Volume 6 Number 8
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Welcome
2. Promoting Responsibility
3. Increasing Effectiveness
4. Improving Relationships
5. Promoting Learning
6. Discipline without Stress
7. What People Say
1. WELCOME
“I have just come back to work after having broken my
foot at school. I was feeling a little down. I checked
my emails and read your newsletter and felt so uplifted.
Thank you.”–Julie Woollard, New South Wales, Australia
———–
Last month at the convention of the National Speakers
Association in Orlando, Florida, I was asked what sets my
program apart from others. Without hesitation, I said, “The
hierarchy and self-monitoring.”
The next question came, “Whose hierarchy?”
I responded, “Mine.”
“Do you refer to it as ‘My hierarchy’ and, if not, what do
you call it?”
I responded, “The hierarchy of social development.”
The conversation concluded with the question, “Since it is
YOUR hierarchy, then why don’t you call it the ‘Marshall
Hierarchy’?”
I pondered the question and concluded that when I refer to
other hierarchies, I refer to them preceded by the name
associated with each, viz., Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs, Jean Piaget’s hierarchy of cognitive development, and
Lawrence Kohlberg’s hierarchy of moral development. I have,
therefore, attached my name to the hierarchy of social
development–as indicated on the homepage.
———–
An assistant principal in New Jersey was not successful in
persuading the principal to have me present at the school.
No interest was shown by the principal. The stated reason
was that the principal had never heard of me or my
noncoercive–yet not permissive–approach. Of course, the
real reason could have been that the principal had another
agenda. I suggested that the principal should read an
article posted on my website by another New Jersey principal
entitled, “A Principal’s Experience” at
http://marvinmarshall.com/principal.htm
The discussion prompted me to add a new page to my home
website. It can be seen by linking to “One Page Information
Sheet” at http://marvinmarshall.com/
———–
I had the pleasure last month of presenting at the William
Glasser Institute’s International Convention in Jersey City,
New Jersey.
Dr. Glasser is a psychiatrist whose first contribution was
REALITY THERAPY, one of the earliest of what is now referred
to as “cognitive psychology.” He then started working with
schools and made perhaps his most significant contribution
to the field of education when he introduced CLASSROOM
MEETINGS. He then extended his ideas by developing “CHOICE
THEORY” (originally referred to as “Control Theory), which
basically proposes that all we can do is control ourselves
by the choices we make. From W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Glasser
introduced “LEAD MANAGEMENT” (vs. “Boss Management”). His
current thrust is to bring achieving MENTAL HEALTH to the
general public.
I propose that if you practice POSITIVITY to yourself as
well as with others, if you become conscious of the CHOICES
you continually make, and if you REFLECT on how to handle
adverse situations (the three principles to practice of
Discipline without Stress), you will have good mental
health.
Dr. Glasser refers to a person’s “quality world” and that we
do things to satisfy our quality world (the pictures in
our minds) and avoid those things that don’t. I refer to
this as one’s “self-talk”–the conversations we have with
ourselves. The most important point to remember here is that
if you change the pictures in your quality world–or change
your self-talk– you will find it easier to change your
behavior.
Here are two thoughts from William Glasser, M.D.:
–All we do is give information to others.
(People choose their responses to this “information” that is
conveyed in words, tone of voice, gestures and other
external stimuli.)
–One’s behavior is an attempt to solve problems. (This will
become apparent if you make the time to read the very
valuable article by Kerry Weisner in PROMOTING LEARNING,
number five (5) in this newsletter.)
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2. PROMOTING RESPONSIBILITY
“Dad, can I speak to you about something?” asked Tom.
“Let me guess. You want to borrow the car?” his dad joked.
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s about Jim and something
that happened at school today.”
“Isn’t Jim that kid on the track team with you?” “Yeah.”
“You two are pretty good friends, aren’t you?”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. You see,
there’s another guy on the team named Eric who got into a
fight with Jim after practice. I tried to break it up, but
the coach pulled all three of us aside. I told the coach
that I was only trying to keep the peace, but then I
defended Jim.”
Suddenly Tom was quiet.
“Okay, so what happened next?” prompted his dad.
“I found out later from some other guys on the team that
Jim has been bullying Eric for a long time and that today
Eric just snapped. They told me about all kinds of rotten
things Jim had done when I wasn’t around. Dad, I feel like
such a jerk for sticking up for him. I feel like I don’t
even know who he is.”
“Well, don’t be so hard on yourself. We all make mistakes.
Yours was sticking up for someone without knowing all the
facts.”
“You can say that again,” said Tom.
“But the real lesson here has more to do with friendship
than anything else,” said Tom’s dad.
“It does?”
“Absolutely. It would be easy to walk away. But friends
don’t let each other down. You’ve got to tell Jim that
you are disappointed in him.”
“I doubt that he’ll care,” mumbled Tom.
“I disagree,” said his dad. “Jim wanted you to see only
the good side of him and that’s why you never knew about the
bullying. Since he wants your approval, let him know that
you expect more from him. If you do that he’ll come to
expect more from himself. And once that happens, he’ll
change and be the kind of friend you won’t mind sticking up
for.”
———–
In next month’s newsletter, I will share how to diminish
bullying.
3. INCREASING EFFECTIVENESS
In last month’s e-zine I wrote:
Responsible people are happy people.
Happy people are responsible people.
Responsibility and happiness feed on each other.
Dr. Jim Sutton expanded on this concept when he recently
wrote in his blog:
Dr. Marvin Marshall (www.marvinmarshall.com), my friend
in California and founder of the acclaimed ‘Discipline
Without Stress’ program, suggests young people sometimes
misbehave for two clear and addressable reasons:
1. They are unhappy.
2. Their behavior is their attempt to “fix” the problem.
We best not lose the message of these two statements in
their simplicity. They come very, very close to saying
all we need to know about behavior in children and
adolescents. Unfortunately, it is often the case that we
consider neither of these reasons in working with the
disruptive and defiant child; we simply want the behavior
to stop.
James Sutton, Educator and Psychologist
James D. Sutton, Ed.D, CSP
Blog: http://itsaboutthem.wordpress.com
Website: http://www.docspeak.com
Author of the bestseller, “101 Ways to Make
Your Classroom Special”
———–
Here is a corollary thought in working with people
–especially young ones:
HOSTILITY IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO FEAR.
REMOVE THE FEAR AND YOU REMOVE THE HOSTILITY.
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4. IMPROVING RELATIONSHIPS
Listening may be the most powerful statement a person can
make.
5. PROMOTING LEARNING
SUGGESTION: If you deal with young people at all, make time
to read the following article in its entirety. It is only
slightly edited from the original post at
DisciplineWithoutStress@yahoogroups.com.
———–
Date: Thursday, 13 July 2006
Subject: Using Discipline Without Stress with Older Children
ORIGINAL POST: You work with older alternative students as
well as young children. Can you explain the difference
between working with them?
Thanks,
GB
———–
RESPONSE:
I’d love to tell you a bit about the new job that Darlene
and I took on this year. Although in this particular job we
make great use of the three principles of positivity,
choice, reflection, we aren’t using the program to handle
discipline problems in the same way as we do with our
primary students. I’ll have to describe the job, the
students, and the school to make sense of that for you.
I teach almost full time, sharing two jobs with a partner
teacher. We take turns teaching K/1 for half the week, and
for most of the other half of the week we teach 16-19
year olds who either couldn’t read at all when we first met
them or couldn’t read much past a primary level. Many people
think that we have two quite opposite jobs, but we find that
in many ways they are very similar.
In both schools we teach exactly the same reading skills in
almost exactly the same way. Although many of our older
students have beards and in some cases children of their
own, their maturity level is often not much more than that
of our little kids. Definitely, our older students are much
more emotionally fragile than any of the smaller kids whom
we have in our primary job. We must always keep this in mind
or we couldn’t work with them at all. They are extremely
sensitive and very rigid in their thinking.
Almost all of them have “hardened hearts,” as Dr. Gordon
Neufeld would say, and it took a lot of time before they
began to “soften” even the slightest bit. In the beginning,
it was rough. Many of them didn’t accept us easily, and it
wasn’t until nearer to the end of the year that some of them
would even call us by our names. Many of them never did this
year, but I suspect that in our second year at the school
they’ll find it easier to be “personal” with us.
Often I found my eyes welling up with tears on the way home
from this school thinking about the harsh lives that these
young people have lived. One of our favourite students, a 16
year old who is due to have a baby in August, had her mom
die of multiple sclerosis in the last week of school. She
has been nursing her mother almost single-handedly since she
was about 12 years old. She had only been to school about 60
days total in the last two years. Another boy from a very
violent family lost his dad to an alcoholic suicide. His
father threw himself in front of a train when this boy was
8. Each one has their own story to tell. Every story is full
of pain, frustration, anger, and disappointment. When I go
home, I often spend time to think of how unbelievably
fortunate my own children are simply for the “boring”
normality of their lives.
The school has about 150 students “on the books” but with
attendance a huge problem, on a typical day there might only
be about 30-40 students in attendance. Almost every one of
the students attend this school because they have been
expelled for behaviour reasons from two of the five regular
high schools in our district. There are also a few “genius”
type kids who have been picked on in regular schools and so
have found this school to be a refuge.
Half of the students have “labels” such as “Extreme Mental
Illness,” “Extreme Behaviour,” “Learning Disabled,” etc.
The other half would meet the requirement of a label but
don’t have one simply because many of their previous schools
wouldn’t have had them tested–either because they were such
poor attenders or because their families wouldn’t have known
to insist on testing. Probably at least 95% of them come
from very dysfunctional homes and as a result many live on
their own, are in foster care, or move from relative to
relative or friend to friend. Drugs, alcohol, smoking,
run-ins with the law are all part of daily life for almost
all of these students.
Many of them are hungry, too. Although the school runs a
breakfast program for the cost of $1.00 and a student can
receive a great meal every morning, the students we see are
so poor and come from such unbelievable homes that they
can’t usually afford to eat–even at this great price.
Darlene and I started bringing baking and sandwiches from
the beginning in September and this has been a very much
appreciated part of our program all year long. Each student
has their favourite snack and we try to accommodate them all
at some point. The food has allowed us to get to know many
of the “regular” students in the other part of the school as
well–the ones who can’t resist coming in to see what’s for
snack today!
Originally, when we first got this job, it looked as if it
might be a classroom job–in other words teaching a literacy
course. Before a couple of days into the school year, it had
evolved into a one-on-one job. Each of our students is at a
very different place in their reading ability–all the way
from total non-reader right up to someone who can read the
driver’s manual well but has only one strategy for learning
new words, namely, straight memorization of the word as a
whole. He has an incredible memory, but boy, what a
stressful, ineffective way to read!
Basically all of the students we see have exactly the same
problems; they have poor reading habits, i.e., reading past
punctuation, not looking inside the words to look at all the
letters, not looking to the end of a word to see if it ends
in “ing,” “ed,” “s”–no self-correcting, no re-reading when
they make a mistake, etc., and they have absolutely NO
understanding of how to decode.
In other words, although most of them have memorized a
certain number of primary sight words and can “read” a bit,
none of them knows how to tackle a word that is new to them.
This means that when they come to a word they have never
seen before, they are totally stumped; they simply make
their best guess. Because they over-rely so heavily on
figuring out words from context, they cannot read names of
any type (street names, names of people, businesses, cities,
etc.). Even simple words are an impossible challenge for
them.
To give you an idea, they could read the word “jump” or
“bump”–perhaps because they would have memorized these
words at some point during their school lives, but if you
gave them the nonsense word that follows the same pattern as
bump and jump, such as “zump,” they would have no idea of
how to read it. Needless to say, it is impossible for them
to read much past primary books because of the need to read
vocabulary other than the Dolch words. Because they can’t
sound out words at all, they cannot spell at all either.
With such individual needs, the only way we could truly help
them in any meaningful way was one-on-one. So, depending on
how many of our students show up in a day, they receive an
individual lesson of 20 – 40 minutes. Most days, lessons are
about 20 minutes long, but we do have some students who are
so keen to have longer lessons that they will give up their
lunch hour or break time to read.
Darlene and I work in a portable with another teacher who
runs the classroom. This allows us to take kids aside (in
the cloakroom if you can believe it!) for their reading
lessons. Next year, they’ve moved us into the main building
to the anteroom of the furnace room. We haven’t decided yet
if this is a step up-or down from the cloakroom!
Despite the fact that basically all of the students have
been sent to this school as a result of “behaviour
problems,” for the most part, poor behaviour isn’t really as
much of an issue as you would think. I know that sounds
ridiculous, but these students are all really very nice.
They are fairly well-behaved kids who learned to mask
academic difficulties by becoming behaviour problems. These
kids often introduce themselves to any new adult in the
building, are polite, hold doors, get along well with their
teachers, and are usually willing to help if asked. Despite
the fact that sometimes there are behaviour incidents at
this school–someone angry at his girlfriend smashed his
hand through a window; another stabbed a knife into a wall
in a fit of anger at another student and was taken away by
the police, DVD players and video cameras that aren’t locked
up are quickly stolen–THERE IS ALMOST NO NEGATIVITY OR
COERCION AT THIS SCHOOL AT ALL BECAUSE THE STAFF ALL REALIZE
THAT IT WON’T GET THEM ANYWHERE (caps added). The students
find this refreshing that they can be the nice people they
really are instead of engaging in counterwill as they always
did previously.
On the down side, most of them are very immature, quite
rambunctious, have little self-control, little ambition, are
quite loud, have extremely short attention spans, and the
swearing is enough to turn your ears blue. They aren’t
swearing AT teachers; it’s more or less just the way they
talk. Some of them want to curb their swearing. In our
classroom, for those who want to quit swearing, a thing
started where all the adults make a clucking sound with
their tongue if an individual who wants to stop swearing,
swears unconsciously. It sounds a bit crazy, but it seems to
be helping. (NOTE: A PROCEDURE WAS ESTABLISHED FOR AWARENESS
AND REDIRECTION.)
Working one-on-one, Darlene and I have almost no discipline
problems to deal with. However, we constantly use the three
principles. Positivity is the biggest one! We very quickly
learned in September that we had to word everything we said
in positive terms. If we make ANY negative comments or make
a joke that a student “can’t take,” we immediately see our
students shut down or get angry and defensive. Some of them
are so fragile/sensitive that we can’t even speak in a
regular speaking voice with them because it will scare them
away. With one particular boy, we almost have to whisper
during his actual lesson times.
We can NEVER tell any of them they have made a reading
mistake. Within a day or two we quickly learned to be
proactive–a way of thinking that we picked up from
Discipline Without Stress. For example, before they begin to
read their passage for the day, we ask them (principle of
reflection) what types of things will make them a good
reader, but we NEVER correct them if they make an error as
they are reading as we sometimes might with our smaller, but
more resilient beginning readers who haven’t experienced
years of reading/school failure. These older ones simply
CAN’T TAKE even the smallest dose of failure.
It’s been a great thing for us to see that this focus on
being proactive has really worked academically, too. Despite
the fact that we never mentioned ANY errors they were making
in their reading, they’ve all become increasingly more
accurate as time went by. With a focus entirely on what they
SHOULD be doing to become a better reader BEFORE they begin
reading, they have all become VERY accurate readers at their
own developmental level. It’s been so exciting to see this
growth in each of them. Seeing this happen has made us use
the same tactics more often with our little kids, too:
–Be proactive in our teaching by telling them what they
SHOULD do,
–Point out any specific examples of good things that they
are doing, and
–End with a comment such as, “Continue doing THAT.”
We’ve found that this is not only a positive way to teach
but it’s effective, too. Although we knew this in theory
before, as a result of this job–where the ONLY possibility
for working pleasantly with a student is to be 100% positive
(not 99%!)–we have now experienced it in a very real way.
Because of our crash course in the need for extreme
positivity, we are finding that it’s becoming easier for us
to be positive in both of our jobs. We have a lot more
patience with our smaller kids now because of our experience
with the damaged older kids that we work with. For the older
kids, school has been such a negative experience with so
many bad memories and resentments that WE SEE FIRST HAND HOW
MUCH DAMAGE CAN BE DONE TO A CHILD WHO IS NOT TREATED
RESPECTFULLY AND POSITIVELY BY THEIR TEACHERS (caps added).
All of these kids relate stories of their bad memories of
trying to learn or get along in elementary school. One boy,
who is actually very bright but has some incredible learning
disability that makes reading VERY difficult for him,
described painfully how he was through the years–often put
behind cardboard dividers so he “could concentrate better.”
Because he could speak so intelligently and articulately,
most of his teachers found it impossible to believe that he
COULD NOT read. They thought that he was simply misbehaving
and putting on an act. Although I am sure his teachers felt
they were trying to do something positive and helpful for
him by using a cardboard screen in front of his desk to help
him maintain focus, he felt as if he was being singled out
for punishment and put in prison. Heartfelt stories like
this really hit home and make us think about how we treat
each and every one of our little students–especially the
ones who are the most challenging and annoying in their
behaviour.
So in a nutshell, that gives you a bit of a picture of our
job. As I said, we don’t use the hierarchy in a regular
classroom discipline sense, but we do use the thinking
behind it to motivate the kids. For example, when they
choose do something that shows initiative such as telling us
that when they write their grocery list they think about
some things from our reading lessons that will help them
spell more accurately, we have the words and concepts (from
the hierarchy) to be able to explain to them that this small
thing that they have done is a sign of the highest possible
level of human behaviour. CHOOSING to try and improve their
literacy skills is concrete proof that they are taking some
initiative in their lives. As the kids come to accept and
trust us more and more, we are finding ways to offer them
valuable Discipline Without Stress understandings. It’s
definitely a learning experience that we find challenging
but are enjoying.
Kerry
———–
COMMENT: Darlene and Kerry have established a relationship
of trust and noncoercion. These two factors are the
foundation of any successful relationship for influencing
others in a positive way. For a moment, just think of a
friend. Chances are that if that person continually
attempted to coerce you or if you did not trust that person,
the friendship would not last.
In my own classroom, students would admit to and redirect
their inappropriate behaviors based on these two factors.
Students knew that my only interest was for them to become
more responsible–that I had absolutely no interest in
punishing them. I also had positive expectations for them
by continually referring to the hierarchy of social
development and prompting them to reflect when they behaved
inappropriately.
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6. Discipline without Stress
QUESTION posted at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DisciplineWithoutStress.
I received my “Discipline Without Stress” book last
Christmas and started introducing the levels and changing my
behaviors in January. My question is how do I set everything
up for the beginning of the year? What do I communicate to
parents? I have to turn in a class discipline plan to my
principal. What would it look like on paper? I usually send
this same plan home to parents. Before I have always had the
standard (1) warning, (2) 5 minutes time out, (3) 15-minute
time out, (4) note home, and (5) trip to office. Very
concrete, easy for principal and parents to understand, but
it did not work.
RESPONSE posted at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DisciplineWithoutStress.
The book has excellent forms in the back that you can use in
your class to introduce the system. I used the parent
letters and reflective essays almost word for word–just
signed my name! I also made each child a copy of the
hierarchy for them to refer to throughout the year to keep
in their notebooks. I also made a big poster-sized version
of it to hang on the wall. I made it look kind of like a
stop light with a red, green and yellow circle for each
level. Good luck! The book is very helpful!
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7. What People Say
Thank you for your book! It so nicely synthesizes what we
know about “best practice” teaching and classroom
management. I love the framework and the language that you
use. Since discovering your book, many people on our staff
have been doing a book study and plan on implementing your
system in our classrooms. I used much of the system last
year and it was my best year of teaching ever! I am not
great at “posing” questions yet, but, “You cannot learn a
skill and be perfect at the same time.” Thanks for writing
that!
Sonya Overman
Chamberlain Elementary School
Northern Indiana
———–
Preview a presentation by the author at
http://www.marvinmarshallpresents.com/preview_presentation/
mac-presentation_low.htm
See a video clip from the In-House Staff Development from
the last link at
http://marvinmarshall.com/rrsystem.htm
