Teachers can become overwhelmed when their classes won’t listen, to the point that it contributes to burnout and quitting. Many teachers echo the sentiments shared by Brittni, a kindergarten teacher in Oklahoma, who told Good Morning America, "We all love kids, that's why we do it, but we have to have some kind of respect and some kind of support to keep it going."

That was in 2021 when pandemic-era workloads and anxieties were at their peak, but Brittni’s sentiment remains true today. Teachers feel overwhelmed and even disrespected. They need support, or more importantly, they need to feel supported in their classrooms. While changing pay scales or administrative policies may be difficult, solving the day-to-day stress of behavior issues in the classroom can go a long way toward achieving a better work-life balance.

This article breaks down some practical tips for getting control (and respect) back in your classroom by examining why students won’t listen and what teachers can do about it.

Why Aren’t Students Listening?

Rather than skipping ahead to the fastest “solution” to talkative students, teachers should ask why their kids aren’t listening in the first place. This can reveal the strategies worth focusing on to correct the issue at its source.

1. You’re not listening to them

Many teachers exert authority over their room by filling it with their voice. Talking too much and listening to student responses, feedback, and questions too little can create an environment where students don’t feel actively engaged. This can cause them to stop listening.

2. Too much repetition

Repetition in the classroom routine can be a useful tool for setting expectations, but one mistake teachers often make is repeating instructions too often. While this helps students in theory, it also creates a classroom culture of passive listening where students don’t listen to the first set of instructions because they know a second and third version will be coming soon.

3. Failing to follow through

When teachers give instructions and fail to follow through on enforcing them, they may fail to notice misbehavior, second-guess themselves, or get tired of acknowledging the same issues repeatedly. In any case, once the follow-through is gone, students will learn that they don’t need to listen anymore.

Strategies for Encouraging Engaged Listening

Students can listen to instructions without following through on them, essentially making the act of listening ineffective. The goal of every teacher should be to find strategies that don’t “force” or “trick” students into listening but which engage them to want to listen to instruction, feel rewarded for active participation, and increase their engagement over time.

A lot of teachers know that the mid-year slump, especially right before a break, is when listening is at an all-time low. However, these strategies can help students listen all year-round, not just in the first week of class:

1. Establish a clear routine

Too much verbal repetition can create a passive atmosphere, but clear classroom routines are the foundation of good student listening habits. The difference is that a clearly communicated routine enforces itself as students get used to their tasks over time and automatically adjust to the schedule. It shouldn’t have to be verbally repeated later. Clear communication and logical activity flow reduce the talking teachers have to do, which also makes the talking they do have to do more meaningful as a result.

2. Model listening techniques

Listening to students can do wonders for their ability to listen to their teacher. Remember, some students have never been in an environment where their voice is valued; they may not even know how to listen. As teachers, modeling productive behaviors like listening can be an easy and rewarding way to encourage those behaviors.

Some tips to make this work include:

• Giving the speaker full attention, including eye contact

• Waiting for them to finish without interruption

• Taking glasses off when applicable

• Acknowledging their thoughts, even if a correction is needed

• Giving all students the chance to be heard

These strategies can present new challenges. With limited hours in the school day, students may learn that they can delay class by asking questions. Through experience, teachers will learn when listening is the best practice and when the schedule has to be pushed. The important thing is to make sure listening always remains a part of the routine.

3. Stop repeating instructions

Repeating instructions too often because students don’t listen will encourage them to continue not listening. To create engaged listeners, teachers need to make sure their directions are clear, the students have the materials they need, and the instructions are verbally repeated as infrequently as possible. Writing certain directions on the board can help by giving some responsibility back to the students.

4. Offer active listening activities

As part of the yearly schedule, reinforce active listening with fun skill-based games. These usually involve teams assigned to a specific goal, such as building something, creating a picture or story by communicating verbal directions, or reading a text in parts. Diverse and active interactions help encourage diverse and active responses, which can help students listen to their teachers and each other.

5. Let students be bored

The greatest enemy of the modern classroom is media. Phones, music players, games, and computers can cause constant disruptions. Yet, even when these distractions are not physically present, students are so accustomed to them that the slow pace of schoolwork often makes them restless and unable to listen.

Students in any grade level can come to school unused to the reality of sitting quietly or maintaining discipline. Though it may be difficult at first, allowing them to be bored by leaving them to their work without the phones and computers can eventually make more productive pastimes seem more attractive. Allowing them to read or draw after a test can become a real reward, once their minds have slowed down enough to think of it as one.

How to Move Forward as Teachers in a Distracting World

Professor Tom Sallee once wrote that the two lies of teaching are that students learn what the teacher says and cannot learn anything the teacher does not say. Failing to recognize these lies causes many teachers to respond to low student listening in exactly the wrong ways: by talking more and listening less.

Instead, teachers must learn to be engaged in their students’ activities without unnecessary repetition; they must listen without surrendering control. As the world becomes more distracting and teacher burnout continues to grow, the strategies listed here will become even more significant as starting points for creating an engaged listening environment in any classroom.

At Zen Educate, our job is to provide teachers with resources to help them define, learn, and solve their most pressing issues in the modern classroom. We provide information that helps teachers grow and solve classroom issues without repeating the problems that got them there.

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