Early in my career I had a colleague two doors down whose class ran like it was on rails. Mine, some days, felt like herding cats in a thunderstorm. I assumed she just had it — some natural authority I’d been skipped over for. I was wrong, and the truth turned out to be the most freeing thing I ever learned about teaching.
It wasn’t personality. It was procedures — a handful of routines she’d taught so well her kids could run them in their sleep. “Classroom management” is mostly just procedures, taught forty times.
A calm room isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill you build.
That’s the good news hiding inside the bad: if calm is built, not born, then you can build it — starting your first week. The teacher who literally wrote the book on this, Harry Wong, put it bluntly: the difference between an effective and an ineffective classroom comes down to procedures. Here are the five worth teaching first.
Rules tell them what not to do. Procedures tell them how.
A rule says “be respectful.” A procedure says “when you walk in, grab your folder, sit down, and start the warm-up on the board.” One is a vague hope. The other is a habit you can actually teach and rehearse.
The 5 procedures worth teaching first
- The entry. What students do the second they cross the threshold — before you’ve said a word. A predictable warm-up turns the chaotic first three minutes into your calmest stretch.
- The attention signal. How you get silence without raising your voice. Pick one, teach it, practice it until it’s automatic. This single routine saves your voice all year.
- Turning in work. Where it goes, how it’s labeled, what to do when finished. Remove the guesswork, remove half your “where do I put this?” pile.
- Transitions. How the class moves between activities. Name the steps, practice once, and the lost minutes between tasks disappear.
- Dismissal. You dismiss the class, not the bell. A clean end-of-period routine keeps the last five minutes from unraveling everything.
Rule or procedure? (tap to reveal)
Here’s the quick gut-check I wish I’d had. Read each one, decide — vague rule or teachable procedure? — then tap to see the fix.
“Come to class prepared.”
Rule. “Prepared” means nothing to a thirteen-year-old. Turn it into a procedure: “On the bell, you have your charged Chromebook, your folder, and the warm-up started.” Now it’s teachable.
“When I raise my hand, you finish your sentence and your eyes come to me.”
Procedure. Specific, observable, rehearsable. This is exactly what to teach — and then practice on day one until it’s automatic.
“Respect each other.”
Rule (and a vague one). Respect is real, but it’s a value, not a routine. Pair it with procedures kids can see: how we disagree, how we listen when someone’s sharing, how we enter and exit.
“Finished early? Flip your paper, start your independent reading.”
Procedure. It answers the single most chaos-causing question in any room — “what do I do now?” — before it’s asked.
Teacher move → A procedure isn’t taught until it’s rehearsed. Model it, have them do it, narrate what good looks like, and if it’s sloppy — reset and run it again, warmly. Five minutes of practice in week one buys a routine that runs itself for thirty-six.
Done for you, free
Your whole first week, scripted
The First-Week Survival Kit hands you the procedures, the slides, and the day-by-day plan — all editable, ready in 60 seconds. Free through August 10.
Get the free Kit →Once your procedures hold, the next question is what to teach inside them. If mapping a semester feels overwhelming, my editable ELA Pacing Planner lays the year out for you, auto-dating as you go.
New here? Start with what to teach your first week instead of curriculum, then grab the first-day script, minute by minute.
— Ms. G
The full system
Want the routines built in as you teach?
Run the Room is the full year-long system — engagement, behavior, time-back, and the resets, with short videos of me running each one.
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