QUESTION: I am a kindergarten teacher in Spokane Valley, Washington. My colleagues and I have adopted your Raise Responsibility behavior plan. We are having some difficulties getting kindergartners to value the importance of intrinsic motivation. They’ll tell me they are showing level A or B behavior, and they’ll even do a reflection to focus on better choices and better behavior; then before I know it, they have repeated showing A or B behavior. Can we really expect ALL children (kindergartners) to understand and abide by these 4 levels without ANY rewards? RESPONSE: The answer is, YES, but you start by differentiating between ACCEPTABLE levels and UNACCEPTABLE levels. See the posters and cards at impulse management. Also, and—this is critical—be sure
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Everyone knows the whimsical fantasies of Bill Peet, but you may not be familiar with his less well-known non-fiction book, Capyboppy. It’s one of my all time favorite children’s books! Capyboppy is the true story of a South American capybara that was brought into the Peet home by Bill’s oldest son, a natural science major in college. Capy––who eventually grew to be 75 pounds––lived with the four members of the Peet family as a much loved and much spoiled pet! Capyboppy is a great two-day read-aloud for younger children. With a large black and white illustration on every one of its 62 pages, it’s also the perfect book for transitioning older students into reading longer texts independently. If you like cliff-hangers,
READ MORE >>> →A post was made at the Discipline Support mailring wherein the teacher oftentimes used the word “discipline” with students. Clarification is necessary because the term, DISCIPLINE” should BE USED ONLY with ADULTS—not with students or children. The ONLY part of the approach young people need to understand is the levels of social development, the first phase of the Raise Responsibility System—which is only a small but foundational part of the teaching and learning model model outlined at the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model. I – CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT vs. DISCIPLINE TEACHING PROCEDURES (the essence of classroom management) is the responsibility of the ADULT. II – THREE PRINCIPLES TO PRACTICE A) Communicating with people in POSITIVE ways STARTS as the responsibility of
READ MORE >>> →In a few presentations to teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of my charges was to include some ideas about differentiation. The following are some ideas on differentiation (both in content and process) that I shared. ASSESSMENT (before): Write a letter to your parents. Include interests, talents, learning preferences, long-range plans or desires, and goals in the class. — Topics for class meetings with PRIMARY students: –Why are we here? –What are we trying to do? –What does it mean to do something well? –How will we know if we are doing it well together? Topics for class meetings with OLDER students: –What does it mean to do quality work? –How will you know that a quality
READ MORE >>> →People of all ages have an innate desire to feel included. This is especially important to remember for those who work with youth who have a compelling feeling to be accepted. Even when the person is different from others, when the young person FEELS INCLUDED, the natural human desire to belong is met. Without that necessary feeling, everything else takes a subservient role and its effectiveness is significantly diminished.
READ MORE >>> →I just got a book out of the public library titled, ANYWAY – The Paradoxical Commandments; Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World by Kent M. Keith. In this book, the author tells the story of how the Paradoxical Commandments came to be written. They are sometimes attributed to Mother Teresa but were in fact written by an American, Kent Keith. As a 19 year old in 1968, he wrote them to inspire young people to leave their mark on the world by making it a better place. The Paradoxical Commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
READ MORE >>> →Darlene Collinson in British Columbia related to me a success story that we should all remember. Her 81-year-old mother was in the hospital and needed to participate in physical therapy before she could be released. The nurses, physical therapists, and physicians were not successful in convincing the patient to engage in the physical therapy. After hearing of this, Darlene asked her mother, “What do you want?” Her mother replied, “I want to go home.” Darlene simply inquired, “What do you need to do to make that happen?” Her mother replied, “Do my physical therapy,” which she started to do in order to accomplish her objective. As skillful influencers know, the art of influence is to influence the person to influence
READ MORE >>> →Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) was established by the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. The approach is behaviorally based in that it is a classic use of B.F. Skinner’s positive reinforcement of operant conditioning. The program was developed as an alternative to aversive interventions that were used with students with severe disabilities who engaged in extreme forms of self-injury and aggression. The approach rests on the idea that these students need something tangible to change behavior. PBIS treats the acquisition and use of social-behavioral skills in much the same way we would academic skills. However, academic skills deal with the cognitive domain, whereas behavior has to do with the affective domain—those factors which
READ MORE >>> →The most effective approach for repeated discipline challenges is to ELICIT a consequence or procedure to help the student help himself to avoid future unacceptable behavior. This should be done in private by stating, “What you have done is not on an acceptable level.” Then ask, “What do you suggest we do about it?” Be ready to ask, “What else?” “What else?” “What else?” until what the student says is acceptable and will assist the student in not repeating the behavior. The advantages of ELICITING the consequence are multiple: 1. An adversarial relationship is avoided, 2. The student has ownership in the decision, 3. Victimhood thinking is not encouraged because the student is empowered—rather than overpowered, and 4. The student
READ MORE >>> →Throughout this summer, I’ve been emailing back and forth with one teacher in my province who wants to learn how the reading program my partner and I have developed, works in our grade one classroom. She is also quite interested in a program our K-6 school has instituted called “The Whole School Read,” in which every class reads for the first 30 minutes of the day and parents are encouraged to join us as helpers. She recently asked me the question posted below and I share my response here because it includes an explanation of how this discipline approach can be used to help children take responsibility for their own behavior by understanding the concept of Choice-Response Thinking. In other
READ MORE >>> →Tanis Carter wrote an inexpensive but excellent little storybook on the Levels of Development for primary teachers. “CHILDREN OF RAINBOW SCHOOL” presents the Levels of Development—with an introduction explaining how the levels might be implemented in the classroom.
READ MORE >>> →Recently I came across this poem by Portia Nelson. AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS by Portia Nelson I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost … I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out. II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place but, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I
READ MORE >>> →Promoting Responsibility & Learning – Volume 8 Number 8
#2 Service above self
#5 PBS-Another ineffective approach
#7 Reflective questions
At one of my British Columbia presentations, I had the pleasure of visiting Kerry Weisner and Darlene Collinson. While visiting Darlene’s classroom, I saw some reflective questions she had posted on the wall just below the ceiling to which she could easily refer. Darlene told me that she rarely looks at the questions now, but having reflective questions in easy view helped her when she first started using the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model. The following are the questions she had posted for her easy viewing and reference. For commitment: 1. Could you have kept your commitment? 2. What are you going to do to make it happen? 3. On a scale of 1 – 10, how would you rank
READ MORE >>> →Dear Dr. Marshall, About a week before school started, I went online looking for a way to provide a suitable reward system to make sure that my classes were positive and motivated. I knew that rewards were more effective than punishments, or so I thought. I did a search for “Discipline Rewards” and your site popped up. I started reading your website and I was immediately on-board. After spending about an hour on your site, I decided to try your system this year. I spent the second day of school talking to my classes about the hierarchy. Their homework was for them to go online and research the Raise Responsibility System. We discussed their viewpoints the 3rd day of school
READ MORE >>> →In persuasion and influence, emotion takes precedence over cognition. ———— Young people misbehave because it has them feel good; otherwise, they would not misbehave. People don’t voluntarily do things that feel bad. Punishment prompts bad feelings and, therefore, is counterproductive to changing irresponsible behavior in any lasting way. A more effective approach is to help the young person find a response that will engender better feelings than the feelings that comes with the misbehavior—or the imposed punishment.
READ MORE >>> →The more I use the Discipline without Stress approach, the more I appreciate that Step One of Dr. Marshall’s Teaching Model is key to the whole plan. We’ve just started a series of swimming lessons at our local Community Center for all the primary students in our school. This year I decided to be more proactive than in previous years. Instead of just talking for a couple of minutes–just prior to getting on the bus on the first day–about what behavior is expected at the swimming pool, I decided to plan for a time to discuss it the day before. As soon as I really started thinking to myself in an organized way about what procedures we would need at the
READ MORE >>> →Thomas Friedman is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the New York Times and author of the best-selling book about globalization, “The World Is Flat.” He recently introduced a new phrase to the English language: CONTINUOUS PARTIAL ATTENTION. This was explained as, “when you are on the Internet or cell phone or Blackberry while also watching TV, typing on your computer and answering a question from your child. That is, you are multitasking your way through the day, continuously devoting only partial attention to each act or person you encounter.” The August/September, 2006, issue of “Scientific American MIND” included an article about how the brain decides on what to focus conscious attention. A professor asked his class to watch
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