During my career as an educator I found that when I provided a meaningful rationale for what we were doing in school, students rarely demonstrated challenging behaviors. Essentially via multiple lessons, I demonstrated to students how their brains worked, the benefits of a growth mindset, and the advantages related to becoming an adept lifelong learner. With every lesson, I connected lessons to real world living and why those lessons were essential to having a good life. For example, I typically connected most math lessons with current events articles, common objects, and typical daily activities to demonstrate why those lessons were valuable. If you would like to see more examples of this, please search my teaching blog, Teach Children Well and/or my learning behaviors website.