We spend a great deal of time in this space encouraging to keep your focus on learning and your time in support of the growth of your teachers.
One of our readers (thanks!) responded to last week’s issue with this question:
At the new school I’m moving to, there are supposedly so many behavior problems…my question is how do you stay instructional, managing time, being in classrooms, attending meetings, being present, etc if you are bogged down with behavior problems?
Order, Not Control
WE WANT EFFECTIVE CLASSROOMS
that lead to student performance and growth. Our students deserve to be challenged, but often don’t accept the challenge unless they’re interested. Enter the importance of engagement. But, it’s difficult for a teacher to create the space needed for the highest engagement without the help of the students.
In a class where students are highly engaged, those students agree to some level of appropriate behavior driven by their own self-control.
WHAT IF TEACHERS SPENT TIME AT the beginning of the year to develop the norms of self-control with her students? What if they revisited those norms regularly to recommit to them? These are things we suggest when we are bringing adults together to learn, like in PLCs… what if we did a similar version with students?
We have developed many different protocols to encourage self-discipline among our students. We approach it from recognizing good choices (PBIS), we establish an agreement with the students (social contract, popularized by Capturing Kids Hearts). We more typically address it in a more traditional way. We establish a list of negative behaviors and establish the consequences that occur when a student is seen behaving in that way.
Yes, there should be consequences for violating the social contract, for behaving outside of the rules.
When it all goes wrong is when the issue of behavior becomes preeminent to engagement, rigor, and performance.
It gets to THAT point when the students fail to regulate their own behavior and the teacher feels compelled to make attempts to control it. Order is essential; control only works on those who allow you to control them.
If, as Harry Wong told us all years ago, we don’t respond emotionally but rather go back and rehearse behaviors again, we would stay away from the control trap and most likely have better results.
ALL of these ideas are contingent on the MINDSETS of each teacher. Those who think that CONTROL is necessary are more likely to spurn PBIS, social contracts, and the like. Those who realize that teaching someone to control their behavior is ALWAYS easier than controlling that same person’s behavior.
To my colleague who posed this question, if you have inherited a faculty of CONTROLLERS, your path begins with the most coachable and willing teachers who will embrace ORDER. Start with the willing and build a coalition of those who tired of the exhausting world of control.
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