Solving Classroom Discipline Problems
Your Instructor: James Thompson
Lesson 01
Chapter 1

Introduction

The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.

    —Bill Cosby

What Bill Cosby has to say about parents and discipline most certainly applies to teachers as well. Whether it is justice or discipline or just plain quiet, all teachers are concerned about the behavior of their students. All teachers want to know the secret to helping their students succeed in school and become responsible, productive and happy members of society.

Over the years, I have created a number of courses about students and discipline for teachers. In researching and writing those courses, I learned a great deal about children and behavior. I have learned what works and what doesn't work. I am writing this course to share what I have learned with you.

When my children were growing up and I had to deal with their misbehavior, I remember asking myself, "Am I doing the right thing?" I didn't have a course that taught me about children and discipline. I had to learn from experience, and learning from experience is tough on both children and adults.

My goal for this course is to give you the information, language, and skills you need to guide your students toward appropriate, responsible behavior. Hopefully, what you learn in this course will make your job less stressful, more rewarding and, ultimately, more enjoyable.

As you progress through this course, you will learn how to deal effectively with these types of students:

the attention demander
the apple polisher
the whiner
the arguer
the bully
the fighter
the defier
the disrupter
the do-nothing
the cheater
the homework hater
the procrastinator
the rebel
the destroyer

However, before we can address specific problems, we must first examine student behavior in general to develop a better understanding of why some students choose inappropriate behavior. Once you understand their motivation, you can take steps to help these problem students choose more responsible behavior.

In this first chapter of Lesson 1, you will learn a very important secret about children and discipline. Then, in the next four chapters you will learn how to use this secret to solve classroom discipline problems.

To begin, read the following scene and see if anything in it sounds familiar. You might call this a typical scene between a typical student and a typical teacher:

What is the result of this brief exchange? The student has avoided doing his work, has been punished but has learned nothing about responsibility. The teacher feels upset, frustrated and probably a little guilty. And, the rest of the class has been taken off task in the process.

If there is one problem that all teachers have in common, it is discipline. Unfortunately, the word discipline has come to mean something that teachers do to students. And, all too often, punishment is what is done to students. In this course, you will learn that you do not need to punish children to get them to behave.

Have you ever wondered why children can behave like angels for some teachers but are absolutely uncontrollable for others? If you have, there is a simple answer. Some teachers have been trained to manage their students' behavior. In that training, they were taught a very important secret about children and discipline. This secret is that you cannot force children (or anyone, for that matter) to do anything they do not want to do. You may be able to gain compliance with the use of threats, punishment and rewards, but that compliance will be very short lived.

You can't force children to do anything they don't want to do. Think about that for a minute. How often have you tried to force your children to do something they absolutely did not want to do? What was the result? An argument? Yelling and screaming? The child in tears? You in tears?

There is a story told by family therapist Carleton Kendrick that describes a typical teenager's attitude and illustrates my point about trying to force children to do anything.

An adolescent girl, who had been moody and glum with her parents for several months, was heading out to the movies with her friends. Her mom waved to her as she walked out the door and said, "Have a good time." The daughter turned around and snapped, "How dare you tell me what to do!"

Perhaps that story is a bit of an exaggeration, but it does have a good deal of truth in it. Children of any age do not like being told what to do. They don't like being controlled.

If you can't control your children, does this mean that teachers need to step back and just let students do whatever they want to do? Absolutely not. Being too permissive with children is just as harmful as being too controlling. Neither of these approaches teaches children about responsibility. And neither of these approaches recognizes the true meaning of discipline.

The word discipline is derived from the Latin word meaning to teach. For instance, a disciple is a pupil, a student, someone being taught. Therefore, when we talk about disciplining children, we should be talking about teaching them. That is the objective of this course—to teach you how to teach your students to behave appropriately.

Teachers who are successful in helping students behave responsibly have a plan. They have thought about student behavior and have planned what they are going to do both when a child behaves and when a child misbehaves.

Having a discipline plan has many benefits. Most important, when a discipline problem arises, you don't have to react emotionally. Losing your temper does not solve a problem. It only makes things worse. But if you have a plan, you will know ahead of time what you will do when Johnny won't stay in his seat, or Amy will not stop talking or Josh won't do his work.

Teachers not only have a discipline plan, they teach that plan to their students. They teach their students the rules of the classroom, what will happen when they choose to follow the rules and what will happen if they choose not to follow the rules.

The teachers are saying to the children: "Here are the rules for this classroom. You can choose to follow them and enjoy the positive consequences of your choices. Or you can choose to not follow the rules and endure the negative consequences of your choices."

Notice what this use of a discipline plan accomplishes. First the children know the rules, they know what is expected of them. They know what will happen if they follow or if they break the rules. It is their choice. This is placing the responsibility where it belongs, on the child.

This is how children are taught about responsibility. They don't learn about responsibility through punishment, or through rewards. They learn it by making choices and learning to live with the consequences of those choices.

This is the secret of effective discipline. It is not finding better ways to control children and force them to behave in a certain way. It is finding ways to help children take control of their own lives and learn to make responsible choices.

At this point, many of you might be thinking, "This is not the way I was brought up. When I was a kid, I obeyed my teacher or I was in big trouble."

What has happened? Are today's children different? You bet they are and that is the subject of the next chapter.