some of the ones that I use, probably accidentally, I just kind of use them on the fly. I'll let you know some things that I see in the schools that I don't know, some of them I don't like, but I'm not going to tell you which ones I don't like because I don't want to offend the teachers. But I will tell you several different tools that we've seen and then maybe, hopefully, you'll send me an email or get on our Facebook page and post some of your favorite quiet tools too. So let's see what we got. Substitute Teachers Loud. All right.

Greg: 1:10

First I'm going to share a couple of stories to kind of set the base. It won't help us that much, but I think they're kind of funny stories. My son was telling us the other day that what is it about kids? He was talking about his own child when he challenged her don't touch that again or you're going to be in big trouble. And he said she held up her finger and put it down just a little bit and just had to touch it one more time. It reminds me of a scene from from Super Mario Brothers movie where they did the same thing. They were told not to do something. They had to do it one more time.

Greg: 1:52

At church camp one year I was the director in charge of a cabin. I couldn't get them settled down. They wanted to go outside and goof off at midnight and I said, all right, here's what I'll tell you. I'll do. If you, if y'all, can stay completely quiet for a half an hour, we'll all go outside and cause a ruckus. Guess what? They were all asleep in a half an hour. So it worked.

Greg: 2:20

There are quiet tools that work. I'll tell you what worked best with me. But first let's set the base. I'm going to tell you a few tools that I've seen used in schools and I think they work with varied degree of success. Some of them work. Let me go down to the elementary school first.

Greg: 2:42

I know the procedures I've seen in elementary school. As an example, they make it a game, whereas kids hold their arms in the air and make a zero, and that means that's the level of talk you're supposed to have. Now some kids could care less, but probably the majority of the kids are doing that. So that symbol the teachers have taught them that your symbol to be quiet and of course you need to follow through with discipline if they're not. That's the thing I asked my son. I said, all right, she touched that one last time. Did you think it was cute and laugh, or did you follow through with the discipline and all of these quiet things that we're talking about today? If you don't enforce what you say you're going to do, well, it's over. I mean, they could care less what you tell them, because they know you're not going to enforce it. And that's true raising kids and everything else. But that's one thing we'll keep in mind. So we've got the arm in the air holding up the zeros.

Greg: 3:50

Another tool, I think this one was at a middle school, I know, when a teacher thought the class was getting too loud. He would say cue, that, I want you to get quiet. And everybody that would hear him would clap once Now. Not everybody heard him, but everybody that did hear him clapped once Now. Everybody heard the clap. And then after that, after he had said it, you know, clap once if you hear me. He would say clap two if you hear me. And then by that time every student in there had heard the first clap. So now they all clap too and they're supposed to be quiet. Now that made it into a game and they kind of enjoy doing that.

Greg: 4:40

It doesn't mean that they're going to be totally quiet. It works for the moment. It definitely works for the moment. I think they will settle down immediately after that. Whether it's an ongoing thing that will work, I'm not sure.

Greg: 4:56

But none of these tools are like this. Just because you get a class settled down, they're not going to be quiet forever. So that's one thing to keep in mind too. And of course there's the old-fashioned way of just yelling shut up at everybody, but I don't think that's proper. I have never used that. I have said be quiet and loudly. For the most part students will be quiet. For you it's no different. I mean, I got in trouble most in school for talking, and I will tell them. Sometimes I said now I'll be honest with you guys, I probably talked more than anybody in this classroom when I was in school, but I got punished for it too. So make sure that if you come up with your tool, make sure you're following through with it and make sure it's something that works. So we've talked about elementary school. We've talked about middle and high school.

Greg: 5:56

I'm going to tell you now the tools that I have come up with that seem to work for me. I used it last week, as a matter of fact, and in fact I had one kid accuse me of getting into their personal space and I wasn't going to enter into that because it was obviously. That was a tool that he used to try to prove a point, even though he was sitting in other people's personal space. He took offense, or wanted me to think he took offense, when I was in his personal space. So I backed off and I said, all right, we need you all to be quiet and since everybody was looking at them at that point, they were actually quiet the rest of the period. That's not something I want to do again, but, generally speaking, here's the ones that I have used that I think have been effective for me.

Greg: 6:52

Now I'll start with the oldest tool I've ever used. I probably started using. I know I started using this six years ago when it just came to me and it worked well then. I don't think it works as well now. It works best with students that are what's the word? Self-motivated. They tend to keep their concentration level high. So it works for the most part. But this is when I'll give them maybe two warnings and then I'll say okay, here's what we're going to do. And now that I'm thinking this through, I used a lot in middle school. I don't think it would be as effective in middle school these days. I don't know if it's a generational thing I mean, we haven't really crossed generations in six years, so to speak.

Greg: 7:44

But here's what I would do. I would say all right, we're going to be quiet for 10 minutes. I am going to let you talk again after those 10 minutes. Here's the work you will be doing Now. If you are quiet for 10 minutes, then no problem, you can go back to talking at your table. If anybody talks during those 10 minutes, I add another five minutes and I'll even tell them. I said listen, fake coughs count. That's distracting. If I think you're faking a cough or a sneeze or moving a chair, anything that makes noise, it's my. It gets to be my judgment. I'm going to bump it up five minutes for that too. So that takes care of this.

Greg: 8:33

Doing things to get around the rules and all that kind of thing, and that actually worked fairly well for me. They like to get that privilege of talking. I guess that's sort of like the camp story I told you about. Maybe that's where I got the idea, but that worked fairly well. The other one that I use started using it six years ago, in fact to this day. I used it for some students in the sixth grade six years ago and they're seniors now in high school and they still say I can't believe you made me do that, mr Collins.

Greg: 9:07

But here's what I would do, and this is so basic. I use it all the time. It's the set with me rule. Okay, if you can't be quiet, if you're being too noisy, then I'm going to make you come back and sit with me for a while. I'm just going to tell them, by the way, all right, come back and sit with me for the rest of class and as long as they don't bug me to death, as long as they don't say, oh, Mr Collins is going to go back, I will give them about five minutes to settle down and then send them back to their regular chair. Did it again last week you come back and sit with me for a while and they settled down.

Greg: 9:49

You know, it's just a type of student that was so hot what's the proper word? So much energy, it's hard for him to sit still. We had a presentation very good presentation, by the way, if any of you students are listening about agriculture and these were eighth graders and some of them could take ag next year and just the trips they're involved with it was so cool. I wish they. And if you get in and go into stuff like horticulture, it will count as an art credit. I would have much rather taken horticulture than art.

Greg: 10:19

Anyway, this student came back and after about I don't even think it was five minutes cause he quietened down quickly. I looked down and I said you want to go back to your other chair? And he said he just nodded his head. He was quiet, even in nodding his head, and I said go on back as long as you're not distracting. He said OK, now he still talked a little bit, but you know, I thought he did well in that degree. So that's that's probably the main tool I use. You could take away Chromebook privileges. You could, you know, use the old Jolly Rancher method where you give everyone a Jolly Rancher if they're quiet for the next 15 minutes and if one student is not quiet, that ruins it for everybody. Nobody gets Jolly Ranchers. Then that's kind of self-policing, because they don't want to lose that Jolly Rancher and the student feels really bad most of the time. Some of them could care less, but most of the time the student feels bad about costing a jolly rancher for the whole class.

Greg: 11:33

One last little small thing I've done I don't like telling kids they can't talk. There are certain situations where you have to test projects that have to be so low that you're not really supposed to ask your classmates for help. But sometimes I will hear students talking too loud and I'll just say listen, I am across the room from you and I can hear you above everybody else. Let me show you something. So I sit down at the table furthest away from them and I'll say can you hear me? And I'll say can you hear me? And everybody at my table can hear me, just talking like this. I said you can over there, you can talk at this level and everybody at your table will hear you. So why aren't you doing that? Now, some of that's unfair because some of them just have naturally loud voices, because some of them just have naturally loud voices and if they ever enter in a whispering contest they would lose because they just can't do it. But anyway, those are the tools I use. I know you have your own.

Greg: 12:43

It's the age old story of how do you keep students quiet in the classroom. There's two ways to do it. There's one that just yell to yell at them to get quiet. I prefer not to do it that way. You do what you want to do. I prefer to be more diplomatic and try to teach a lesson so that maybe in the future the other students don't want to be up there or sitting with you all by themselves later on. But quiet tools and we're out of here for the episode.