Confessions of a Former Yeller, or Five Reasons Why I Don’t Yell At Students (anymore)
I’m now closing out my fourteenth year of teaching, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work alongside and to coach both novice teachers and veterans. I’ve asked and fielded tons of questions about education, and while I truly enjoy delving into the details of my content, an overwhelming preponderance of questions that I hear being asked in meetings, conferences, and professional development sessions revolve around one subject: classroom management. Oftentimes, these questions are simply a teacher’s substitution for their real question: “How do I just get them to do what I want?” This desire is somewhat misguided, but for me, what’s worked to improve my management has been deep content knowledge, methodological and charismatic delivery, extensive planning, rigorous and meaningful activities, and flexibility. What doesn’t work: yelling.
I will not glamorize my own experience and pretend that I’ve always had classrooms that run smoothly. Nobody does. But throughout my teaching career, I can only recall resorting to yelling a dozen or so times. In my last five years of teaching, I remember yelling twice. None of these moments were my proudest in the classroom, but I’ve found myself more frequently observing — or simply overhearing — teachers who seem to constantly yell and scream at students. This can’t work. Here are five reasons why I quit yelling:
It’s not that deep. Humans have evolved to understand that raising one’s voice is a signal that the hearer should be on heightened alert. When there’s an imminent danger or an urgent safety issue, by all means, yell away. But yelling is essentially a 10 on the volume dial. Ask yourself: Do the situations that you’ve been raising your voice for warrant a 10? Is a 10 response required when a 6 will do? Keep in mind that a 10 is also the end of the spectrum. There is no more room above 10. You have nowhere else to go. If everything is urgent, then nothing is.
Yelling doesn’t feel good. I don’t know if this applies to other educators, but one of the things I had to learn early was to conserve my energy. At my first school, I taught three periods of ELA, each lasting 90+ minutes, and then taught two 45-minute electives. My voice couldn’t take the strain of frequent yelling. Hell, my voice could barely take the five periods I was teaching already. There’s not much incentive for me to constantly yell if I desire to preserve my physical self. As for my emotional self, while yelling in general (at the sky, into a pillow, in a forest, etc) can definitely be cathartic as a disembodied exercise without a human recipient, it doesn’t feel good to yell at a student. If yelling at students in any way brings relief or provides catharsis, you are in the wrong profession. GET OUT.
Yelling doesn’t help me. As if ruining my vocal cords before the day is through isn’t enough, yelling is detrimental to me personally. Selfishly speaking, it is not in my own best interest to yell. It riles me up. It’s difficult for me to return back down to a comfortable heart rate and stress level after shouting at someone. It also creates a pattern of behavior that is reinforced by yelling, so that shouting becomes a requisite to feel heard or understood. This then creates a reputation. Think about your own childhood. There was someone who you knew was a “yeller.” How did you regard that person? (It should also go without saying that yelling also doesn’t respect or preserve the psyches of our students. Children who are poor, Black, and brown are already the targets of enough aggression in this country without us adding to that tumult. Gentler language is needed. If your argument is that your yelling is consistent with what students receive outside of school, I would challenge what you believe the true purpose of your classroom is.)
Yelling isn’t productive. Ever since a meaningful classroom observation I had in my sixth year of teaching, I’ve aspired to run classrooms that minimize my voice (students often learn much better from collaborating with each other, anyway) and maximizes theirs. Even earlier in my career, I also realized how much of my success with classroom management came from productive use of time — if students had rigorous, engaging, meaningful tasks to partake in, then there were fewer opportunities for disruption. If the goal is to educate students, then yelling is futile. Stopping the flow of learning to go on a loud tirade or to harangue a student derails the focus from their own learning, it wastes time, and it’s an altogether ineffective and inefficient way of communicating.
It’s usually unwarranted. I do recall a few moments where I intentionally shouted in my classroom with what I believe to be good reasons (an inappropriate boundary had been crossed, or a student’s physical safety was impacted). But if I reflect on the overwhelming majority of these incidents, I can admit that my yelling was largely unwarranted. The desire for me to yell came from my own frustration, and not at all from the apparent heinousness or impropriety of their actions. In fact, many of the transgressions that teachers are frustrated to the point of yelling about are developmentally appropriate (albeit annoying) behaviors for their elementary or adolescent students. It was only after becoming acquainted with child development texts like the work of Jean Piaget and Chip Wood’s invaluable Yardsticks that I was aware of how many of these student behaviors that educators should expect, instead of shouting them down in response.
So hopefully, these are five reasons for you to quit yelling in your own teaching practice. Take it from me, you’ll be amazed at how much better life is when you’ve freed yourself from this habit. Even if you’re not a pack-a-day chain-yeller, we can all cut back on how much we shout and holler. And everyone will be better for it.
