Mystery Student: The BEST classroom management tool!

Classroom management techniques can be one of the trickiest parts of being a teacher. Every year different things work for different classes. One wrong move and it can feel like your classroom is in chaos. There has to be a balance of structure and comfort for students. How can they coexist?

In my undergrad, we didn't have a lot of instruction on how to actually manage a classroom. I graduated being able write a four page lesson plan for a 30 minute lesson (which I haven't done SINCE then), but didn't really know how to set up strong classroom expectations from the start. Part of it feels like a failure of my education, but the other part feels like it's not something you can do well until you're actually IN it. Over the past three years, I've tried many different things and have found what works best for my students and myself.

My favorite management tool/strategy is what we call "Mystery Student." At the beginning of each day, during our morning meeting, I have students take turns reading our class vision. This is an agreement we wrote together at the beginning of the year with the 5 most important things for our classroom to work well. It's displayed in two different places in our room. Each student signed it and agreed to uphold it, and we read it every morning as a reminder. After we read our vision, I pull a random numbered popsicle stick and put it in a pocket chart at the top of our whiteboard. I hide the number from them and this is the person who is the Mystery Student for the day.

I am the only one who knows who the Mystery Student is. Students know it could be any of them. At the end of the day, if I think the mystery student had a good day and upheld our class vision to the best of their ability, then they get rewarded. We give them a round of applause, students give them compliments, I have a written note telling them how proud I am of them (grab my compliment cards here), and they get to choose from the prize bin.

That's all it is! It's such a great management tool because they have no idea if it's them or not. Throughout the day, if students are off task or goofing off, all I have to say is "Some of you need to remember you could be the Mystery Student," and they immediately clean up their act. They know the good behavior you're looking for and want to succeed!

So what if the Mystery Student didn't have a good day? When we get to the end of the school day where I would normally reveal the Mystery Student, if the student did not have a stellar day, I don't reveal who it is. I tell the class that the Mystery Student "didn't get it today, but they're going to try and have a better day tomorrow." I ask them to think about their day and if they thought they could do better. We reflect on our vision and each of them give themselves a mental goal for tomorrow for how they can have a great day. I don't reveal who it is because it causes self reflection since it could be any one of them, but also because I don't want there to be any shame involved with it. We all screw up and have bad days, but there's always a new day ahead.

I won't lie, the system is sometimes rigged! If one of my students who struggles is having a really good day and needs a win, I'll change out the mystery student when they aren't in the room. I also keep track of how many times students have gotten or not gotten Mystery Student. Usually it's pretty balanced, but if there's a student who hasn't gotten picked in a while for whatever reason, I'll change it to their stick. Other times, if I'm frustrated with the class as a whole for being disrespectful or having a collective bad day, I'll say the Mystery Student didn't get it no matter who it was. This gives us a chance to reflect as a class on why we had a bad day and how we can do better.

Students LOVE this management strategy and will remind each other throughout the day, "remember, you might be the Mystery Student!" It's such a fun, easy, and highly effective management tool. Give it a try and watch your class fall in love with Mystery Student!