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Are You Reacting Reflectively or Reflexively?

On May 17, 2016 / Stress Management

One of the significant characteristics of the Discipline Without Stress approach has to do with acting reflectively versus reacting reflexively.

What’s the difference? Consider this example. You are at home and the telephone rings. You answer it.

Assume for a moment that you are NOT familiar with choice-response thinking. If I were to query you why you answered the phone, most of you would say—in one way or another—that the PHONE WAS A STIMULUS AND ANSWERING IT WAS THE RESPONSE.

Now, let’s assume that you are at home watching a television program that you had been looking forward to seeing. You are totally engaged in a scene and the phone rings. Would you disrupt your involvement in the program to … >>>

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Remaining unhappy

On May 15, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Stress Management, Weekly Tips

Remaining unhappy is very easy. It even comes naturally. If you are in a funk, it is natural to be unhappy. But when you are in this state and do nothing about it, you are taking the easy way out. Is this in your own best interest?

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” When unhappy or feeling sad, it is a shame to take the easy way out.

You can take the easy approach and remain in a funk, or you can choose to put forth effort. All you need to do to change your feelings is to redirect your thinking. The emotion (feelings) always follows thinking (cognition).

Never attempt … >>>

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Discipline is NOT Control

On May 10, 2016 / Discipline Help

People being controlled, whether young or old, have low motivation to carry out decisions IMPOSED on them. As a result, enforcement and maintaining that control is both difficult and time-consuming. This is very evident in schools where teachers spend so much classroom time “playing police” by using outdated discipline techniques that aim at enforcing rules, rather than by teaching procedures and inspiring responsible behavior. No wonder so many people are in need of discipline help!

Controlling people aims at obedience, and obedience is not the same as discipline. Except where the relationship is so strong that the person being controlled feels that the control is in his or her own best interest, control rarely brings either desire or commitment.

Control … >>>

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Facing Adversity

On May 8, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Stress Management, Weekly Tips

If you were born into a poor family without the means to send you to a desired university, you can’t go back and trade in your parents for a set of millionaires.

If you were born with a physical disability, you can’t trade in your body for a better model.

Remember, however, that the cards you are dealt are less important than the way you play your hand.

History books are full of success stories about people who faced adversity as a challenge.

I know this from my own life. Throughout my K-12 education, I stuttered so badly that I was afraid to open my mouth in public. When I did, I could feel my heart beating so badly that … >>>

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Measuring Student Growth

On May 5, 2016 / Classroom Management

Testing anxiety is a major trigger of discipline issues at school and at home. When young people are stressed and anxious, they may act out more in an attempt to take control of their life. It’s normal for me to receive more requests for discipline help during testing times of the year.

When it comes to tests, many educators are familiar with the term “normative” as a testing term. This word refers to the process of comparing a student’s academic performance on a standardized achievement test with a group of students who took the test under similar circumstances in the past.

The test results of the original student group are taken as the norm. In other words, this group is … >>>

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Mindset Affects Discipline

On May 3, 2016 / Discipline Help

People seeking discipline help need to first understand the power of their mind and how it impacts their interactions with young people. Having a positive mindset is indeed a powerful discipline tool.

You probably remember learning about the seventeenth century French philosopher Rene Descartes, who asserted the supremacy of the mind over the body when he wrote: “I think; therefore, I am.” This philosophical concept suggested that the physical body is separate from the mind, and it set the stage for Western philosophy and medicine.

We now know, however, that mind and body are inseparable and act upon one another. Thoughts and feelings are inextricably linked to the way a body functions. Yet we are generally unaware of the countless … >>>

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Listening, Caring, and the Story

On May 1, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Stress Management, Weekly Tips

Listening and caring are prime sources of good relationships. They are so intertwined that if you experience one, you also experience the other.

If you ask yourself how you know someone cares for you, one of your responses is likely to be that you know because the person listens to you.

Ask a husband about a good wife, and he is likely to say that he knows his wife cares for him because she listens to what he has to say. Ask a wife about a good husband, and she’ll respond that he listens to her.

Even if we are saying something that is not really worth listening to, we still want someone to listen to us.

Ask a person … >>>

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An Exercise of Positivity

On April 28, 2016 / Discipline Help

Here is a very effective approach for helping in discipline problems and in other situations.

Do this exercise: Smile for 60 seconds straight.

Just sit there and smile. Don’t do anything else.

Do you immediately sense a positive physical feeling inside you the very second you start to smile? Another thing you may notice is that you start thinking of fun times and enjoyable experience you have had.

It is impossible to feel “down” when you are smiling. If you are still doubting it, just try to get into a sour mood with a big grin on your face. You can’t do it.

The physiology of this is quite extraordinary. It is wired into us. In fact, if you thought … >>>

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10 Discipline Approaches to Avoid

On April 26, 2016 / Discipline

If you’re looking for some discipline help so you can increase motivation, responsibility, and learning in young people, then stay away from the following 10 counterproductive discipline approaches.

BEING REACTIVE

Teachers too often become stressed by reacting to inappropriate behavior. It is far more effective to employ a proactive approach at the outset to inspire students to want to behave responsibly and then use a non-adversarial response whenever they do not.

RELIANCE ON RULES

Rules are meant to control, not inspire. Rules are necessary in games but when used between people, enforcement of rules automatically creates adversarial relationships. A more effective approach is to teach procedures and inspire responsible behavior through expectations and reflection.

AIMING AT OBEDIENCE

Obedience does not … >>>

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A Dirty Sponge

On April 23, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Stress Management

The ghosts of what we erase on a computer remain deep within the system, electronically etched into the hard drive. Similarly, what goes into the human mind can remain to contaminate it or to enrich it.

The mind is like a sponge. If you soak a sponge in dirty water and squeeze it, dirty water will come out. Interestingly, if you then soak the sponge in clean water and squeeze, you will still get some dirty water because some of the dirt clings to the sponge.

Similarly, when you fill your mind with unhealthy or unproductive thinking, it penetrates beyond the conscious mind and into the subconscious. There it stays. The subconscious does not forget. The debris that comes into … >>>

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Can Substitute Teachers Use Discipline Help?

On April 21, 2016 / Discipline

When you’re using the Discipline Without Stress methodology in your classroom, can a substitute teacher step in and lead your class if he or she is not familiar with the discipline help in the book, Discipline without Stress, Punishments or Rewards?

Yes! A substitute teacher does not need to know the discipline system at all for discipline help. Also, I use the term “guest teacher” because of the influence it has on students. When I was an elementary school principal, as soon as the day started I was in the “substitute teacher’s” classroom and introduced the substitute by announcing that we had a guest teacher that day and that I knew the students would treat the teacher accordingly. Expectations … >>>

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How to Move Away from Rewards in Discipline

On April 19, 2016 / Discipline

Here is a communication I received from a teacher that is definitely worth sharing about discipline and rewards.

“I am a fourth grade teacher who desperately wants to move away from students only working for rewards that is the nature of the discipline ‘behavior plans’ at my school. After implementing a few of your strategies in my classroom, I am pleased with the way my students have responded. Because I, and all their previous teachers, have used rewards, I am unsure how they will react if I do away with all tangible rewards.”

———

MY RESPONSE:

Use principle two, CHOICE, of the three principles to practice.

Rather than stopping the use of rewards, give your students the CHOICE. It sounds … >>>

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Counterwill

On April 16, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Stress Management, Weekly Tips

“Counterwill” is the name for the natural human resistance to being controlled by someone else.

This instinctive resistance can take many forms—disobedience or defiance, procrastination, doing the opposite of what is expected, and lack of motivation. Counterwill is normal in toddlers, in young people of all ages, and most certainly in adults. It is such a universal phenomenon at certain stages of development that it has given rise to the term “rebellious twos” and “rebellious teens.”

The underlying dynamic of counterwill is deceptively simple: a defensive reaction to felt coercion. On a side note, the totally noncoercive (but not permissive) Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model totally bypasses counterwill.

Trying to deal with this dynamic by using coercion is a … >>>

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Having a Teaching System is Better than Having a Talent for Teaching

On April 14, 2016 / Classroom Management, Discipline, Learning, Responsibility

Working in Harlem under contract for three years with the New York City Board of Education taught me an invaluable lesson: Having a teaching SYSTEM is far superior to talent when a teacher faces challenging behaviors in the classroom.

The assistant superintendent and I were very impressed while observing a teacher one year. We agreed that the teacher was a “natural.” However, when I visited the teacher the following year, she told me that three boys were such challenges that she could use some assistance.

Even teachers with a “natural talent” are challenged by student behaviors that teachers in former generations did not have to deal with. To retain the joy that the teaching profession offers and to reduce one’s … >>>

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Practice Procedures

On April 12, 2016 / Responsibility

Developing procedures is crucial for success in the classroom. But don’t stop there! Once you and your students develop the procedure, you all must practice it.

Remember that procedures are different from rules. Procedures have no rewards or punishments. You simply practice until everyone understands them. When a student asks about something, or isn’t doing something for which you have a procedure, you simply ask, “What is our procedure?” By doing so, you put the responsibility back on the student to think of the procedure or to practice it after a reminder.

All classroom procedures should be thoroughly discussed and planned with student input. Additionally, post your procedures on the wall on a student-made chart. Because everyone agrees on the … >>>

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Creativity and Procedures

On April 7, 2016 / Discipline

Although procedures are the foundational step to efficient instruction and reducing discipline problems, sometimes we forget to be creative in their establishment.

In some cases, the teacher might create a new classroom procedure to proactively deal with misbehavior from certain students. In other words, rather than reacting to the same type of misbehavior day after day, the teacher might restructure the environment more carefully in a way that would allow immature students to be more successful.

For example, in an elementary classroom, there may be a few students who find it difficult to maintain appropriate behavior in the cramped quarters of the cloakroom at dismissal time. To deal with this, the teacher can change the procedure for the cloakroom.

Rather … >>>

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A Simple Procedure for Handling Risk

On April 5, 2016 / Effectiveness

If there is one area in life that many people struggle with, it is that of taking a risk. The reason is that risk creates fear, and fear prompts inaction.

Here is a simple and practical system (procedure) to deal with risks.

Look at any situation where a decision needs to be made. It makes no difference what the decision is—be it taking a vacation, purchasing something, or some action. Ask yourself three questions:

As a result of taking this action, what is the best thing that can happen?

Then flip the coin:

As a result of taking this action, what is the worst thing that can happen?

Then use some moderation by asking,

What is the most likely thing

… >>> READ MORE >>> →

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