Discipline Strategies and Solutions

Students can and will make responsible choices when administrators, teachers and adults implement comprehensive plans for school wide discipline programs in their schools. All too often one of the major components of a comprehensive discipline plan is neglected and we fail to help students see the correlation between cause and effect and what ultimately strengthens them or weakens them. There are seven essential components that will enable your school to implement a successful discipline program.

1- Develop a clear Discipline Plan including who is responsible for what; Administrator s Responsibility, Teacher s Responsibility, Parent s Responsibility and Student s Responsibility. Have everyone sign the document.

2-Focus your discipline plan on Student Responsibility rather than identifying various areas where you need control. Help students see that the choices they make make them and that every person deserves what their attitudes produce. Involve students in constructing the list of things that enhance learning and destroy learning. Use the list that enhances learning to write a class mission statement titled What We Need From People . Require students to sign the class mission statement after they assist in designing it.

3- Utilize the high correlation between motivation and student behavior. Be an expert in Child Currency. What a teacher does before the misbehavior occurs largely determines whether or not there will be violations of behavioral standards. Identify from the six major motivators below the motivators that contribute the most in promoting a productive learning environment. Independence-Competition-Peer Approval-Adult Approval-Mystery Disclosures- Food-Animals.

4-Avoid an over indulgence in praise and punishment but rather focus on identifying Agreements & Replacement Behaviors that ultimately serve both the student and the teacher. Encourage students with You Statements , helping children see that what they do they do!

5- Provide training in Ethics for all students; including how to build an ethical community. Conduct an ethic forum session on what s the right thing to do when faced with various dilemmas. Promote school wide value themes including Respect and Responsibility.

5-Implement options for learning about different types of students including Temperament and Different Learning Types.

6. Institute a Problem Solving Strategy that includes fact finding (What happened?), personal responsibility (How are you going to fix it?) and action steps to correct the problem (What would you be willing to do to fix it?).

7- Distinguish the difference between Compliance issues and those that are Negotiable. Help everyone see there are little if any options other than consequences when individuals do not follow compliance issues while at the same time helping others see that most interactions are negotiable.

– Gene Bedley