Over on Sines of Learning, Ms. Libb has a post about Fred Jones’ resources on classroom management. In “Tools For Teaching Part I.” Ms. Libb wrote
One of the most useful resources I’ve come across was Fred Jones’s works. Even though the teacher certification program I went through was great in many respects, we had -no- training in classroom management (big surprise, right?). Once I asked the best teacher we had, our math methods teacher who had been a classroom teacher herself, and her response was “The best discipline plan is a good lesson plan.” Riiiiiight. There’s tons of truth to that, but every trainee in the classroom knew we needed more than that!
Ms. Libb, who’s just getting started in teaching, goes on to explain how she then found one of Professor Jones’ books. She provides a review of it, refers to her experience attending a workshop on the methods, and promises a review of Fred Jones Website. Professor Jones’ recommendations about classroom management are good ones. I hope that they serve Ms. Libb well.
Link to Ms. Libb’s post.
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Over on Like Horses to Water, a first-year teacher of English has a post about discipline that caught my eye. In “Thoughts on Discipline #1: Why is discipline so difficult?” the author has captured one of the ideas that I express every semester.
“Classroom management” is one of the biggest challenges for all teachers, and one of the most difficult for us to get help with. In this blog I’ll be harping endlessly on the intensely personal and individualistic nature of teaching, and classroom management is one of the most personal parts of teaching.
It’s harder for new teachers since most of us still have our idealism, and are naturally not mean people. We’re going to win them over with love, we tell ourselves. We will treat them like mature and responsible young people, and they will rise to meet our high expectations. All together now: awwwwwwww…
That’s a noble and worthwhile approach, but it is insufficient. The author goes on to explain that this is an unrealistic view. I’m sure I disagree with some of the other points made in other posts, but there’s a lot of first-person observations that are worth reading in Like Horses to Water.
Link to “Thoughts on Discipline #1….”
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Over on Teachers at Risk Elona Hartjes has a post worth a read. In “Strategies for dealing with kids who get physcially aggressive with teachers- Part 1- Establishing the classroom climate,” Ms. Hartjes explains the value of creating a positive environment with adolescents, including establishing rules (though she prefers to call them “agreements”). Read the entire post.
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Families sometimes turn to private residential facilities, often called “behavior modification camps,” for youths when they decide that a young person “challenges authority,” is “out of control,” and has “accountability issues,” But some “behavior modification camps” in the US and elsewhere do not employ behavioral procedures or only employ them inappropriately.
Sadly, investigations of some of these facilities have revealed that they are more focused on dominating the youths who live there rather than teaching appropriate behavior using behavioral processes humanely. This has been documented in professional materials. Now these facilities are under investigation about how the conduct their business as well as their “therapy.” An article by Nancy Zuckerboard of the Associated Press recounts current concerns about the marketing of some facilities.
Youth boot camps and their referral services are using deceptive marketing practices when trying to convince parents of troubled kids to try the programs, a federal investigation has found.
The programs - also referred to as residential treatment facilities, behavior modification programs or therapeutic boarding schools - have been under congressional investigation for about a year. It’s estimated that at least 20,000 U.S. teens attend such facilities.
It is important that such facilities not employ deceptive techniques to obtain customers. However, it is at least equally important, in my view, that these facilities not misrepresent what they do. Well-documented behavior modification procedures can—and should—be used to promote appropriate behavior, but harsh and inhumane methods should not be confused with behavior modification as it is discussed here and in the professional literature.
Here are some methods or techniques that I do not include under the rubric of “behavior modification”:
- Spankings;
- Long-duration isolation (and, in fact, time-out doesn’t even have to employ physical isolation);
- Tough love
- Sleep deprivation
- Public humiliation
Here’s a link to Ms. Zuckerboard’s article, as it appeared in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Review the document entitled “The Exploitation of Youth and Families in the Name of “Specialty Schooling:” What Counts as Sufficient Data? What are Psychologists to Do?” authored by Allison Pinto, Robert M. Friedman, and Monica Epstein of the University of South Florida and published by the American Psychological Association. Also see stories by Maia Szalavitz from the Washington Post
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Over on Math Stories, Mr. K. has some comments about classroom discipline that are worth reading. Try this for example:
What the “good” teachers do
So, at this school at least, discipline is a huge part of being able to teach at all, much less well. Many of the teachers are successful. They have well run organized classrooms, their students are engaged and learning, and succeeding at it. In talking with one of them, we came to the realization that there are a lot of different styles, but they all have at least one thing in common:
The classroom is a culturally isolated from the rest of the school.
Teachers stand at the doors, and do a brain check on each kid as they come into the classroom. Every kid is given some sort of reminder that that door is a threshold, that when they cross it, the rules change, the expectations change, and their behavior better change. Those classrooms are little individual fortresses, and the successful teachers bring in the kids, but have set up barriers to keep the bad behavior out.
This reminds me of a study that I use sometimes in class. Allday and Pakurar (2007) examined the effects of having teachers greet students at the door. They found pretty clear increases in students’ attention to task during the class periods when the teachers complimented students as they entered the classroom.
Read Mr. K.’s full entry. Flash of the electrons to Liz Ditz for her post for alerting me to this. You can download a PDF the full version of the study by Allday and Pakurar for free.
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In October of 2007 over on D-Ed Reckoning, Ken deRosa had a series of posts that were based on an interview with a semi-anonymous teacher about her methods of managing classrooms of students who have substantial problems, including some who have been identified as having disabilities. This teacher resorted to a token economy to get things going.
For example, one year I was assigned to a new school and an extremely difficult group of fifth and sixth graders, all with both learning and behavior problems, and most seriously delayed academically. Some had intimidating discipline records; at least one was probably clinically psychotic. They were oppositional, violent (towards each other), screamed and yelled and threw things, or were passive-aggressive, and generally did nothing of what you assigned them to do. I was desperate — every day I went home feeling like I was escaping a war zone — and so I set up a classroom economy, a variant of what the behaviorists call “token reinforcement.” I printed up bills for $1,$5,$10 etc., as in “real” money, set up bank accounts, wage and price schedules, the works. Everything students might want to do cost something, whether it was visiting the restroom between recesses, computer time or using art materials. In turn, they could earn money in a variety of ways.
I encourage folks to read the entries, including the comments. The full suite of content is very informative. The posts are entitled How to Effectively Manage a Classroom, How to Effectively Manage a Classroom II, How to Effectively Manage a Classroom III, and (no surprise) How to Effectively Manage a Classroom IV.
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