With All Due Respect

With All Due

Respect

Keys for Building

Effective School Discipline

By

Ronald G. Morrish

Author

Woodstream Publishing

Fonthill, Ontario, Canada

Copyright © 2000 by Ronald G. Morrish

Illustrated by John Boon (Welland, Ontario, Canada)

Cover design by Darcy Morrish (Dundas, Ontario, Canada)

Smashwords Edition 2012

All rights reserved.

1. Discipline 2. School Discipline 3. Teaching 4. Effective Schools 5. Classroom management 6. Teacher Training

Woodstream Publishing, P.O. Box 1093, Fonthill, Ontario, Canada LOS 1E0

ISBN 978-0-9681131-6-5

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Introduction: Where Has All the Respect Gone?

Chapter 1: Not by Management Alone

Chapter 2: Lessons Along the Way

Chapter 3: Too Much of a Good Thing

Chapter 4: Renewing Our Sense of Discipline

Chapter 5: Believe It or Not

Fundamentals: Taking a Closer Look At Training, Teaching, and Managing

Chapter 6: Training Positive Behavior

Chapter 7: Teaching Responsible Behavior

Chapter 8: Managing Independent Behavior

Chapter 9: Effective Classroom Management − 14 Tips to Keep Your Classroom Humming

Building Effective Discipline

Chapter 10: Decide, In Advance, How Your Students Will Behave

Chapter 11: Design the Supporting Structure

Chapter 12: Establish a Clear Threshold

Chapter 13: Run a Two-Week Training Camp

Chapter 14: Teach Students to Behave Appropriately

Making it Work

Chapter 15: Set the Stage

Chapter 16: Provide Active, Assertive Supervision

Chapter 17: Enforce Rules and Expectations

Chapter 18: Focus on Prevention

Chapter 19: Set High Standards

Chapter 20: Treat Parents as Partners

Building School Discipline

Chapter 21: Rebuild Teamwork

Chapter 22: Get Everyone on the Same Page, Going in the Same Direction

Chapter 23: Work Together to Make it Happen

Applications

Chapter 24: Problem Solving

Chapter 25: Dealing With ADD/ADHD

Chapter 26: Dealing With Disruptive Students

Chapter 27: Dealing With Aggression and Violence

Chapter 28: Dealing With Defiance

Chapter 29: Dealing With High Impact Students

Chapter 30: Potpourri

Recommended Resources

Appendices

A Worksheets

B Behavioral Continuum − Kindergarten to Grade 8

C Physical Intervention Guidelines

Web Site and Contact Information

About the Author

Dedication

To Laure, my wife and best friend:

Her gift for teaching, dedication to her students, and commitment to discipline have inspired many of the principles espoused in this book.

Introduction

Where Has All The Respect Gone?

If there is one issue which unites teachers and parents these days, it is the desire to improve discipline in our schools. Everyone wants to see more respect and responsibility from students, less disruption in classrooms, and an end to bullying.

Demands on teachers are escalating rapidly – new curricula, less preparation time, more meetings, and much more paperwork. It is impossible for teachers to meet these demands if their time must be spent dealing with disruption, defiance, and aggression. For teachers to provide high-quality lessons and meet the needs of individual students, it is essential for students to behave appropriately and show respect for the rights and needs of others.

Parents are equally concerned. They want to be able to send their children off to school without worrying about their safety. Parents have been shocked by the highly publicized rash of violent incidents in schools and stunned to learn that it could happen anywhere, anytime. They want gangs and weapons out of schools.

Meeting these goals is an enormous challenge. Obviously, children don’t develop positive behavior by accident. It is the result of great discipline, which brings us directly to the purpose of this book. We need to establish the keys for building effective discipline in our schools.

With All Due Respect provides these keys, but it does so with a unique perspective. Your journey through this book will force you to look, not just at your discipline strategies, but also at your beliefs regarding how we have been raising and teaching our children. As you will learn, your beliefs have a direct impact on the outcome of your strategies. These days, many people equate discipline with punishment and consequences, a simplistic view which has led to a widespread over-reliance on punitive techniques. Somehow, we must find a way to re-instill the concept that discipline is mainly about teaching and training our children to be the kind of children we want them to be. This isn’t some new theory. The principles espoused here are the principles which have been followed by great teachers and parents for many years.

One of the great ironies about the discipline debate is that there are teachers who know, and have always known, how to solve the problem. They do it every day in their classrooms. You would think that we could just learn it from them – either by watching how they do it, or by having them explain it to us. If only it were that simple.

Try to learn discipline from the masters and you will immediately run into two big problems. First, when discipline is done well, it is almost invisible. You can’t see it. It’s not like poor discipline where you can easily see all the punishments, detentions, confrontations, students in isolation, and so on. You can also hear the raised voices and feel the constant tension.

With effective discipline, all you see is students behaving well, doing their assignments, and getting along with each other. Lessons are relatively uninterrupted and transitions are quick and smooth. When a problem does arise, it is dealt with quickly and quietly. Unfortunately, try as you might, you won’t see how the teacher creates the effect. It almost seems to happen by itself.

The second problem is that great teachers are, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst people in the world for explaining to anyone else how they discipline their students. It’s so natural and intuitive, they can’t put it into words.

Obviously, if effective discipline can’t be learned from master teachers, then there is a very real danger of teachers being unduly influenced by every new theory that comes along. In fact, this is exactly what has been happening over the years. Teachers have implemented trendy forms of discipline which do not get the job done. The only way of avoiding this situation is to analyze the discipline techniques used by effective teachers so they can be shared and duplicated.

That’s what this book is all about – practical, common-sense concepts which we have lost sight of over the years. These principles were first described in the book Secrets of Discipline: 12 Keys for Raising Responsible Children (ISBN 0-9681131-0-9) which preceded the present text. It looked at issues which were common to parents and teachers.

With All Due Respect is specifically for educators. School issues need to be addressed separately because the learning environment is unique. It has its own special problems and demands. Parents, after all, aren’t required to keep large groups of children on task for five hours every day and to implement complex curricula, usually without adequate resources.

Schools work best when they operate as learning communities where everybody gets involved in a common effort to accomplish common goals. Hence, when you see the word teacher in this book, remember that this refers not only to the curriculum specialists in the classrooms, but also to the teaching assistants and child care workers, the school administrators, secretaries, and caretaking staff, all of whom must work together. Unless everyone is on the same page, going in the same direction, we won’t be successful in bringing respect back into our schools.

Note: Throughout this book, the pronoun he has been used in most descriptions of student behavior. This is not intended to imply that only males experience behavioral difficulties. All examples apply equally to both genders.

Every new initiative adds to the workload....

....but effective discipline is an investment. The extra time and effort which it requires, especially at the beginning of the school year, is repaid many times over in the long run.

Chapter 1

Not By Management Alone

As an educator, you know that many students come from homes where supervision and discipline are lax, and from communities where social problems abound.

You know that regardless of these problems, it is essential for students to behave appropriately in school. The ability of teachers to deliver quality education depends upon it.

And since you know this doesn’t happen by accident, you understand the importance of providing effective discipline within the school environment.

So, let’s get right to the point.

For the past twenty years, teachers have consistently been taught to elicit positive student behavior by using a set of strategies known as Classroom Management. These strategies are designed to keep students on task, minimize disruptions, and maintain general control of the learning environment. They have proven to be valuable techniques and every teacher should be proficient in their use.

But, understand this:

Classroom management alone will not give you the kind of students you want.

If you’re like most teachers, you have high expectations for students. It’s not enough to simply have them quiet and on-task. You also want them to be respectful, responsible, and co-operative. You want students who can be trusted to behave well without direct supervision, students who avoid conflict, and students who make a positive contribution.

This requires discipline....

.... and there is more to discipline than just classroom management.

Discipline is about developing and creating appropriate behaviors, not just managing the ones which are already there. It’s about instilling values and positive attitudes, teaching pro-social skills, and training children how to work within a structure of rules and limits. Because it deals with all aspects of behavior, discipline is capable of producing higher order attributes such as respect and responsibility.

This sounds great, but it’s really a parental responsibility, right?

Absolutely – up to a point.

We’re actually talking about two different jobs here, so let’s clear up any confusion. Parents are responsible for the overall positive development of their children. They are supposed to teach their children the skills and values necessary for success in the world at large. It would be neither appropriate, nor feasible, for teachers to assume this responsibility.

School discipline is a different issue. It involves teaching students to be respectful and responsible in school. That’s all. If it so happens that the discipline used in school helps children deal positively with the world outside, that would be a bonus.

There are several reasons why it is important for teachers to take on this specific task. First, even if parents have done a good job with discipline, their efforts may not carry over to the school environment. This especially occurs when children have certain traits such as obstinacy or impulsivity. Second, in a multicultural world, teachers cannot be assured that the lessons taught in homes are the lessons needed for school. And finally, it will always be the case that some parents fail to provide their children with the necessary supervision and discipline. Teachers must at least provide enough within the school setting to protect the quality of the learning environment and the safety of staff and students.

This is one of the great challenges. How is it possible to elicit appropriate behavior from students who have not had a solid foundation laid in the home environment?

And the Award for Special Effects Goes to....

To accomplish this goal, school discipline relies on a special effect. It takes advantage of the fact that behavior is, to a certain extent, situational. People are capable of learning behaviors which apply only to a specific place or occasion. Inappropriate behaviors are excluded.

An excellent example of this is the behavior of people at church. When attending church, people act in a manner considered suitable for that environment, even if they would normally behave very differently. It doesn’t matter if they are rich or poor, if the family has one parent or two, or how smart they may be. It is clearly understood that there is a correct way to behave at church. Negative behaviors such as rude language and provocative clothing are not allowed.

Within the school environment, effective discipline has exactly the same impact. As children arrive at school, they literally switch on the set of behaviors associated with being students. Clearly defining these expectations increases the effectiveness of the system, blocking out the negative behaviors and attitudes which children could bring with them from their home and community settings.

Paying the Price

Classroom management does not create this effect – and classroom management is what most teachers rely on. Instead of creating a set of situational behaviors, classroom management operates on the premise that teachers can manage whatever behaviors the students bring with them. This only works if there is a high degree of consistency between school expectations and the community at large.

The system quickly breaks down if a significant number of students arrive at school with negative and antisocial behaviors. Allowing these behaviors into the school simply overwhelms the efforts of the teachers – and this is exactly what has been happening in many schools. Students have been bringing into schools the constant banter, defiant attitudes, provocative language, and poor social skills which are commonplace in the outside world. These behaviors are incompatible with academic learning and interfere with the progress of other students. This situation is causing enormous headaches for teachers, especially since it is happening at a time when the demands on teachers are escalating at an extraordinary rate.

Not Allowed in School

We will never have the kind of schools we desire if we continue to allow students to act