Here are a few tips for promoting learning. Use procedures rather than rules.Superior teachers use procedures and do not rely on rules. Rules are necessary in games. However, in interactions, rules result in adversarial relationships because rules require enforcement. Rules place the teacher in the position of an enforcer, a cop-rather than that of a teacher, mentor, or facilitator of learning. Enforcing rules often results in power struggles that rarely result in win-win situations or in good relationships. Instead, rules often result in reluctance, resistance, and resentment. While rules are “left-hemisphere” oriented, and they work with people who are orderly and structured, they do not work well with “right-hemisphere” dominant students act who randomly and spontaneously. Even when these students
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A happy life is a disciplined life. Most people misunderstand the term “discipline.” A university professor once told me this term is so negative that he never uses it. Instead, he uses the phrase “classroom management.” As with so many educators, the professor mistakenly used these two terms as if they were synonymous. On the contrary, classroom management is about making instruction and learning efficient. This is the teacher’s responsibility. Discipline is about behavior and is the student’s responsibility. The key to classroom management is to teach a procedure for everything you want your students to do. A major mistake many teachers make is assuming that students know what the teacher wants-without the teacher’s first modeling, then teaching, and then
READ MORE >>> →Although consistency is important, imposing the same consequence on all students is the least fair approach. A significant trait that teachers, students, and parents are concerned about is being consistent. “How can I be fair, firm, and CONSISTENT?” was a question I continually asked myself-not only as a teacher, but especially as an assistant principal of supervision and control in a high school of 3,200 students. The question was also on my mind when I disciplined students as a middle school assistant principal and as an elementary school principal. Only when I returned to the classroom after 24 years in counseling, staff development, and administration did I realize that my mindset of being consistent in dispensing punishments was unfair and
READ MORE >>> →It is challenging for many people to separate themselves from what others may think about them. This is especially the case when it comes to learning. Generally, people are not embarrassed to make mistakes when learning a musical instrument. We don’t give up when we play a wrong note on the piano—or in my case the Great Highland Bagpipes. The same holds true in athletics. We don’t stop playing baseball when we strike out at bat, and we don’t stop shooting basketballs at the hoop when we miss it. When it comes to mental learning, in contrast to kinesthetic or psychomotor learning, why is it that so many people would rather not engage in the process than make a mistake and become
READ MORE >>> →Dan Ariely has written a very interesting book entitled, “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How to Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves.” The book attempts to explain how people balance the two forces of being honest and the desire to benefit from dishonesty. Among his conclusions is that people believe that if they cheat just a little, then they still consider themselves as being honest. For example, if pencils are taken home from the office, that’s O.K., but taking petty cash can’t be justified. In a setting where free food is available for a private party, it is hard to be the first person who was not invited to the party to partake in some of the free food. However, as soon
READ MORE >>> →One of the beautiful aspects of being human is that we have the opportunity to continually learn. Unlike turtles, for example, who are born with everything they need to survive, our nature allows us to continually learn. To me, this is one of the joys of life. In our technological age, learning is tantamount to being a part of modern society. How we take to technological learning is a reflection of our psychological approach. An external psychological approach can easily lead to victim-like feelings. In contrast, if you believe in an internal psychological approach—that regardless of the stimulation, situation, or urge—you have the ability to choose your response, then you are not a victim. The reason is that you control your thoughts,
READ MORE >>> →Our daughter gave me a Father’s Day gift “for the man who has everything.” The toothpicks are harder than the ones I usually use, and I was delighted with them. I used them after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It never dawned on me that when I broke out in hives, which led to a rash, which inflamed into dermatitis that the cause could be an allergic reaction to my new toothpicks. I saw a number of experts—allergy specialists, dermatologists, and other medical doctors—none of whom could find the cause. I searched the Internet for answers. One medical doctor had even asked, “Do you believe in the Web or in your medical practitioner? (The answer, of course, is “Why not use
READ MORE >>> →I received the following from a parent: “Hello, Thank you for writing the book. We are and will continue to recommend it to other people. (The book referred to is http://piperpress.com/parenting-without-stress.php) “I wonder would you please reply/advise me here. My 15 yr old spends several hours on the computer and she does not part with her phone. She does activities and is a good student, but every free moment she has she is on Facebook or texting. Network she is on allows for free texts to certain numbers. Wi-Fi is free so she has internet access on her phone. She feels that if she has done her chores, then she can spend her free time anyway she likes (especially as it is summer
READ MORE >>> →A close relative of mine asked my counsel regarding a new job she had just accepted. Two of her friends had suggested that she not take the job—that it was too risky and that she may not succeed. I asked her, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” She responded, “I could get fired.” I asked, “Can you live with that? She said, “Yes.” I suggested that with the risk comes the reward and that if she stays positive and continues to reflect before she makes choices, she will succeed. However, if for some reason, she doesn’t, her life experiences will have been enhanced. Either way, she wins by taking the position.
READ MORE >>> →Technology is affecting our brains. It is controlling and enslaving those who have become addicted to ultra smart devices and virtual social networking. People are drawn into the technology by the potential of short-term rewards. Every contact offers the potential for a social, sexual, or professional opportunity. The mini-reward is like a squirt of dopamine for answering the Pavlov bell. There is no doubt that many are becoming impulsive. A recent study at Case Western Reserve University correlated heavy texting and social media use with stress, depression, and suicidal thinking—especially among adolescents. These depressed youth were the most intense web users, spending more hours on e-mail, chats, video games, and file sharing. They also opened, closed, and switched browser windows
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Promoting Responsibility & Learning – Volume 12 Number 7
#1 Understanding parenting styles
#6 A parenting two-word motivating tip
#7 Explaining different discipline styles
No Ordinary Time – Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin is a wonderful historical read. FDR’s mobilization of the United States in helping the Allies and preparing the United States for war before our entry into World War II was a tremendous challenge. How did he bring industry and labor together? How did he convince industry to change their product from civilian goods to armaments? The answer is articulated on page 55, “Roosevelt’s stress on cooperation rather than coercion.” FDR knew what influential leaders know, namely, that the art of influence is to induce a person to influence himself. Coercion never accomplishes this. As Benjamin Franklin said to King George III
READ MORE >>> →“The proper frame of mine,” being charged with a “mister meaner,” referring to an “Ivory League School,” complaining that a roommate was from “another dementian,” the school was in “secession year round,” “taken for granite,” and becoming “pregnant on that fetal night” were just a few of James Courter’s examples in his July 10 article of The Wall Street Journal. Courter had recently retired from teaching composition to college freshman. His charge is that today’s young people don’t read. As a result, they sometimes have hilarious notions of how the written language represents what they hear. We can only imagine what the English language writings will look like generations from now when young people make spelling shortcuts in their texting
READ MORE >>> →I received an e-mail stating, ” I Googled ‘disadvantages of punishment and rewards’ and found your website.” My website was the 28th website listed on Google. Needless to say, I was grateful for the person’s finding me and subscribing to my free, monthly newsletter, “Promoting Responsibility & Learning.” In the future, there will be more and more sites devoted to the disadvantages of using punishments and rewards for teaching and parenting. The reason is that the more these external approaches are used, the more obvious they are seen as being coercive and ineffective in changing people’s long-term motivation. Rewards ask, “What will I get for doing it?” and punishments ask, “What will you do to me if I don’t?” These external
READ MORE >>> →Knowledge about the brain has significantly increased in the last few years. Here are four myths about the brain and learning, each followed by a statement that reflects new findings. 1. You can’t change your brain. The brain is constantly changing in response to thoughts and experiences. Changing our thinking and changing the way we behave induces changes in the brain. 2. We lose thousands of neurons every day.Assuming that the brain remains healthy and disease free, the brain loses relatively few neurons with age. 3. The brain doesn’t make new brain cells.Certain areas of the brain—such as the hippocampus and olfactory bulbs (the scent processing center)—regularly generate new neurons. And, as mentioned above, every time the brain experiences something different, new
READ MORE >>> →The message from the United States Declaration of Independence that spread around the world is rarely given its due. Following the first paragraph that indicates the reason for the Declaration, the second paragraph begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It is the next line that changed the course of history. It reads, “–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Before these words were penned by Thomas Jefferson, with little editing by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, people
READ MORE >>> →I received the following e-mail: “I am doing a thesis on Third Culture Korean kids (graduate paper) as a requirement for my Master in TESOL/Adult Literacy. I would love to be in touch with you in order to gather some information from you. NO PRESSURE. I am merely asking this as a favor since you seem to have a grasp on this subject. Thank you ever so kindly.” Of course, I responded that I would help in any way I could. I made nine (9) presentations in South Korea and am familiar with “third culture Kids.” These are young people who were born to parents of one nationality and whose parents have taken positions in other than their native country. The
READ MORE >>> →Problems with students so often arise from imposing, rather than from eliciting. When teachers impose “logical” and/or “natural” consequences on students, they are using their authority to impose a form of punishment. It matters not if the adult’s intention is to teach a lesson. Imposed punishments increase the likelihood that the student will feel punished by the adult. Anything that is done to another person prompts negative feelings of reluctance, resistance, resentment, and sometimes even rebellion and retaliation. In addition, when authority is used to impose, it deprives the student of an opportunity to become more responsible. Working with the student, rather than doing things to the student, is so much more effective. This approach avoids the problems typically associated
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