How Do You Design Your Success Story: According to Francis Kong (Part 3)

By:  Mariae Francesca Ramos for  http://www.imoney.ph/

In the conclusion of this exclusive three-part interview, Francis Kong tells us how to design your success plan, the benefits and pitfalls of success and gives us a glimpse into his own journey to success.

(Did you miss the first and second part of this interview? Read How Do You Climb The Mountain Called Success and How To Recognize Your Potential For Success?)

How do you design a success plan?

You design a success plan the same way you would design a business plan.  You start your plan by taking care of your daily habits first. Ask yourself the following questions:  Do you go to bed late and then you wake up late — well, that’s something you have to change.  Do you exercise? What about your health?

What about your money management skills? Do you track all of your expenses?  What about your work? Are you still driven in your work? Do you chip in and offer your services? Do you study more, and then don’t just wait to be promoted, but present yourself to be promotable?  So these are some of the things you have to do. Start with the small things that add up to be big things.  Next, you have to be honest in making your SWOT Analysis.

What are your areas of strengths?  What are the areas of weaknesses: What are your bad habits? Am I critical of other people? Do I envy other people? Do I react violently when somebody criticizes me, especially those closest to me?’  What are the threats: I’m not getting any younger. What are the new technologies challenging my areas of competence?

What are your opportunities? Well, if you don’t have much to write here, then you’re in trouble.  Last, and very important, who are the people in my circle of friends? Are they losers, too? This is what I say in my seminars: ‘Birds of the same feather poo-poo together.’ If you find yourself in a circle of winners and achievers then mahihiya ka eh. And you’ll be driven to be like them.

So these are the things that you have to do and consider to come up with a good personal life plan. What are the benefits and pitfalls of being successful?  The benefits of achieving progress and being successful are:

1. Your life now carries meaning. You have reason now why you want to wake up in the morning.
2. Your network of friends and associates continue to expand.
3. You continue to grow because of the expansion of your network.
4. You now know and accept that you don’t know. So you begin to put yourself in a mode of wanting to learn more.
5. Money becomes an afterthought. Money now becomes second to yourself because of your competence.
6. You now have the moral right to encourage or cheer, even rebuke and correct other people who are in a rut and pull them up. Somebody said, ‘if you want to pull me up based on your moral high grounds, then you have to make sure that you’re standing somewhere higher than me.’
7. Your family respects you. You have a very holistic, healthy family life. Your children respects you, your spouse loves you, and your relationships continue to grow.
8. And for me the biggest, biggest benefit, you see that what you are enjoying now is beginning to take place in your own children as well.

Meanwhile, the pitfalls are:

1. Hubris, or an unrealistic expectation of one’s ability to be successful in anything you do. This begets recklessness, arrogance and you begin to overestimate of your capacity.
2. Because of success, you think you’re invincible and beyond failure.  
3. You close your mind to ideas and suggestions of others whom you deem as inferior to you.
4. The higher and more successful you are, the more difficult reality and truth reaches your level. The higher you are the more the information is filtered before it reaches you. And nobody is courageous enough to tell you ‘Sir you’re wrong.’
5. You begin to believe your press releases. Suddenly you are being interviewed and then you go ‘yeah, I’m really that good.’ Pride leads to arrogance, arrogance leads to isolation, isolation leads to being left in a rut, and then being detached from reality.  
6. And the biggest, biggest pitfall of success, it distances you from your loved ones who were with you in your initial journey. I think the most painful thing to happen is for couples who went through difficult times together, but upon achieves success, separate because they cannot enjoy the success because of disagreements and conflicts.

There are many pitfalls, but I think the benefits far surpass the pitfalls. Why? Because the benefits are continuous. You become a good citizen, you build your community, you become an asset to the country, you become an inspiration to the younger generation…

So are you saying, rather than an endpoint, success is a new beginning of sorts?  Oh, yes. Success is just a platform to bigger and better things. Cliché, but it is a cliché because it has a semblance of truth. Success is never a destination, it is a journey.

You never arrive at success. You spar and you wrestle with success. Sometimes you get hit, sometimes you hit back. But it must be a forward momentum of continuous progress.

Do you know how I check: my resume. At the start of seminars or lectures, people would always introduce their speaker. So they read my bio. And when they do, I challenge myself: What new things can I add to my resume this year? So I want to make sure every year I add something. It is ongoing.

In my workshops I ask people, ‘if I were to ask you to put up a piece of paper right now and write your resume, what new things can you add? If you can’t think of anything, that means you have not grown.
Have you found your success?

No, I still feel like I’ve such a long way to go. I’m no longer searching for success, but more adventure as I strive to progress over the years.

I’m looking forward to newer things to learn, newer seminars to attend, newer information that I can share with my clientele, newer technology which I can share to people and warn them that this might take over their job unless they brush up or use it to propel them to the next level.

I’m so excited with what is happening in the world. I do almost 330 talks a year, and have been doing it for years. The latest that I gave a couple of days ago was my 177th this year.

And during these talks, I get to learn from my clients as well. I learn what’s happening in pharmaceutical, in oil, telecom. And then I see the general pattern. And then how to write principles and then teach and share them with people.

How did you start with public speaking?

It started with something simple as a bible study consisting of six people. I got so scared with just six people there.  The funny thing is after that talk, they all encouraged me — maybe they saw how bad I was haha. But I felt the joy of researching, studying then sharing.

Research, study, put your personal experiences in it, make it more relevant and practical, then share.
Ang sarap pala ng process na yan.

It’s the main thing that pushed me to public speaking. Soon the six became 12, the 12 became 25. Then someone from the group said, ‘hey, why don’t you speak in Rotary?’ So I spoke at Rotary. I spoke for 12 years, averaging 120 talks, all for free.

I just kept on sharing ideas: marketing, advertising, even fashion, because my business used to be in garments. I love it — research, study, apply, share. And people appreciate that.

Do you think the same principle of research-study-apply-share can be applied to other aspects? Absolutely. This should have been the foundation for the word passion.

Have you heard people say ‘I want to follow my passion.’ Hey, that isn’t your passion, it’s your hobby. How can you pursue your hobby but totally neglect your responsibility?

Passion comes when you follow the process.  Any message for your readers?  There’s instant ramen, instant milk, and instant coffee, but there’s no such thing as instant success.

Success entails a process. And process requires intentionality, and discipline. You do that and you’re sure to arrive there.

5 Surest Way to Finish and Graduate from College

By:  Gilbert M. Forbes
DepEd QUEZON, CALABARZON

Most are studying college for the belief that it is the best thing to do so that one can find and land a good paying job in the future.  A good paying job that will improve the family's standard of living. However, for the most poor college student, there is a great uncertainty even if one is full scholar.  Even those already receiving enough monthly stipend as part of their scholarship may still find a hard time.  What can be done:

Images courtesy of google search

1.  Focus on your studies. Avoid all negative influences and don't get into serious romantic relationship as much as possible. Remember, you are studying to graduate and have a college degree and ultimately a good job once graduated and not settle.

2.  Don't be shy just because you couldn't go along with the fashion trend, gizmos, events, parties etc of your classmates, friends and barkada's particularly the financially well-off because they already know and would have actually understood your situation from the very beginning that they got to know you.  Prove your worth in everything that you do with excellence but with humility and love for the glory of  God

3.  Be truthful to yourself and don't pretend that you belong to the well-off or middle class families just to get along with the real ones.  It will not do any good but harm.  Be proud instead of your situation and be the best that you can be.  Remember, you are there to study and ultimately finish not impress the social caste by becoming a social butterfly.

4.  Be extra-productive.  While, in college, studying, you could apply as student assistant in your school or a part time job outside which will help you earn while you learn and improve and enrich your resume' as well. It will put you step ahead once you graduate and start looking for a job. If having a part time job is not feasible, you can try 'direct selling' even multi- level marketing during your idle time.  You could also engage into seasonal business during semestral breaks or help in family income generating jobs.

5.  Leave all your worries to God in prayer and trust Him.  He will surely make a way when there seems to be no way by using other people whom at the least you are not expecting that they will.  Be surrounded by positive and religiously active people.  You could join the parish choir or the youth organization or even offer yourself to minister.

Surely, with diligence, patience and trust in God, you will achieve your dreams.

How Do You Climb The Mountain Called Success: According to Francis Kong (Part 2)

Written by Mariae Francesca Ramos originally for http://www.imoney.ph

In part two of this three-part exclusive interview, Francis Kong gives us a different view to success: recognizing and tapping on your strengths and talents to find purpose and meaning and, what you can do when you find yourself stuck in your quest to ultimately attain success.

(Did you miss the first part of this interview? Catch up here.)

Images courtesy of google search images.

Do you think it is important to find success?

Rather than saying it is important to find success, I would shift that thought to it is important to find your unique purpose and meaning in life. Once you do, and you do it well, the meaning comes and  you can qualify yourself to say ‘I am really successful.’

The question now, does that entail lots of money — not necessarily.

There are people in NGOs, and there are people in their vocation who will never trade who they are and what they are doing for pockets full of money. That for them is success. Then there are people with tons and tons of money, who are not exactly happy. They look at themselves in the mirror and say the saddest statements anybody can ever say. ‘What is the meaning to all of this,’ they would say. So, it is important to find purpose and meaning.  So how do you find purpose and meaning?

This is what I teach in my seminars. You and I are gifted with different talents. For me, that’s God-given. You cannot do anything about it.

The people inside my seminar hall are a mixed bag. Some would be good in singing, some would be good in speaking, others in writing. So they are given different gifts. They have a natural propensity for what is in their strength-zone.

But while talent is God-given, skills are what you acquire for yourself and what you do with your talent. When you bank on your talent and you work on it, this increases your competency. And when you reach a level of mastery, your talent then becomes your skill. Your purpose in life is to find your own talents and skills — where you are strongest at.

If you look at successful people, they know their talents and skills. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, his talent is in social networking even from when he was in Harvard. He has an entrepreneurial spirit and he knows he’s got it. Similarly, Bill Gates has left right analytical talent.

Locally, you have MVP (Manuel V. Pangilinan) who is an extremely talented finance guy. If you look at all these taipans, their talent is in looking at something which doesn’t seem to be work and then make a tremendous amount of profit developing it, whether in manufacturing or in services.

They all know their talent. They hone it into becoming their skills — and that’s their purpose.

Do you know when meaning comes? Meaning will only come when you give your purpose away. So profit comes as a result of honing your competence. But you don’t keep it and you don’t become greedy because of it.

You share. And you use those rewards in order to help others. This is the best time when meaning comes.  And that moment will give you an immense sense of joy that would make you say, ‘This is what success is for me.’What if you only have skill but no talent? Is it still possible to find success?

Marcus Buckingham came out with a very good book entitled Now Discover Your Strengths.

It starts with parenting talaga. Some parents would force their dreams to their children. They would tell their kids to take up medicine or engineering when the natural propensity or the natural talent of the kid isn’t geared towards that area.

They love their parents, so they obey them. This is not a sweeping generalization, but among many who follow their parents’ wishes, some would develop skills. They too become competent. But they would just reach a particular level and that’s it. 

There are others who once they’ve mastered a skill and have satisfied the wishes of their parents, go on to discover other talents. They instinctively jump into their natural talent.

This is why there are doctors who were lackadaisical in their medical profession, but when then they open businesses for distribution, they become so good because their natural giftedness is in entrepreneurship, not in medicine.

If you have the natural talent, but what you do isn’t in alignment with your natural talent, and you built that into a skill, it is still possible to be good at it, but it’s a hard, long climb. It’s tough. It can still be done but you have to work double, triple. And force yourself to be good with that particular skill.

Meanwhile, if you build of your skill in alignment with your natural gifts, not only is it easier, it’s more fun. You enter into your strength-zone, and then you can level up many, many times.

I’ve noticed myself that being a public speaker is a natural talent for me because I am very talkative and I express my ideas in a clear and concise way. I never knew I was going to be a public speaker. But the moment the signs came, I developed it. Until today, I still read books on public speaking. I still hone it, I still practice. I still study the best of the best. And that elevates me into a very comfortable zone.

How do you know your talent? How do you know when you’re good at something?

The field has become so scientific that we all have different tests on personality to find your talent. I would highly recommend the book by Tom Rath called Strengths Finder which is now being used by many corporate structures.

Before this we had the DiSC Assessment. But today our minds are wired different. So I would rather use Strengths Finder. Briggs-Myers is also still workable.

What if you can’t afford to use the studies? Ask the people around you and those close to you who would not be afraid to tell you what you have to hear.

For me, this is a very philosophical and theological statement: God won’t get out from you what he did not put in you. For instance, God led Joseph to go through many years in the desert only to prepare him for becoming prime minister of Egypt who served in the palace. God prepared Moses for many years inside the palace to prepare him for forty years in the desert.

In other words, there’s always a purpose if we’re open to searching.  I have realized that my purpose is not really speaking. My purpose is to equip people that leans more towards education. This is the reason why I dislike the term motivation. Sometimes when you think about motivation, you only appeal to the emotion. You’ve fired people up, but you haven’t educated them.

I would rather embrace the term inspirational speaker, because when you inspire somebody, you have to touch both the emotion and the intellect. Appealing to the intellect causes a person to begin thinking, and that person now becomes more self-motivated.

How can you tell if you’ve finally found success?

This is very subjective, but I find myself extremely happy in what I’m doing, so much that I am actually willing to do this even if I’m not paid for it.

Because I love doing it. But clients pay me high, because they know that I can deliver what they want.

I want to have my meaning, that’s why I give it away. So I continue to give talks to parents, teachers and students and I have never charged them. No matter how tired I am, I’d still do it. Some speakers won’t do that. They think I’m losing opportunity, but not even I knew that someday the rewards will be so visible.

Whenever I give trainings and talks to paying clients, they pay me well, and that makes me happy because that buys food for my family. But when I give talks to schools for free, it gives me a sense of fulfillment and inspiration that propels me to do my job better. So when I give my paid talks and seminars, I do even better. So there’s no loss.

And throughout years of giving talks to schools, I never imagined that many of my former participants would someday be my current clients.

My students would say, ‘You know Sir Francis, I recommended you to our HR because I’d never forget what I’ve learned from you when I was in high school .’

And I would say, ‘Shut up, was that so long ago?’

I never knew that I was able to help them. More importantly I was investing goodwill. No wonder the bible says, ‘The more you give, the more you will receive.’ It is now so visible to me, very visible. I don’t know if other speakers see that.

So for me, that’s success: That I could do what I’m doing, even if you don’t pay me, yet happy to share, and excited about the future. At my age, I still feel like a beginner because there’s so much that I can still do, and so much to explore.

Now, the antithesis of that is ‘I don’t want to do what I’m doing anymore.’ You get depressed. You feel like you’re in a deadbeat job. And the only thing you look forward to is retirement.

What if you find yourself stuck? How do you shake yourself out of that rut?

There are three things I want to share with you that might work.

1. You need to have somebody real and honest to you. You need somebody who can really shake you up and say, ‘Pare, let’s get out of this current situation and let’s improve.’

Human beings have a tendency to be blindsided. We don’t really see who we are and where we are unless there is somebody strong enough to tell you that ‘you’ve stopped growing.’ ‘Things are not working for you.’ ‘Pare, you got to get out of that one na.’

2. How do you improve? Some people attend a seminar. Some people read books. Some listen to podcasts. While others listen to audio books. But if you look at the four factors, they all have something to do with knowledge.

There will never be change unless there is new information. So you have to seek for new information.

I’ll give you a very good example. ‘Friend buy this french fries, these are good.’ You say, ‘No!’ ‘Come on friend, these are really good.’ You still reply, ‘I don’t want to.’

I’ll do it again, ‘Buy it now, it’s 50% off!’ And now you say, ‘Oh, you didn’t say that! OK I’ll buy it.’ So now there’s a change in response because there’s new information.

3. Make everyday the first day of the year with that sense of wanting to have a new beginning, and wanting to change. This may be difficult, but I say, make every Monday the first day of the new year. And then assess: ‘what have I done last week?’ ‘what are the new things that I need to do now?’ ‘Have you worked on it consistently.’ And the most important part is you go back to the first one and say, ‘Pare, i-mentor mo naman ako.

You got to have a sense of accountability, accompanied by a firm determination to grow. Self-growth, and development should always be intentional. Why? Because you have a choice. You can live your life with miserable people, or you can live your life by means of design.

Designing will be a lot better. You can design a success plan for your life.

How Do You Climb The Mountain Called Success: According to Francis Kong (Part 1)

Written by Mariae Francesca Ramos originally for http://www.imoney.ph

Francis Kong has run his own garment business for 17 years before finding his niche sharing inspiring talks, lectures and seminars on entrepreneurship, leadership, money management and even parenting. His audience, both students and businessmen, started from a small group of six and has now multiplied to thousands.

Francis J. Kong

His own success, he said, did not come overnight, but from years and years of learning and growing through hard work and practice born from the love of his craft. He compels people to listen because of his gentle yet powerful manner, but more so by the truth in his words.

iMoney one morning met with businessman, columnist, broadcaster, book author and inspirational speaker Francis Kong over coffee, hot chocolate and a basket of fries to ponder over the intricacies of success.

In part one of this two-part exclusive interview, Francis Kong gives us a different take on success: why people are fixated to achieve it, what you lack and what you already have that will drive you to succeed and the family’s role in character and confidence building.

How do you define success?

Success for me is something intangible. When people ask me what my success is about, I would always counter by saying, ‘I have never thought about success.’

But what is important for me rather than success is progress. This means it is a continuing journey without having a fixed destination. That way, you can continue to level up.

So, if you want to be technical about it, I think, it’s about meeting goals and then exceeding it. This for me would define success.

True success has to be fully integrative and it has to be holistic in approach. So you cannot be a person who is successful in one highly departmentalized compartment of your life. If you want success, you need to be successful in your business, your career, and in your family. And as far as your own spiritual journey is concerned, you have to be quite successful in that area as well. It has to be holistic.

Why are people driven to succeed?

We are living in a highly competitive economy wherein the population explosion seems very high, especially in our country. So people instinctively know that they have to be competitive and they have to be driven to success.

Now, this is the inherent feeling of every person exacerbated by the fact that parents now really hone their children to be competitive and successful.

And the parenting style over the years have really changed. For example, during the earlier years, parents would value character in their kids. As a matter of fact, parents would tell their kids ‘don’t be proud,’ ‘stay humble,’ ‘be respectful,’ ‘be courteous,’ but do hard work. So if you are successful, you don’t flaunt it.

During the last 20 or 30 years, the parenting styles have really transformed into putting a lot of confidence into your kids. Convincing your kids that ‘you can do anything you want,’ ‘you can be anybody you want to be,’ it’s teaching them that ‘you have to believe in yourself.’

These two factors have driven people to have a very high level of desire to want to succeed or be better than anybody else. So I would say that’s the reason why people are driven today.

In your opinion, is being driven to success good or bad?

Both. This is bad because this fosters a lot of unhealthy competition. Second, this creates disappointment and frustration, especially when young people today see the magazine covers of 19 and 20-year-old billionaires. And parents exacerbate the fact by telling them, ‘you can be like him if you want to.’ So some kids grow up into thinking that having low scores and low grades make them losers.

Another result which bad, is that for some people the end justifies the ‘meanness.’ They can be mean in wanting to arrive at their goals thinking that life is simply one-upping the other. If you’re smarter, you’re more aggressive, then you tend to get the opportunity.

On the other hand, being driven to succeed can be good in the sense that it shakes people out of their lethargy and apathy. It’s telling people that ‘you got to do some work.’ People now will have to learn the fact that the world does not owe them a living. They have to earn their stripes.

And so, the curious thing here is the balance between the two. How do you maintain confidence, yet maintain humility in the process. But not giving out of the traditional value of hard work and honesty.

So how do you strike a balance between character and confidence?

I would start with parenting. That’s the reason why even though I’ve given about 320+ seminars in a year I still give a lot of parenting seminars that are free. And it’s important to start at home.

Rather than just building confidence, which is also important, make sure that you don’t neglect building character in kids.

Character building will balance the whole thing. Making money and being successful does not mean at the expense of other people and that you take advantage.

Doing hard work, earning your stripes and then earning money also gives you a responsibility to learn to give back to others and bless them, too. So that gives you a healthy cycle.

And then with the constant reminder, which is a favorite thing I like to say in my seminars, that ‘you never allow success to get into your head. But you never allow failures to creep into your heart.’

So there must be a balance of the two things.

What do people nowadays lack but need that will propel them to success?

I would rather reduce that question into a more specific boundary.

1. For the young people, what I’m afraid of is this constant living in the moment phenomenon, which they call YOLO (short for you only live once). I had someone in my seminar say, ‘Sir Francis, people our age have this concept of living for the moment, and we want to pour everything right now, what’s your take on that?’

My response is, ‘It’s OK, as long you make sure you pour everything today, and tomorrow you die. What will happen if you continue to live tomorrow? Resources are limited. Pouring in everything now without any regard for the future will make you totally negligent and reckless.

And secondly, life catches up with you. I’ve got news for you, I used to be your age. What if you reach my age now, what resources will you have left? So a wise, successful person is always somebody who studies the lessons from the past, make good of the current moment, and exploit it to the max, not wasting time with a future orientation knowing that the success today may not be working for tomorrow. So you should always be goal-driven, a person who has a vision for tomorrow.

2. As for other people, what stops them from being successful is idleness. There are people who still hold onto their competencies which they have had in the past not knowing that the world has already changed. I find this happening in many organizations wherein senior executives would still hang on their positions and not upgrading and updating their competencies, especially in leadership skills. This tend to cause them to be very irrelevant as far as dealing with the new generation.

And the same kind of idleness and the lack of desire for self-development will also cause them to be technophobic. So rather than learning, and getting out of their comfort zone, they’ll just demonize it.

Some people would even proudly say, ‘You know what, I still don’t have a Facebook account.’ For me, that’s not something to be proud of. Because if you are in business, how can you say you’re not familiar with Facebook, when social media now is THE thing apart from traditional advertising.

If your children are in Facebook now, how can you be so isolated without knowing what’s going on? And so, technology, Facebook is not something that you should ignore. You have to go through the discipline of understanding it — and use it for the good. So that when it’s not being used for the good, you have the right to explain why it should not be done for the bad. If you’re ignorant, then people won’t respect you.

3. Finally, ignorance is dangerous, ‘lethal knowledge’ is even more dangerous. I find a lot of young people mouthing cliches without deeper understanding. When you ask young people, ‘what are your intentions?’ They answer, ‘I want to earn passive income.’ When I say ‘how young are you?’ ‘I’m 19.’

I tell them: You’re so young you don’t have income, yet you want it to be passive, are you crazy? You are the most important income generating machine you could ever be. That’s why rather than thinking of passive income, why don’t you think of generating active income?

And this extends to active study, development, investment in growth, working hard, looking for the vision of the future — not living YOLO, and spend less time playing COC (Clash of Clans).

Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, you and I, we’re all given exactly 24 hours in a day. The question now is how do you use it to your advantage?

So if you’re using one hour doing COC vs one hour reading books, guess who loses? So another hindrance towards achieving success is the typical mentality of our people to favor entertainment over education.

Education may be boring for now. It is hard work, so it’s not fun. But it reaps results. Entertainment gives you pleasure for the moment. But it doesn’t reap any long term results in the future.

So how do people find success?

You find success the same way you do investment. You invest first before you can make a profit. It is impossible for you to have a profit first before investing.

Success is like profit. To earn your success, you invest by pursuing knowledge, educating yourself, developing your character and attitude, continuous improvement, working really hard, networking with people, creating a service mentality and a good attitude.

But the most important factor in order to go up the step ladder of success is making yourself likeable. The likeability quotient required now is very high — almost as high as IQ and EQ.

In the world right now, wherever you go, people just want to do business and give opportunity to people they like, all other things being equal.

If you’re brash, arrogant — because you never knew that there’s a difference between confidence and arrogance — you’re going to be left alone. Opportunities will not go your way.

So likeability quotient now is an essential thing in order to achieve success — without compromising your ethical principles, of course.

5 Quick Classroom-Management Tips for Novice Teachers

By:  Rebecca Alber

Appeared originally at www.edutopia.org

I made a good number of blunders my first year teaching that still make me cringe. I learned though. And it's fair to say, when it comes to managing a classroom, most of what we learn as new teachers is trial by fire. It's also smart to heed the advice of those who have walked -- and stumbled -- before you. If you are struggling with discipline, here are five tips that you can start using right away:

 

Photo courtesy of Rappler.com

#1 Use a normal, natural voice

Are you teaching in your normal voice? Every teacher can remember this from the first year in the classroom: spending those first months talking at an above-normal range until one day, you lose your voice.

Raising our voice to get students' attention is not the best approach, and the stress it causes and the vibe it puts in the room just isn't worth it. The students will mirror your voice level, so avoid using that semi-shouting voice. If we want kids to talk at a normal, pleasant volume, we must do the same.

You want to also differentiate your tone. If you are asking students to put away their notebooks and get into their groups, be sure to use a declarative, matter-of-fact tone. If you are asking a question about a character in a short story, or about contributions made by the Roman Empire, use an inviting, conversational tone.

#2 Speak only when students are quiet and ready

This golden nugget was given to me by a 20-year veteran my first year. She told me that I should just wait and then wait some more until all students were quiet.

So I tried it; I fought the temptation to talk. Sometimes I'd wait much longer than I thought I could hold out for. Slowly but surely, the students would cue each other: "sshh, she's trying to tell us something," "come on, stop talking," and "hey guys, be quiet." (They did all the work for me!)

My patience paid off. Yours will too. And you'll get to keep your voice.

#3 Use hand signals and other non-verbal communication

Holding one hand in the air, and making eye contact with students is a great way to quiet the class and get their attention on you. It takes awhile for students to get used to this as a routine, but it works wonderfully. Have them raise their hand along with you until all are up. Then lower yours and talk.

Flicking the lights off and on once to get the attention is an oldie but goodie. It could also be something you do routinely to let them know they have three minutes to finish an assignment or clean up, etc.

With younger students, try clapping your hands three times and teaching the children to quickly clap back twice. This is a fun and active way to get their attention and all eyes on you.

#4 Address behavior issues quickly and wisely

Be sure to address an issue between you and a student or between two students as quickly as possible. Bad feelings -- on your part or the students -- can so quickly grow from molehills into mountains.

Now, for handling those conflicts wisely, you and the student should step away from the other students, just in the doorway of the classroom perhaps. Wait until after instruction if possible, avoiding interruption of the lesson. Ask naive questions such as, "How might I help you?" Don't accuse the child of anything. Act as if you do care, even if you have the opposite feeling at that moment. The student will usually become disarmed because she might be expecting you to be angry and confrontational.

And, if you must address bad behavior during your instruction, always take a positive approach. Say, "It looks like you have a question" rather than, "Why are you off task and talking?"

When students have conflicts with each other, arrange for the students to meet with you at lunch, after or before school. Use neutral language as you act as a mediator, helping them resolve the problem peacefully, or at least reach an agreeable truce.

#5 Always have a well-designed, engaging lesson

This tip is most important of all. Perhaps you've heard the saying, if you don't have a plan for them, they'll have one for you. Always overplan. It's better to run out of time than to run short on a lesson.

From my own first-hand experience and after many classrooms observations, something that I know for sure: Bored students equal trouble! If the lesson is poorly planned, there is often way too much talking and telling from the teacher and not enough hands-on learning and discovery by the students. 

We all know engaging lessons take both serious mind and time to plan. And they are certainly worth it -- for many reasons.

Share with us your classroom management experiences: What specific challenges are you having? What strategies have worked well for you and your students? Please share in the comment section below.