Category: Instruction & Classroom Culture Article: Student Engagement as an Aspect of Classroom Management
Author: Amir Taron Ayres
Source: Edutopia (February 12, 2026)

🎯 Executive Summary 

In his February 12, 2026, Edutopia article, Amir Taron Ayres offers a powerful reframe of classroom management: order and engagement are not competing priorities—they are codependent.

Ayres argues that effective classroom management is not about tighter rules or louder discipline systems. Instead, it is about building intellectual engagement strong enough to sustain order. When engagement is absent, boredom fills the gap—and boredom often leads to distraction, disruption, or disengagement.

His core insight is simple but profound: if teachers focus solely on compliance, they get ritual engagement and passive obedience. If they focus solely on engagement without structure, chaos follows. The solution is intentional design—norming learning structures as carefully as behavioral expectations.

🧱 Rethinking Management: Beyond Discipline

Citing Harry Wong, Ayres reminds readers that classroom management is not discipline. It is systems, organization, and motivation.

New teachers often begin with rule-heavy classrooms—Ayres describes his own early rule list as resembling the Ten Commandments. Over time, however, he streamlined expectations to two core principles:

• Respect the classroom community

• Stay on task with technology

He then invites students to define what those expectations look like—including expectations for him as the teacher. This shared understanding shifts culture from imposed compliance to community agreement.

🔄 Norm Learning Structures Like You Norm Behavior

One of Ayres’s most compelling arguments is that teachers routinely norm behavioral routines—how to enter the room, line up, or transition—but often neglect to norm academic routines.

Complex activities like Socratic seminars, turn-and-talks, or group discussions frequently “fall apart” not because students are incapable, but because the structure was never explicitly taught and rehearsed.

Ayres asks a crucial question: Did you teach and norm the activity?

In his classroom, a turn-and-talk includes clear expectations:

• Stay on topic

• Engage in discourse

• Expect teacher monitoring

• Wrap up on countdown

• Be prepared to share

These expectations are practiced repeatedly before being embedded in higher-stakes lessons.

Leadership implication: If a learning structure breaks down, revisit the structure—not just the behavior.

🍬 “Candy Before Vegetables”

Ayres introduces a memorable metaphor: candy before vegetables.

Before launching a rigorous Socratic seminar on complex social issues, he practices discourse structures with low-stakes, high-interest topics—music, sports, pop culture. In one example, students debate whether Bad Bunny should headline the Super Bowl halftime show.

These conversations serve two purposes:

1. They engage authentic student interest.

2. They allow the teacher to assess and refine discourse norms in a low-pressure environment.

Once students master the structure, the class transitions to heavier academic content—debating systemic causes of life outcomes or drug policy—with far greater independence and intellectual stamina.

The structure holds because it was rehearsed.

🧠 Engagement as Management

Ayres references the concept of authentic engagement versus ritual engagement. Authentic engagement demands cognitive investment and student voice. Ritual engagement looks orderly but lacks depth.

When teachers overemphasize compliance, classrooms appear calm but intellectually flat. When teachers design for discourse, collaboration, and inquiry—while explicitly teaching how to execute those structures—engagement and order reinforce each other.

Importantly, Ayres notes that feedback is essential. Naming what success looks like and revisiting norms when necessary prevents breakdown.

🏫 Leadership Implications

For school leaders, this article offers practical insight:

• Encourage teachers to explicitly teach academic routines.

• Model and protect discourse-rich instruction.

• Provide coaching on norming learning structures.

• Observe for intellectual engagement, not just behavioral compliance.

Engagement-driven management reduces reliance on punitive discipline while elevating rigor.

🔄 The Takeaway

Classroom management is not about tightening control—it is about designing engagement.

When learning structures are clearly taught, rehearsed, and refined, students free up cognitive space for deeper thinking. Order emerges not from silence, but from purpose.

As Ayres demonstrates, students will not tear down what they understand and help sustain. When intellectual engagement becomes the anchor, management becomes natural.

Original Article

Link: https://www.edutopia.org/article/student-engagement-aspect-classroo...

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com