Rules vs. Procedures

Rule: Governing principle, way to live

Procedure: established way to comply with the rules

Even though I have taught many years (15 to be exact!) I don’t have all the answers and it seems that I am learning every day to do a better job. I have always struggled with the whole rules and procedures ideas in my class. How many rules should you have? Are rules procedures or just something you like your class to do? Are procedures rules or just a certain way to get something done? The whole thing can be a bit of a headache and if you don’t have some idea of guidelines…man, are you in for it as a teacher!

The thing is the past six years I have taught at a school that gave me certain rules to teach. The whole school did it, and it was a good idea to have everyone on the same page. The only problem, I did not completely agree with the set of rules (a few seemed unnecessary or over the head of first graders) but it was part of the protocol in our school, so I didn’t buck the system and did as I was told. For the most part, they were great! The kids understood what they needed to do and they mostly followed the rules.  I almost got into a trance with the rules, we repeated them at the beginning of the day and if the kiddos broke a rule you would repeat the rule they broke, so far so good. It worked pretty well when I taught third graders and the kids understood me and most of the time things were fine. But then I went to first grade…it was so hard! The kids didn’t get it. The rules confused them, but we still held strong to the rules, because that is what our school did. I muddled through a year in first grade, crying that I couldn’t speak six-year-old and I was going to have to pry children off the ceiling the rest of my career. I ended up morphing a few rules to be more specific and that worked…most of the time, but the real problem was I was teaching procedures as rules. I was given rules for my classroom that were really procedures. I was confusing kids by stating rules that were easily broken every single day.

Rules being broken daily? How could that be so? For example, raising your hand to speak or leave your seat is not truly a rule, it is a procedure. The past six years I have been teaching it as a rule…so what happens when you are in centers, do you really want your kids to raise their hands to leave their seat, or just quietly go get a new pencil when one breaks? Do you want your small group to always raise their hand when they have something to say? No! That would be ridiculous and tedious, but if you go by the rules, that is exactly what I would expect, right? What happens? We are all now confused, because now a rule has to change for different circumstances or different places…poor six-year-old brains.

So, I decided this year rules don’t change—procedures can. It is that simple. So, for now on, I am not going to say that raising your hand before you make a comment is a rule, it is a procedure(way)  to follow the rules when we are at the rug or at our seats and I am teaching the whole class. I am not going to say you need to follow directions quickly and quietly as a rule, but I am going to say that you need to respect time, and the way to do that is to follow directions quickly and quietly. I am tossing the procedural rules and making rules that can be followed anywhere you go and anyplace you will be: Respect Yourself, Respect Others, Respect Property and Respect Time. Will I teach procedures? Absolutely!! I just won’t call them rules anymore!