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As I do at the start of each semester, I greeted my new students at the door with a firm handshake, a look in the eye and instructions to put on their uniform shirts before they stepped into my classroom.

After the late bell, and after I started my introduction to the class, a student appeared in the doorway, craning his neck in search of an open seat. He didn’t have his uniform shirt, so I told him he could use one from the pile of extras that I keep around.

He refused. He insisted that I write him a pass to go get a shirt from the office.

“Not right now. You’ll miss important information,” I told him. “I washed all the spare shirts over the summer. It’s alright.”

“No, write me a pass. I get one.”

“Not right now. Use one of those.”

He glared at me, unmoving for a long time. The class came to a halt while we stood in silence, waiting for one of us to do what the other said.

After a minute, he made a move to sit down at a desk. I stopped him with a disapproving, “No.”

He stood back up.

“Write me a pass,” he insisted.

With each verbal volley, every head in the class turned back, then forth, like they were watching a tennis match.

“You know what you are supposed to do right now,” I said. And then I waited.

The other 38 students sat silently in anticipation for more than a full minute. Finally, the student huffed and walked out of class. He came back later and we had a nice chat.

That battle wasn’t about a uniform shirt. It was about whether or not I expect my students to follow the policies and guidelines for the class. And it was about how much weight my words carry in my classroom.

And as a result of it, I will not only have more kids following my instructions and listening to me after that stand off, more of the kids who don’t usually follow instructions, will now do so.

That particular student has shown up to my class on time every day since — with his uniform shirt. And, with the exception of some light redirection, he follows every direction I give. The best part is that he is now learning.

Conflicts like these with students feel petty sometimes, but they mean everything in a classroom. A lot of people, some administrators included, don’t understand why I absolutely cannot bend in situations like that. Instead, I hear over and over that I should “choose (my) battles,” which means that I shouldn’t face off with a student over something small, like a uniform shirt. Instead, I am supposed to wait until there is a major conflict.

But in truth, if we fight the little battles early, then we don’t always have to fight the big battles later.

There are always going to be “those kids” — the students that many people talk about with an especially stressed “those” and a nearly forgotten “kids.”

We often tend to think of them in terms of what they do. They are the kids who don’t come back after we let them use the bathroom, the ones who refuse to give us their cell phones after we catch them texting during class, the ones who mumble curse words at us under their breath after we correct them.

But there is another side to their story. Many are kids who have seen horrible things at too young of an age. Some have bounced around between foster homes and distant relatives, or they have never had anyone just hug them and tell them outright: You are loved.

Many of those kids feel too powerless to affect anything — their circumstances, their environment, or their futures. The only way they know how to feel any kind of control over their own lives is to stand defiantly in opposition to an authority figure who doesn’t pose a physical threat.

Those are the kids that I usually have stand-offs with at the start. They are also the ones who break my heart.

I think that some people think that I am rigid or authoritarian. They misinterpret my insistence on creating a learning environment. Those students who run away and try to drop my class are the ones I most want to teach. That said, I know that the only way I can really reach them is by helping them to understand that they need to let me be their teacher.

I win every battle for control of my classroom, but I don’t always win every student. A few always drop when they realize how unrelenting I’m going to be.

It hurts sometimes that what makes me successful with those who stay is the same thing that makes those other students leave.

I don’t buy in to the mantra that I’m “not their parent.” My classroom management style is not a tough-love approach. It is a good-parenting approach. And like a good parent, I personally feel failure when it doesn’t work. I feel like a failure when a student drops my class because they don’t want to be taught by me.

I think that it is important to feel failure when a student runs away from a class, and to stay sensitive to that experience. Being sensitive to such feelings makes us more attuned and able, the next time around, to find better ways to create the learning environment that we want. It also helps us to keep students who most need the structure and guidance that we can provide where they belong — in the classroom.