Schools can increase their effectiveness by holding discussions with the staff and being proactive by setting up a system to use school-wide. The examples in the previous post about setting up a communication system to engender expectations is a very effective approach. Eliciting samples of the levels from students and then practicing them ensures greater effectiveness.
For eliminating noise when in the hallways, set up the procedure by having students line up and then elicit a course of action in case someone were to talk during the “no talking in the hallway” on the way to the cafeteria.
The importance of ELICITING a “consequence” ahead of time cannot be over emphasized. When students have set up the procedures and then don’t follow them, adversarial relationships are not developed when consequences are enforced. For example, if a student were to talk on the way to the cafeteria and the “consequence” were to go to the front or the rear of the line, a pause and a look by the teacher actuates the student to voluntarily follow the “consequence.” Again, this would have been practiced in the classroom before leaving for lunch.
