Everything I Know About Classroom Management I Learned While Waiting Tables

The disclaimer is, of course, that I've been through a Master of Arts in Teaching program (thank you for the bell, Walla Walla University! And for everything else.) and learned all the legitimate skills there.

But when I started teaching high school students (some seniors included), I was twenty-two, and I had never been up in front of a classroom before. Aside from my knowledge of my content area, I had no skills I felt I could apply to the teaching and learning situation. I was terrified, I had nightmares, and etcetera.

But what I quickly realized was that my classroom felt (very unexpectedly, mind you) like another work environment in which I had quite a lot of experience.

I had been in food service-- mostly waiting tables in fancy restaurants-- for over three years. Now, some of you may not have had table-waiting experience, so I'd like you to imagine your last eating-out experience. You've been a customer, and you've been a student. Consider the ways in which you want your eating experience and your learning experience to be the same:

1. you want your needs (having a good meal, understanding content/getting a certain grade) met efficiently,
2. you want good communication in what's expected of you and in what you'll get,
3. you want to trust that you'll be notified in case things change (what if the bouillabaisse got 86'd from the menu two minutes before you ordered it?)
4. you want to have a positive, respectful interaction with your server/instructor

These are just some of the basics-- I know there's at least one of you out there who expects to have other kinds of interactions with server/instructor (you know who you are)-- but they'll get us where we're going in the end.

So, as an instructor who knew how to wait tables and who had a vague idea that the abovementioned were some of the things that my students needed from me, what could I do? How could I step up in front of a classroom and create a positive and mostly dignified learning environment? The quick-and-dirty:

• PREP: I can't stress the importance of this enough in the world of waiting tables or of teaching class. A good class or shift begins early-- as you make yourself ready for your day. 
• Don't run out of candles, properly folded napkins, or sliced bread, servers!
• Much of what needs to be prepped in a restaurant can't happen until the day of that shift, but instructors should know that they should be doing the preparation for their classes at the beginning of the week to give themselves an overview of their goals and objectives.
• On the day of your lesson, review where you've been and what you've produced-- how does this fit into your longer term goals and your goals for today?
• This time will enable you to be calm in the face of inevitable fury that is a full classroom or restaurant.
• Fast Feedback: Is there a special today? You'd better know it already.
• And if you're grading student papers, you've got to be reasonable: aim for three days for feedback, unless you're reading term or thesis papers.
• Even if people want to linger over their meal (or their paper writing, for that matter!), they want you to be impeccably timed in your service.
• Understand Needs, and Be Preemptive: You have to become a genius at knowing when someone needs a new fork (even before they drop the old one on the ground). Or when you've got a fourteen-year-old on the verge of crying, know how to send that person to the bathroom before anybody else notices.
• What does this take? A lot of practice, a lot of observation, and a lot of circulation.
• One of the best things you can do in a classroom is circulate while they're doing work. Physical proximity to the student means that the student is 1) less likely to act out and 2) more likely to ask you a good question about his/her needs.
• Don't circulate aimlessly, though-- and this is the least effective thing you can do for time management in a restaurant; create a pattern for yourself based on "issues priority" (a hot meal about to come out takes priority over a teaspoon, btw) and vary that pattern if you need to-- neither students nor customers want to see you wandering.
• Never underestimate the power of eavesdropping-- the only difference is that your customers don't want to know about it and your students will be impressed if they do. My favorite: "I can't believe you heard that! That's amazing!" Also, students have a love-hate relationship with being caught using their cellphones in class. If you can do it, they'll be impressed. And more so if you don't care about taking it away.
• Lay It Out: let customers know the price of everything. Is it gluten-free? How long does that take? And if the kitchen has dozens of orders, let them know that, too.
• Students always want to know the minimum amount of work required to pass an assignment, and I let them know that. And I encourage them to do better.
• But lay it out-- give them an explicit syllabus that includes a course calendar of assignment due dates. They will feel overwhelmed at the beginning of the term (I won't liken this to the overwhelming feeling of looking at an excellent menu), but then they'll know what is expected of them and what to expect from you.
• Expectation is key in both restaurants and classroom, and if you have to change the expectations, do this as soon and as diplomatically as possible. Try not to blame your kitchen or your administration; students and customers both will be more happy if you're honest with them.
• Find An Ever-Genuine Smile, and A Gentle Frown: people can tell when you're being false with them, and it's disappointing.
• So make sure the smile you keep plastered on your face (when the customer walks into your French restaurant asking for a meal without butter or the students call you a crazy cat lady) is a real one. Think of this an experience to get to know (albeit briefly) a lot of people who are very different from you.
• But! Things will come up! I have had to ask people to leave my restaurant before; I have had to cut people off from further drinking. There are cases even more extreme than these, and in these times (when a student yells at me in blatant disrespect and threat), I am not afraid to be mean.
• But for the most part, people do dumb things (drink too much, throw spitwads in class-- this is real!) without malice. It's not my job to humiliate people when they're eating out or when they're trying to learn. I just let them know firmly that they've gone outside the bounds of propriety and leave them to figure it out themselves. The disappointment of seeing a gentle frown is sometimes all they need.

In the end, many of us want the same things: to be treated well in a reasonable time. I had learned to do this waiting tables, and I managed to figure it out as a teacher.