As you venture back into the classroom, I hope you are excited at the prospect of the next semester. This post is for newbies and anyone interested in classroom management.

Teachers are taught to invite discussion. We are shown ways to create classroom rules through democratic processes, for example. Students sometimes choose the rules for their classroom with guidance from a questioning teacher. Mostly, this democratic process triumphs since students know the answers to the Making-Rules Quiz. They have been using similar rules for years. Teachers may throw in prompts, pointing out useful words like respect.

Discussion can be overrated, however. Explanations can also be overrated. For one thing, five minutes explaining why we keep our hands to ourselves represents a time loss of 25 students X 5 minutes or 125 total possible learning minutes. By this time of the school year, the explanations should mostly be done, except for a few exceptional new transgressions. (We don’t sanitize people’s shoes without their permission might be one case in point.) When transgressions arise now, I recommend taking the responsible student aside while other students work if you feel that student needs clarification on the rules.

I also recommend skipping the explanations entirely sometimes. Feel free to say “no,” just the single word “no,” without explaining or justifying yourself. “No.” This one word can say it all. If a student demands an explanation, tell that student that you don’t have time to explain during class because you have too much material to cover, although the student is welcome to come talk with you about your decision before or after school. I always figure any student who cares enough to stay after school to get an explanation deserves an answer.

But you are the Captain of your ship. We should teach democratic processes in our classrooms, but our classrooms are not democracies. If they were, many students would spend most of the day in gym, art or recess between bouts of eating pizza and cheese fries.

My “Life” magazine from the preceding post was issued on May 16, 1969. Here is another snapshot of history. S stands for students, P for parents, T for teachers, and A for administration in the “Life” polls.

In this time of racial unrest, I find this poll instructive. In 1969, we were a full 14 years past the Supreme Court decision Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which integrated America’s schools. Yet the “Life” poll asked these questions, questions that have an inherently offensive undertone in my view. I found the answers thought-provoking.

Fourteen years after Brown versus the Board of Education, we still had all white high schools to integrate. We still do. In the poll, teacher and student percentages ran close to each other. Teachers and students were much more open to change than parents, with the majority favoring integration, although certainly not an overwhelming majority. Parents favored hanging onto the status quo or were uncertain whether to accept integration or not.

I believe there is a tendency on the part of many in society today to look at the situation of African-Americans and point to progress that has been made as proof that protesters are behaving irrationally. I look at this poll and I understand at least one reason why Non-African-Americans should not be too quick to judge. We can pass laws to mandate equality. We can strike down laws that prevent equality. But laws and court decisions do not immediately – or sometimes ever – change people’s perceptions. A law is only as good as the people standing behind that law and supporting the law.

The fact that I am free to become an astronaut does not change the fact that my neighborhood may be as dangerous as a war zone. The fact that I am free to become a university professor does not mean that my darker complexion will not result in a store cop following me from floor to floor in a Chicago department store.

Old though it is, this poll reminds us that the world we legislate is not necessarily the world in which we live.

What a difference a little over 40 years has made in the climate of our country.