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Procedures to Consider

On June 15, 2011 / Classroom Management, Discipline Answers, Procedures in the Classroom

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT has to do primarily with how things are done to make teaching and learning more efficient and effective.

Procedures should be taught before teaching content. A major mistake so often made is assuming that students know what to do without first teaching procedures.

Chances are that when you walk into a room, you do not pay much attention to the floor. But if it were missing, you would certainly notice the situation. The analogy works for classroom management. You don’t notice it when it is good. However, the lack of it is readily apparent because the teacher spends unnecessary time with discipline problems.

Unless PROCEDURES are explained, practiced, and reinforced, discipline problems will increase.

Following … >>>

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Positive Classroom Management

On June 14, 2011 / Classroom Management, Classroom Mgt., Discipline Answers

An Interview about Positive Classroom Management
with Larry Ferlazzo

I began a new feature called “Interview of The Month” where I interviewed various people in the education world about whom I wanted to learn more.

This month, my guest is Dr. Marvin Marshall. His ideas on positive classroom management have been a huge influence on my classroom practice. I strongly encourage people to subscribe to his free monthly newsletter, Promoting Responsibility & Learning.

Here’s our interview:

You’ve been advocating for a more positive approach towards classroom management for quite awhile. What got you thinking about it originally, and how would you summarize it in a few sentences?

We now know how the brain operates as it relates to emotions. First … >>>

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Curriculum, Instruction, Management, and Discipline

On June 13, 2011 / Classroom Management, Classroom Mgt., Discipline Answers

Gain a clear understanding of the differences in
order to pinpoint the cause of a problem.

Curriculum
Curriculum refers to what is taught.

Instruction
Instruction has two parts: teaching and learning.

A) What the teacher does
It is the teacher’s responsibility to make the curriculum interesting, relevant, meaningful, and/or even fun. Activities that create interest, challenge, inspire creativity or are personal are excellent approaches. A good starting point is for the teacher to ask, “Why am I teaching this?” and then share the reasons with students.

Every lesson should have planned time for reflection in order to enhance understanding, reinforcement, and retention.

B) What students do
Learning that is retained requires active involvement. We remember:

10% of what … >>>

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Classroom Management Rules

On June 12, 2011 / Classroom Management, Classroom Mgt., Discipline Answers

Rules

Rules are meant to control, not to inspire.

Rules are necessary in games. Between people, however, rules result in adversarial relationships because rules require enforcement. In addition, rules are often stated in negative terms and imply an imposed consequence if not followed.

Rules place the teacher in the position of the enforcer, a cop, wearing a blue uniform with copper buttons—rather than that of a teacher, coach, mentor, facilitator of learning, or educator.

Enforcing rules often results in power struggles that rarely result in win-win situations or good relationships. Relying on rules often prompts counterwill (the human tendency to resist coercion) and produces reluctance, resistance, resentment, rebellion, and even retaliation.

Upon analysis, you will see … >>>

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Be Kind to One Another

On June 9, 2011 / Relationships

After spending some time recently with me and my wife, my friend asked what was the secret to our relationship.

I replied by sharing the Golden Rule of marriage: “BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER.”

In all of our married years together, I have never experienced the quickest way to destroy a relationship: register disgust!… >>>

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Abraham Lincoln on Influence

On June 7, 2011 / Effectiveness

Forcing an issue often spoils the desired outcome.
—Abraham Lincoln

The old story of the salesman who lost a sale bears periodic repeating.

After he told his sales manager, “Well, I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” his boss replied, “Your job is not to make the horse drink; it’s to make him thirsty.”

The “Art of Influence” is to INDUCE PEOPLE TO INFLUENCE THEMSELVES.

Posing a provocative question that prompts the other person to reflect is the most successful approach for increasing your effectiveness.… >>>

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The Optimism Bias

On June 5, 2011 / Effectiveness

The June 6, 2011 issue of Time Magazine headlined an article “The Optimism Bias” (pp 40-46).

The article began, “We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures” and then gave the following definition: “The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present is known as the optimism bias.”

A key ingredient of optimism is hope because it keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress, and improves physical health.

The article relates optimism and hope to how memory may work: The core function of the memory system could be to imagine the future—to enable us to prepare for what has yet to come. The system is not designed to perfectly replay past events. It is … >>>

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Montessori and Discipline Without Stress

On May 31, 2011 / Learning

On June 2, I will be presenting to the staff of Clark Montessori Junior and Senior High School in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I have long admired the Montessori approach. The following shares four fundamental characteristics that Discipline Without Stress and the Montessori approach have in common.

1)
Children learn best through intrinsic motivation.
There are neither rewards nor punishments in true Montessori environments.

2)
Competition hinders learning.
Students learn to monitor their own progress in order to recognize self-growth. This leads to personal satisfaction based on effort—instead of comparisons about what others may have accomplished.

3)
Montessori develops self-discipline and independence.
Students in a Montessori environment learn to be responsible for their choices. They become truly self-disciplined with much less need … >>>

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NEWSWEEK: Billionaires Waste Money on Education

On May 19, 2011 / Learning

“Back to School for the Billionaires: They hoped their cash could transform failing classrooms. They were wrong. NEWSWEEK investigates what their money bought” was the headline in the May 9, 2011 issue of Newsweek Magazine.

The article is about the money invested by Bill Gates, The Sam Walton Family, Eli Broad, and Michael Dell. The magazine states, “There weren’t many positive results that we could identify.” (page 43)

Anyone who has had experience as a classroom teacher could have predicted this. Education improvement starts in the classroom, not with money or with administrative mandates.

Instruction has to do with both teaching and learning. Teaching is, obviously, the responsibility of the teacher. To be successful, the teacher has to … >>>

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Increasing Motivation and Reducing Apathy in Schools

On May 17, 2011 / Learning

The weekly newspaper “USA Today” carried an interesting article about education on May 11, 2011. The article was entitled, ” How to Reshape U.S. Education” and was written by Amy Chua, the author of “BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER” and a law professor at Yale University.

The article highlighted the following: “Parents should insist that we combine Asia’s discipline with American creativity so that our children can excel in the global economy.”

As with the vast majority of articles, this one also addresses “what” needs to be done, but does not include any idea of “how” to do it. The article does assert, however, that there is one critical skill where our kids lag behind: learning how to learn.” … >>>

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School Announcements as Questions

On May 13, 2011 / Learning

Here is an effective approach for any school:

Every day the morning announcements END WITH A QUESTION designed to prompt reflection and responsibility in students. Posing a daily question directs the attention of everyone in the school (both students and teachers) to a specific issue or topic. Throughout the year, the school reinforces school-wide procedures, solves small problems, and encourages internal motivation through the announcements.

The school sees a lot of good coming from these questions because they provide a powerful way to influence students.

Kerry in British Columbia shared this idea.

Sample announcement questions are posted at her blog.

See Kerry’s categorized posts.… >>>

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Free Books and Staff Development for USA Schools

On May 10, 2011 / Discipline, Learning

The mindset of current educational approaches regarding student behavior unfortunately focuses on obedience, which turns out to be a common source of reluctance, resistance, resentment, and even rebellion. Simply stated, OBEDIENCE DOES NOT CREATE DESIRE.

However, when the focus is on promoting responsibility, obedience follows as a natural by-product. The reason is that motivation to be responsible requires a DESIRE to do so. The motivation must be INTERNAL.

Many schools use EXTERNAL motivation of stimulus-response psychology in the form of rewards, threats, and punishments. However, these approaches (a) foster compliance rather than commitment, (b) require an adult presence for monitoring, (c) set up students to be dependent upon external agents, and (d) do not foster long-term motivation for responsibility. In … >>>

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Likability and Effectiveness

On May 5, 2011 / Effectiveness

Likability is the shortest path to believability, trust, and effectiveness.

It is also the easiest path to influence others.

It may be worthwhile to reflect on this one quality above others—the quality that prompts people to do what you would like them to do.

Three practices are most productive in this regard. They are (1) communicating in POSITIVE, rather than in negative, terms; (2) showing OPTIONS that are available; and (3) REFLECTING on how to overcome objections.… >>>

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The Influencers in Our Lives

On April 28, 2011 / Learning

Here is an interesting quiz:

1. Name the three wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last three heavy-weight world boxing champions.
3. Name three people who have won a Nobel prize.
4. Name the last three Academy Award motion picture winners for best actor (female and male).
5. Name three of the last decade’s baseball World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is that none of us remembers the headliners of yesterday. Notice that these are not second-rate achievers. They’re the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here is another quiz. See how you do on this one.

1. Name three … >>>

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The Key to Communicate to Influence

On April 7, 2011 / Effectiveness

Every so often messages and stories are repeated in order to bring them back to our attention.

Often we are not conscious of the power of our communications.

The words and phrases we use in our daily interactions have three major influences:
(1) They influence how we think and experience the world,
(2) They shape the way others see us, and
(3) They determine how much cooperation and success we have with other people.

We can use words which are landmines–which will blow up our odds of getting cooperation–or we can be persuasive in a positive way. For example, if I introduce a phrase with the word, “unfortunately,” it conjures up that something bad will follow. I have communicated in … >>>

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