I have taught at a small private day school located on the North Shore of Massachussets for the last two years. Students at this institution are selected for their academic drive, sport or acting history, ability to maintain focus, ability to socialize with peers and adults, command of English, and general executive function.
As a result, classroom discipline is not much of a challenge. Simple directives to place phones at the edge of the classroom are obeyed without question as a class, and rarely need to be reinforced at an individual level.
Most students come from relatively wealthy families, and have high expectations placed on them by their families. Several of my students play two or even three sports in the same season, which are a higher priority than schoolwork or sleep. This overcommitment sometimes impacts their ability to do complete their homework, or stay alert on Monday mornings, after spending the weekend at a club tournament several states away.
Partly due to this culture, my school places limits on the amount of homework students can be assigned per class. For all but AP classes, students are not expected to average more than 40 minutes of homework a night per class meeting. In alignment with this policy, I have designed my curricula to have relatively low amounts of homework. In cases where the assignment is too long, I instruct my students to make a note that they were spending too much time on the material, and turn in what they got done. This is honor-system based, and also enforced by the class averages. A student is not likely to do half an assignment when they know all their peers were able to complete it in its entirety.
First-year students come from a variety of public and private schools. On beginning school, their expectations around class engagement can be very different. To facilitate a community learning environment, I focus on small group discussions and soft cold-calling so everyone has a chance to answer questions.
In addition, I provide rubrics for their homework assignments so they know what expectations I have, and provide scaffolded note-taking guidelines to familiarize them with standard note-taking style. This scaffolding also acclimates them to our textbook and guides them how to extract key information from the book. As the year progress, I provide leaner scaffolding, eventually eliminating it.
Students are required to participate in school-based cocurriculars, 2/3 of which must be sports each year. Cocurricular teams become a primary method to cultivate friendships across grade levels and academic interests. This encourages students to learn about electives they haven’t taken yet and enables groups of students to sign up for courses together. When these students wind up the same course as their teammates, class environments can be smooth and focused or may frequently teeter on the edge of a jovial anarchy.