Here is Disciplie Mistake #3 from my mistakes course. This is a silver bullet that can immediately change your teaching career. Remember, my methods do not come from any theory learned in college but by what I learned from experience that works in the classroom, and I have been where you are; my first few years teaching I was lost as far as discipline goes. When I was a child, my mother had a poster up in the house called ‘Children Learn What They Live.’ blinn.edu/socialscience/LDThomas/Feldman/Handouts/0801hand.htm It is a beautiful and profound series of statements showing what cause leads to what effect, by Dorothy Law Nolte, though it doesn’t translate directly into the classroom. Who knows, it may have embedded a certain cause and effect relationship I have learned to respect. So let me give my own addition here to introduce discipline mistake #3: ‘If a child learns they have two warnings before any action takes place, they learn to goof off twice before adhering to any class procedures’. Discipline Mistake #3: Giving Warnings My first year of teaching, there was some warning system going around where you would put the student’s name on the board as a warning, then a check next to it as a second warning, then if they kept going...(I don’t remember—maybe you were supposed to give the ultra-warning after that followed by the mega-ultra warning, and when you got the mega-booty-ultra warning you knew the teacher was getting serious). I wonder if they made any money off of that system. Anyway, pretty soon my marker board looked like the balance sheet for a going-out-of business sale (I’m not sure I get that joke myself—roll with it). So now I still had a noisy classroom, but this time with a lot of names and checks on the board. Seem familiar? We’re always talking about how intelligent students are, so I think we should give them enough credit to know that two warnings before action means a ‘Two Free Misbehavior’ pass. With a classroom of 25 students, that’s a potential 50 warnings per class before any action is taken. Hmm. How about NO warnings? That’s right. I think my students are intelligent and know already how to behave, especially after I have gone over all classroom rules and procedures at the beginning of the semester. So instead of a warning, they receive a consequence right away. One that counts. Wrong: ‘Johnny, be quiet. If I have to tell you one more time blah blah blah.’ Right: ‘Johnny, you are disrupting the classroom. Come after school today 15 minutes.’ Is that always the end of the story? No. But stop giving warnings tomorrow and you will have one more method to build the atmosphere you want in your classroom. In Classroom Discipline 101: How to Get Any Classroom in Order I outline a complete system for getting any classroom quiet, respectful and on task. It is all of the techniques I have learned and developed in over 20 years of teaching even in the most difficult circumstances, and which have earned me the reputation as the teacher whose students are always on task, even at schools where this is thought next to impossible. These are not some abstract theories you can try out but the exact methods and steps I have used to gain the attention and respect of some of the world’s most notorious classrooms. My methods are not designed to deal with classroom discipline problems but to virtually eliminate them so teachers can spend all of their time teaching. Best wishes to enjoy your teaching experience, Craig Seganti P.S. I DO welcome comments, but this is not the place for debate or criticism of these techniques which have helped tens of thousands of teachers. They are simply methods which work, and teachers are free to use them as they see fit. 
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 04:54:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015