Teach Procedure to Reduce Discipline Problems

Why is classroom management (procedures) so important for reducing discipline issues?

1) If you don’t have good classroom management, you will have (to a greater or lesser degree) chaos. You can’t teach someone to be SELF-disciplined in the midst of chaos. Simple as that!

2) The Discipline Without Stress approach itself is actually based on handling most discipline problems by helping the undisciplined students with procedures to keep themselves in control. It’s hard to help someone else create effective procedures if you aren’t doing it well yourself.

The foundation of the RAISE RESPONSIBILITY SYSTEM (Part III of the DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRESS TEACHING MODEL) is to be PROACTIVE by teaching procedures BEFORE problems occur. In fact, effective teachers don’t focus on discipline at all. They never even refer to this term. How is that possible?

Notice the title: The RAISE RESPONSIBILITY SYSTEM. Referring to any discipline approach—and announcing consequences for irresponsible behaviors BEFORE they occur—infers that students will misbehave. This is a NEGATIVE APPROACH. Schools that insist on having teachers post consequences are not doing a service to themselves, teachers, students, or parents.

KNOWING WHAT WILL HAPPEN AHEAD OF TIME enables the student to measure in advance the desired behavior against the consequence: “Will the behavior be more fun than the consequence?”

NOT KNOWING IS FAR MORE EFFECTIVE IN PREVENTING  IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR. Whispering in a misbehaving student’s ear, “Don’t worry what will happen; we’ll talk about it later,” immediately redirects the student’s attention, stops the disruption, eliminates teacher stress, and takes no time away from instruction.

This is often one of the biggest revelations to those seeking discipline help.

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