Why Redirection Is A Bad Classroom Management Strategy Smart Classroom Management

Redirection as a classroom management strategy is common, accepted, and wholly uncontroversial.

Touted from Baja to the Canadian Rockies and circumnavigating the civilized world, it’s recommended de rigueur without a second thought.

“Just redirect” they say, so easy and breezy.

It rolls off the tongue. It requires no explanation. And it really can get students back on track.

So what’s not to like?

It’s not accountability.

Whenever you redirect misbehavior you ignore your classroom management plan. There is no other way to do it. Redirection always replaces what should be a consequence.

Therefore, there is no accountability.

Yes, you can give a dirty look or raise your voice, which redirectors tend to do, but this isn’t fair and effective accountability. Further, it creates resentment and less intrinsic motivation to stay on track.

It makes you inconsistent.

You can’t have both a classroom management plan and use redirection. Technically you can, of course, but it will make you by definition inconsistent.

Y0u’ll have to choose, given the severity of misbehavior, whether to enforce a consequence or redirect. This will always result in disaster. Angry, confused students and chaos will be the norm.

It’s micromanagement.

Because students don’t learn anything in a psychological sense from redirection, and because there is no true accountability, the strategy will cause more and more off-task misbehavior.

Your students will grow tired of your broken record and eventually just tune you out.

Before long, you’ll be using it all day. You’ll be that tired, frustrated micromanager endlessly sighing in the teachers’ lounge you promised yourself you would never become.

It causes immaturity and dependence.

Where there is no accountability and its accompanying reflection, there is no growth. With redirection students don’t have to try to control themselves. They don’t have to self-discipline or work to ignore distraction.

It requires nothing from them and everything from you. Redirection supplants brain and willpower and the progress and maturity that comes from doing for themselves.

It interrupts learning.

If you redirect rather than follow your classroom management plan, you’re going to have to redirect a lot. Although, again, it can get students back on track in the moment, it doesn’t change behavior.

There is no possibility of improvement.

So instead of teaching great lessons and drawing your students into the love of learning, you’ll struggle through fits and starts. Your classroom will become like so many others: a boring, annoying mass of distraction.

Only Accountability

So what should you do instead? Have a classroom management plan that protects learning and follow it to a tee.

It’s that simple.

The benefits, especially if you use the SCM way, are many and far-reaching. And instead of every day being the same old beater that dies before reaching the speed limit, you’ll experience actual change in behavior.

I see too many teachers breathless and racing to put out another fire by redirection, hoping to smother the coals before they flare up to0 high. But like simmering embers and trick birthday candles, they’re never extinguished.

Only the fire hose of accountability has enough power.

PS – As for whether or how you should redirect a student daydreaming instead of working, this is a topic we’ll save for another day.

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