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Promoting Positivity, Choice, And Reflection

On February 11, 2012 / Responsibility

These three simple practices can make school a place where teachers and students want to be.

By Marvin Marshall

Originally published in Leadership Magazine by the Association of California School Administrators – Vol. 34, No.5, pp. 28-30

Theme:
How to Champion A Positive Learning Climate

No student comes to school with the deliberate intention of failing or getting into trouble. Similarly, no adult enters the teaching profession with the intention of not being successful or not enjoying it. Yet, the profession loses fifty percent of its new teachers within five years and a rapidly growing number of students are demonstrating irresponsible behavior.

This article describes three simple practices that foster positive school climates—where both teachers and students want to be.… >>>

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How To Create A Learning Community

On February 11, 2012 / Responsibility

A learning community is a place where teachers and students want to be and where teachers and students have positive feelings about what they are doing.

At the conclusion of a recent school staff development program, a teacher wrote the following comments on the evaluation form:

What I liked most: This program makes us look at ourselves as well as the children whom we touch each day.

What I liked least: I didn’t like what I saw in me.

This teacher (1) acknowledged the use of negative interactions with students, and (2) the teacher reflected and self-evaluated. She had discovered two of the three overriding practices in creating and maintaining a community of learners. The three practices are the continual

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How to Discipline without Stress® Punishment or Rewards & Promote Responsibility

On February 11, 2012 / Responsibility

Irresponsible behavior is a major problem for, teachers, parents and society.
Rewards, punishments, and telling don’t work with far too many young people.

Myths:

Rewards motivate young people to be responsible.

They don’t. The bribe becomes the focus, not responsibility. In addition, we are not honest with young people when we give them rewards for expected standards of behavior. Society does not give such rewards.

Punishments are necessary to change young people’s behavior.

Punishments satisfy the punisher but have little lasting effect on the punished. If punishment such as detention worked, why do the same students appear again and again? Once the punishment is over, the person has served the time and relinquished responsibility. Punishments engender enmity, not responsibility.

Young

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Contingencies, Positivity, Choice, and Reflection

On November 1, 2011 / Parenting

The following is from an e-mail I received:

“I am reading the book right now and have already tried some things on my 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

“I’ve always used choices with her. It makes life simpler with little ones. But I have not always used contingencies. Saying, “If you clean up, you can go to the park” sounds so much better and works much faster than saying, “If you don’t clean up, then you can’t go to park.”

“It is so much easier for youngsters to take responsibility when you communicate in terms that are positive and prompt them to reflect on the choices they make.”

———-

Notice—as mentioned—that in addition to communicating in positive terms and prompting reflection, the … >>>

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The Raise Responsibility System & Noise Levels

On October 25, 2011 / Effectiveness

I received the following communication:

“I’m a retired electrical engineer. I recently began working as a substitute teacher handling any subject from grade 3 up through grade 12.

“The biggest challenge is to keep the noise level down and the smart alecks from disrupting the class. Things have sure changed since I went to school!

“So I have approached the challenge by being strict. Smart alecks, mainly 12-year-old boys, end up standing facing the wall until they apologize for disrupting the class. I knew there had to be a better way, so I spent some time in the local library and discovered your book. I am going to teach 6th grade tomorrow and I plan to implement your suggestions in … >>>

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Research on PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports)

On October 20, 2011 / Discipline, Learning

I received the following excerpt from a doctoral dissertation and reproduce it with the author’s permission:

“As you can tell from the dissertation excerpts I sent you, I have thoroughly researched your approach to discipline, as well as countless others. Unfortunately, the many other more traditional approaches have failed us as educators. I spent the past nine years in administration trying to make a difference in public education.

“But more importantly, I wanted to impact the course of public education positively. Catching kids doing something good and then reinforcing those acts by positive rewards is a component of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) that I experienced firsthand. As a matter of fact, I was delighted to spend my first … >>>

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PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) Ethical Consequences

On October 18, 2011 / Discipline, Learning

QUESTION:

Positive Behavioral and Interventions and Supports(PBIS) is the discipline approach that is being mandated by many states. Do you have any thoughts on this approach?

RESPONSE:
This antiquated and backwards approach is based on the ideas of Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner. Without going into detail explaining the differences, they are “behaviorist” and have the following in common:

1. Behaviorism is naturalistic. This means that the material world is the ultimate reality, and everything can be explained in terms of natural laws. Man has no soul and no mind, only a brain that responds to external stimuli.

2. Behaviorism teaches that man is nothing more than a machine that responds to conditioning. The central tenet of … >>>

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An Interview about Where We Are Going – Part V

On October 13, 2011 / Interviews, Learning

This is the fifth part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:
School reform has now been a topic for generations but there seems to be little improvement. Any suggestions?

RESPONSE:
Any meaningful reform must affect the student-teacher relationship. I cannot think of a single school reform that started top down (and was a headline twenty years ago) that is still being used today.

Now education leaders have given their leadership over to government and business leaders. What reason do we have to think that legislators can improve education? On what basis can we assume that business is a model for education when every few months a … >>>

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An Interview about Where We Are Going – Part IV

On October 11, 2011 / Interviews, Learning

This is the fourth part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:
What kind of assistance is found at your website?

RESPONSE:
MarvinMarshall.com is the foundational site that contains free information explaining the entire system. This site includes such links as The Discipline Without Stress® Teaching Model, The Hierarchy of Social Development, support links, and other links to implement the proactive, totally noncoercive (but not permissive) system .

My aim is to have teachers increase their joy of teaching, reduce stress, improve relationships, and become more effective.

In addition to this main website, there are other sites to help teachers and parents: Discipline Without … >>>

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An Interview about Where We Are Going – Part III

On October 6, 2011 / Interviews, Learning

This is the third part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:

Your book “Discipline without Stress” has been out there for several years. Any idea as to how many schools use and refer to it?

RESPONSE:
Since the book was published in 2001, 50,000 copies have been sold so far. The next 10,000 copies will be off the press within the next few weeks. I’ve heard it said that the book is perhaps the best ever published on how to discipline and promote learning.

The comments on the homepage for the book give an indication of its popularity. Here is an example I received from a … >>>

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An Interview about Where We Are Going – Part II

On October 4, 2011 / Interviews, Learning

This is the second part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:
I have enjoyed your Oliver Wendell Holmes story about the issue as to where we are going. With all this emphasis on Annual Yearly Progress and the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) , where indeed are we heading? Can you tell us the story to set the context for this interview?

RESPONSE:

As the train conductor made his way down the aisle collecting tickets, the forgetful Oliver Wendell Holmes saw him coming. The Associate Justice reached into his pocket—first into one, then into another, then into a third pocket. When the conductor arrived … >>>

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Smile When You Speak

On September 22, 2011 / Effectiveness

“You are never fully dressed without a smile,” sang Little Orphan Annie in the old Broadway musical. It turns out Annie may have been giving some shrewd advice.

Studies have repeatedly shown that people remember smiling faces better than neutral ones. Researchers at Duke University have found a physical explanation for the phenomenon.

Robert Cabeza and his colleagues “introduced” volunteers to a number of people by showing them a picture and telling them a name. Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the investigators found that both learning and recalling the names associated with smiling faces preferentially activated the orbitofrontal cortex, a processing area of the brain.

Although the studies are preliminary, it makes evolutionary sense that a smile would engender positive … >>>

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Tag Questions

On September 20, 2011 / Effectiveness

A tag question is simply a question offered quickly and nonchalantly at the end of a statement or observation. It encourages review of the previous communication. When using tag questions, you make a statement, then leave it up to the person you are talking with to think about what you have asked.

Tag questions in particular give teachers and parents a tool to help a young person review what has been said or done.The tag prompts an opportunity to have the young person reflect—without requiring an accounting to the adult.

Here are some examples of tag questions:

So you think that will help the situation, do you?

You meant that you can go to your friend’s house when you finished … >>>

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Some Challenges of Classroom Teaching

On September 13, 2011 / Learning

Work and learning both require effort. However, they are so different that I devoted the epilogue in my book to the differences between “work” in employment and “work” in learning. The differences are so apparent to me that the only time I use the word “work”—as in “homework”—is in the index.

With this in mind, enjoy the following e-mail I received.

Have you heard about the next planned “Survivor” show? Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped in an elementary school classroom for 6 weeks.

Each business person will be provided with a copy of his/her school district’s curriculum and a class of 28 students. Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with A.D.D., one gifted child, and … >>>

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When to Teach the Raise Responsibilty Sytem

On September 6, 2011 / Discipline

QUESTION:

I had the pleasure of hearing you speak in New Orleans. Thank you for your encouraging words.

I am a fourth grade teacher who desperately wants to move away from students only working for rewards, which is the nature of “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 the students will react if I do away with all tangible rewards.

———

MY RESPONSE:

Use principle two, CHOICE, of the THREE PRINCIPLES TO PRACTICE of the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model.

Rather than stopping the use of rewards, give … >>>

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Having a System is Superior to Having aTalent

On September 1, 2011 / Learning

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 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 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 confront. To retain the joy that the teaching profession offers and to reduce one’s stress, a SYSTEM to rely … >>>

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