What Actually Makes a Classroom Work Has Nothing to Do With What You Teach

If I could sit beside every new teacher before school started, these are the ten things I’d tell them. Not one of them is about content.

Every August, I think about the teachers who are getting ready to meet their students for the very first time.

I remember being one of them. I spent most of my time worrying about lesson plans, classroom management, and whether I was covering everything I was supposed to teach. Those are all important things, and they’re still things I think about today.

But if someone new to teaching asked me for advice, I probably wouldn’t start there. The best lesson in the world can’t save a classroom that hasn’t been built the right way.

You can have engaging activities, creative projects, and a strong curriculum, but if your students don’t know who you are, don’t believe you’re on their side, and don’t feel like your classroom is a place where they’re known and respected, none of those lessons will have the impact you’re hoping for.

I spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about what I teach and planning my lessons. But over the years, I’ve learned that how I teach and the classroom environment I create matter just as much.

If someone new to teaching asked me for advice, these are the things I’d want them to know. It’s a long and fairly specific list, but after thirty years of teaching, I’ve learned that every one of them matters.

1. Don’t overlook the minutes before and after class.

One of the first things I’d tell you is not to overlook those few minutes before the bell rings and the few minutes after class. They’re easy to think of as transition time, but I’ve come to believe they’re some of the most valuable minutes of the day.

That’s when I get to know my students. That’s when I ask about yesterday’s soccer game or how their birthday dinner was. Sometimes we end up talking about something completely unrelated to school before we ever open a book, and I’m perfectly happy with that.

I don’t ask those questions because I think there’s some magic relationship-building strategy behind them. I ask because I’m genuinely interested in the answers. If a student tells me they’re trying out for the school play, of course I’m going to ask them the next day how it went. If another student tells me they’re worried about their dog, I’m probably going to ask about the dog the next morning. That’s just what people do when they care about each other. I don’t stop being curious about my students just because the bell hasn’t rung yet. Those conversations probably don’t seem like a big deal on any one day. But think about what happens over the course of a school year.

By the middle of the year, students start stopping by my office hours just to talk. Sometimes they have a question about an essay, but a lot of the time they wander in to chat about their day or say hello. They might tell me about something funny that happened at lunch or a game they’re looking forward to after school. Those relationships don’t suddenly appear in March. They’ve been growing all year, through all those little conversations before class, after class, and in the moments in between.

I don't think they happen because I have some special or particularly funny personality. I think they happen because, for months, my students learn that if something matters to them, it matters to me too. They learn that if they want to tell me something, I'll stop what I'm doing and listen. That kind of relationship doesn't get built during a lesson. It gets created in all the little moments that happen around the lesson.

If you’re a new teacher, don’t rush through those moments. They may look like the least important part of your day, but I’ve found they’re often the most valuable.

2. Do not feel like you have to teach the way anyone else teaches.

The second thing I’d tell you is not to spend your career trying to teach like the teacher down the hall.

Every school has ideas about what a classroom should look like. Sometimes those ideas come from professional development. Sometimes they come from social media. Sometimes they come from watching another teacher who seems to have everything figured out. It’s easy to look around and wonder if you’re doing it the right way.

I’ve stopped worrying about that, and you should too.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t begin class with a warm-up waiting on the board. It’s a fair question because that’s become a pretty common expectation. At my school, we’ve even had professional development sessions about how important it is for students to walk in, sit down, and immediately get to work. I understand why people like that approach. It gets everyone settled, starts class quickly, and works well for a lot of teachers.

It just isn’t how I run my classroom.

I like greeting my students, asking how they’re doing, and telling them in my own words what we’re going to be doing that day instead of having them read an objective written on the board. I want them to know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Sometimes I tell them, “This is going to be fun.” Other days I tell them, “This one’s going to make you think,” or, “This is a hard one, but I know you can do it.”

Could I run my classroom another way? Of course. There are plenty of excellent teachers who do. This is simply the way that feels right to me.

That’s probably the biggest point I’m trying to make. Don’t confuse someone else’s teaching style with good teaching. Watch other teachers. Borrow ideas from them. Learn from them. I still do. But don’t feel like you have to become them.

Your students don’t need another version of the teacher next door. They need the best version of you.

3. Let your students see why you love what you teach.

This one may sound challenging, but hear me out. It is very important to find something you genuinely love about everything you teach.

That doesn’t mean every lesson is naturally exciting. It isn’t. There are standards we all have to teach, skills students have to practice, and topics that don’t immediately grab your attention. But I’ve found that if I look long enough, there’s almost always an angle. Sometimes it’s an idea I can’t stop thinking about. Sometimes it’s a sentence that makes me stop reading and think, “Wow.” Sometimes it’s something as ordinary as a comma.

When I teach commas, we learn the rules, of course. But then I show my students real emails people have sent me where one misplaced comma completely changed what the writer meant. These aren’t fake examples from a grammar workbook. They’re messages written by intelligent, successful adults who accidentally made themselves look careless because of one little comma. We laugh about them (and silently judge), fix them together, and before long my students are arguing about where the comma belongs. They don’t suddenly fall in love with commas. They just understand why they matter.

The same thing happens when we read.

If I come across a sentence that surprises me, I stop. If an author creates an image I know I’ll remember years from now, I tell my students why. If there’s a line that makes me laugh or catches me off guard, I let them see that too. Sometimes my hand goes right over my heart because I love what the author just did. If I don’t show them what to look for, they may never see it on their own.

By the middle of the year, my students will begin to show the same enthusiasm I just modeled for them. They’ll stop me and say, “Wait until you get to the next quote. You’re going to love this one.”

One of my students wrote me a note at the end of the year that said,

“I like this class because it seems like you really love the stuff you teach.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever received a better compliment.

So here’s my advice. Before you teach a lesson, ask yourself one question: What do I love about this? If you can’t answer that question yet, keep looking. Because if you aren’t excited to teach it, your students probably aren’t going to be excited to learn it either. I’ve found that finding that angle is one of the most important parts of planning the lesson.

4. Let your students see you laugh.

It is really important that you let your students see that you’re human. And human beings laugh when things are funny.

Middle schoolers need that. Plenty of the time you’re firm and all business, and you should be. But when something genuinely funny happens, and you laugh, they get to see another side of you. They see someone who can smile, be surprised, and enjoy a moment with them.

So when a student says something genuinely clever, laugh. Not a polite teacher laugh, but a real one. If you’re naturally funny, let that come through too. If you’re not, that’s fine. You don’t have to become the funny teacher. Just don’t feel like you have to force it. Students know when a joke is genuine and when it isn’t.

My students would probably tell you I have my running jokes. When someone uses texting spelling (4 you, or IDK) in my class, I tell them it’s a dagger in my heart, and I overreact every single time, on purpose. I repeat the same phrases so often that “I know I sound like a broken record, but...” gets a laugh all by itself now.

Those little moments don’t take away from the lesson because I know when they’re over. We laugh, and then we get right back to work. That’s an important balance to find. If students think every funny comment is going to turn into five minutes of joking around, they’ll keep trying to make it happen. Before long, you’re spending more time getting the class back on track than teaching.

Your students should know they can laugh with you. They should also know that when it’s time to get back to work, you’re going to lead them there. When they know you can do both, they relax and enjoy being in your classroom, but they also know what you expect from them.

It’s much easier to teach students who like being in the room.

5. Classroom Management starts before the first student walks through the door.

People ask me about classroom management all the time. Usually, they want to know what consequences I use, what I say when a student is disruptive, or how I handle behavior. I understand why they ask those questions, but I don’t think they’re the right ones. Most classroom management happens long before anyone gets into trouble.

It starts with the room itself, the expectations you set, and whether your students believe you mean what you say.

New teachers are often told that classroom management is about establishing control. I’ve never really thought about it that way. To me, it’s more like a contract between you and your students. I make a commitment about how I’m going to treat my students, and I ask the same in return. The contract only works if both sides keep it, and what nobody tells you is that you have to go first by showing that you mean it.

I’m not the teacher who spends the first day brainstorming classroom rules and making a colorful poster to hang on the wall. We all know the poster isn’t what makes students behave, and my expectations aren’t really up for discussion anyway. They’re simple: be kind, be respectful, be responsible, and be prepared. Students need that certainty.

During the first week of school, I explain exactly what those expectations look like. It sounds something like this:

“I will always treat you with respect. When you’re talking to me, whether you’re answering a question, asking for help, or telling me something important, I’m going to listen. I’m not going to look away while you’re talking, and I’m certainly not going to start a conversation with someone else while you are speaking. I ask the same from you. If I’m talking, don’t talk over me. Don’t look away. Don’t check out. If you choose to distract the whole class out loud, I’ll ask you to stop out loud, so know that going in. I’m here to help you, guide you, and protect you. Treat me like a human being, and I’ll do the same for you.”

Then I spend the rest of the year keeping every word of that promise.

I don’t look away when a student is talking to me. I don’t interrupt them. I don’t expect respect that I’m unwilling to give. If I stopped keeping my side of the agreement, I couldn't expect my students to keep theirs.

Classroom management isn’t only about how you interact with your students. Sometimes, even the way you arrange the furniture matters.

When I taught fifth grade, classroom management looked very different. Then I moved to middle school, and everything changed. I eventually realized that many of my students simply focused better when they weren’t facing another student all day. Middle schoolers are changing socially as much as they are academically, and they’re constantly aware of each other.

So I moved my desks into rows.

I know rows aren’t popular in every school anymore, and I’m not suggesting they’re right for every teacher. I’m simply telling you what happened in my classroom. Students focused better. They listened better and spent less time watching each other and more time paying attention to what we were doing. Some discipline problems disappeared before class even started because of where students were sitting.

A lot of classroom management isn’t about what you do after a problem starts. It’s about the decisions you made long before the problem ever had a chance to happen.

6. Do not let yourself be antagonized by a teenager.

Sooner or later, a student is going to try to get a rise out of you. Decide now how you’re going to respond.

In that moment, it can feel personal, and that is the trap, because it almost never is. They are not really reacting to you. They are watching to see what you will do in front of the class, and so are the other twenty-five students in the room. If you snap back, you have given them a reaction to aim for, and you have shown everyone else that it works.

It helps to decide ahead of time what you will say, because it is coming. I keep a simple line ready. “Thank you for that. Moving on.” Or, “Let’s talk about that later, thank you.” I never make it a question. “Can we talk about this later?” hands them a choice, and they will take it. A calm, plain sentence ends the moment, and the class loses interest surprisingly quickly when nothing happens.

Honestly, the words almost matter less than the tone. Use a calm authority. Being firm does not always mean being louder or more intense. In fact, it usually means the opposite. Stay neutral. No sarcasm. No judgment on your face. No urgency or tension in your voice. I’ve found that students often match the emotional tone of the adult in the room. When they don’t feel your tension, they are much more likely to settle down instead of escalating the situation.

Learning to stay that calm takes practice. It is not easy, especially at first, but it is a skill you can learn.

The real work comes later, in private, where there is no one for the student to perform for. Keep them a minute after class and pull the old line from Jerry Maguire: “Help me help you.” Then ask what is going on, and listen. Sometimes they want to entertain their friends. Sometimes they are bored, or confused by the class, or they simply do not want to be there. You and the student need to come up with a plan to help them make better decisions when they are tempted to act that way again.

Be firm about the behavior, but never let the student doubt that you are on their side. Those two things are not opposites. Put together, they are the foundation of a strong relationship with a student.

One conversation will not always fix it. A few students will keep testing you all year, and you may still be giving the same calm response in June that you gave in September. That doesn’t mean it isn’t working. Some students simply need more time to trust that you mean what you say.

7. Be honest with your students.

I would strongly encourage you to be honest with your students from the first day of school.

I think sometimes, as teachers, we want our students to love everything we teach because we love it. We get excited about a book, a project, or a lesson, and we assume they should be excited about it too. But that’s not always going to happen. Not every lesson is going to be fun for every student, and not every assignment is something they’re going to love. Some of the most important things we ask them to do require patience, practice, and hard work. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

In fact, I’ve found that students appreciate hearing the truth. They aren’t used to a teacher saying, “This is going to be hard,” or, “I’m going to be honest with you. This may feel a little tedious, but here’s why we’re doing it.” When I say something like that, I’m acknowledging what they’re probably already thinking instead of pretending they should feel differently.

That kind of honesty builds trust over time. My students know that if something is going to be difficult, I'm not going to pretend it isn't. They also know that when I tell them something is worth the effort or that I think they're going to love it, I mean it.

The clearest example of my honesty in the classroom is the conversation I have every year about writing. I say something like,

“If writing were easy, they wouldn’t have invented AI. There’s no AI to decide what to eat, what to wear, or what sport to play. Those things are easy, and you can do them yourself. Writing is the hard one. So this is your chance to learn something you’ll use for the rest of your life.

Will you use AI someday? Sure. Have I used AI? Of course. The difference is that I don’t need it, because I know how to write. My goal this year is to teach you to write well enough that you won’t need it either. If AI disappeared tomorrow, I want you to know you could still sit down with a blank page and figure out exactly what you want to say.

Let me teach you to do that this year. You won’t be sorry.”

I’m not telling my students that writing is going to be easy, because it isn’t. I’m not even telling them that they’re going to enjoy every minute of learning how to do it. What I’m telling them is why I believe it’s worth the work, and then I’m asking them to trust me enough to give it a chance. That’s what honesty with students does. You don’t have to convince them to love everything you teach. Tell them the truth about the work, tell them why you believe it matters, and over time, they’ll learn that when you say something is worth their effort, you mean it.

8. Know why you’re teaching it.

One habit I’d advise you to develop is asking yourself one simple question before every lesson: Why am I teaching this?

A lesson can look wonderful and still teach absolutely nothing. A room full of students cutting, gluing, coloring, and chatting may look busy to someone walking past your classroom, but that doesn’t automatically mean anyone is learning. The question isn’t whether an activity is fun or pretty. It’s whether there’s a good reason for doing it.

The tricky part is that the same activity can be a great lesson one week and a complete waste of time the next. Sometimes my students have just spent three class periods writing, and they need a break. We might spend the next day drawing, coloring, or making something connected to what we’re learning. There’s value in that because I know exactly why we’re doing it.

Other times I’ll find a really nice-looking worksheet online and realize it isn’t going to teach my students much of anything. It will keep them busy, but that’s about it. A whole-class discussion might be the better lesson that day. A game may look fun, but I may need to change it so students are thinking about what we’re learning instead of simply trying to win.

The activity isn’t the point. The reason behind it is.

So before you stand up to teach a lesson, be able to explain what you want your students to get out of it and why it deserves their time. If the honest answer is that it will keep them occupied for forty minutes, throw it out. Students can usually tell when an activity exists just to fill the period, and once they figure that out, they stop trying.

9. Don’t give homework just to give it.

Another thing I’d encourage you to think carefully about is the homework you assign. Before I send anything home, I always ask myself one question.

“Can my students do this without me?”

If the answer is no, it doesn’t belong at home. It belongs in class because your class is the only part of their day when they have you. Once they leave your room, they lose the person who can answer questions, clear up confusion, and help them when they’re stuck. So the work I send home is the work that doesn’t require me, like vocabulary practice, studying for a test, or finishing something we’ve already started together.

I’ve never understood the idea that if we run out of time in class, the answer is to borrow time from a student’s evening. Sometimes homework is necessary, of course. But I also think it’s worth asking ourselves why we’re assigning it. Is it really helping students learn, or are we just finishing what didn’t fit into today’s lesson?

These students have already spent seven hours at school by the time they leave my classroom. Before I decide to take another thirty minutes of their evening, I want to be sure it’s really necessary.

After school, they have soccer practice, dance, theater rehearsal, music lessons, games, family dinners, younger brothers and sisters to help with, and, believe it or not, they sometimes just want to be kids for a while. I don’t think every extra minute of their evening should automatically belong to me.

My class is sixty minutes, and I try to make those sixty minutes count. If I can’t fit the learning into the time I have, I treat that as a planning problem, and the fix belongs to me, not to their evening.

I know some teachers will disagree with me, and that’s okay. I’m not saying everyone has to do it this way. I’m just telling you what’s worked for me.

My students appreciate it, truly. They see that I care about their well-being, and they know I try to make their life after school a little easier. That doesn’t mean they never have work to do at home. It just means that when I ask them to do something outside my classroom, I want there to be a good reason for it.

10. Make sure they know you’re actually going to read it.

You must make sure your students know you’re actually going to read what they write.

Students want to know that their work will be seen, not just scored, and there’s a real difference between the two. A number tells them their writing was processed. A comment tells them it was read by a person who knows who they are. With writing especially, that matters more than almost anything else you do, because a student puts a piece of themselves on the page and then waits to see whether anyone on the other end notices.

I’ve found that when students know I’ll be reading what they wrote, they work harder and more carefully. Some even write with me in mind because they know I’ll notice the effort. When I point out a sentence they worked hard on or tell them I can see how much they’ve improved, it makes them feel so proud. It tells them I saw that they were listening, trying, and working.

My comments aren’t a list of everything they did well. I focus mainly on what to improve and what to take another look at. The comments are part of the lesson. I’m still teaching when I write them. They’re also how I find out who my students are and what they truly understand. No test tells me as much.

I’ve also learned to be realistic. No one can read and respond thoughtfully to every assignment all year long without burning out, so I’m strategic. I keep most writing assignments short enough that I can read every one and hand it back with something real written on it. I save the long, ambitious pieces for specific times in a unit, so that when they come, I have the time to sit with them and say something worth reading.

The generic work, like vocabulary quizzes and simple practice, doesn’t need my handwriting anywhere near it. I put it in a Google Form and let it grade itself.

I’d rather save my attention for the moment when a student hands me four paragraphs that they had to dig deep to write.

A Final Note

Nothing on this list will ever show up on a test score or in a formal observation. No one will evaluate you on whether you laughed with your students, asked about yesterday’s soccer game, or told the truth about a difficult unit. That’s exactly why these things get pushed aside. We make time for what gets measured, and the rest is left to each teacher to figure out alone. I wrote this article so you wouldn’t have to.

So start here. You don’t need years of experience, a perfect curriculum, or a binder full of strategies to do any of these things. You can greet your students at the door, tell them the truth, let them see why you love what you teach, notice their effort, and actually read what they write.

Some lessons will still fall apart, because some always do. But these are the things that will hold your classroom together while you learn everything else.

And one more thing.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Thirty years later, I still do.

The difference is that now I know my students don’t need me to be perfect. They need me to care enough to keep learning, keep adjusting, and keep showing up for them every day.

I hope thirty years from now you’ll still be doing the same.

Good luck. You’re going to do just fine.

~Jennifer

---

One more thing...

I’ve been thinking about adding something new to The Real Classroom: a monthly feature where readers can send me their classroom questions, and I’ll answer a few in depth.

Before I build it, I’d love to know if that’s something you’d actually find useful. If it is, let me know in the comments. I’d also love to hear what kinds of classroom questions you’d want answered.