Why am I failing at classroom management?
Brief, inadequate training leaves teachers unprepared to handle boundary-pushing students, turning the school day into an exhausting sprint from period to period. This daily struggle to manage behaviors causes teachers to fall behind on grades and parent communication while facing serious warnings from administration.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
Why am I failing at classroom management?
- 1Asking coworkers for advice or supportDid this help you?
- 2Changing schools or looking for a different districtDid this help you?
- 3Going over expectations before every transition and reteaching them if students failDid this help you?
- 4Modeling the behavior of veteran teachersDid this help you?
- 5Meeting proactively with admin to take accountability and ask for an improvement planDid this help you?
- 6Documenting everything and reaching out to a union repDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I’m being scolded for my inability to completely control my class on a daily basis at this point. Am disliked by more than a few of the staff.”source ↗
“having 26 children at once and then constantly being told I’m doing everything wrong is absolutely exhausting.”source ↗
“The kids are pushing boundaries and I am struggling with classroom managment”source ↗
“Putting it into practice is killing me and I feel like I'm teaching/sprinting from class period to class period.”source ↗
“I feel like since it is my 5th year the training wheels are being taken off and everyone is expecting me to teach fine but my face is scraping the ground”source ↗
“I am in a similar situation. I came into this through an alternative certification pathway. My training was very brief and, it turns out, VERY poor. I was taught the completely wrong way to manage middle schoolers.”source ↗
“Anyway, I have also been getting a lot of serious warnings and interventions from the principal (this week especially. I made so many mistakes this week).”source ↗
“When I got to my current placement I was very much on their radar and I felt they wanted to fire me; my grades were always late, my parent communication SUCKED, I could not manage their behaviors, I was constantly sick.”source ↗
“It's also my first year teaching, and I'm not the best teacher, I've been nagged by the school admin a couple of times for failing to discipline certain students”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2Why does the classroom chaos never go away?
- 75What do you call students who copy or police classroom instructions?
- 6Why is my school teaching schedule so impossible to follow?
- 8What to do when there are no sub plans
- 27How to stop classroom interruptions from photo and video documentation
- 6Why do mandated teaching methods fail in the classroom?