It is very important for teachers to learn their students’ names as quickly as possible. As I mentioned last week, this will help foster the student-teacher relationship, but it will also help teachers handle minor classroom management problems as well.

For example, teachers can become very frustrated during a lesson when students are talking to each other when they’re not supposed to.

This leads many teachers to call on the students who were not paying attention in an attempt to get the student to refocus.

Unfortunately, the student may become embarrassed and may deal with this “threat” in a negative way thereby escalating the classroom management problem.

Here’s my solution…

In my class, all my students know that they always have the option to say “pass” whenever they are asked a question. I tell them they can pass for any reason (don’t know the answer, weren’t paying attention, too tired etc.)

Students rarely use this pass option, but it does solve the problem above.

Since students know they have an out (the pass option) they are much less likely to respond in a negative way. If a student was not paying attention, the student simply says “pass”. Now the student knows to refocus their attention on the lesson, but without the embarrassment and without escalating the minor classroom management problem to a major classroom management problem.

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