Help
ByI’ve already read through all the material. There’s a lot of interesting information in there.
One question though. At my school we don’t have a full time counsellor who we can send students out to. The role is performed by various classroom teachers who have their own lessons to teach.
The only places to really send a student are to another teacher’s class or to the office.
The office only has two chairs and also serves as an entry point for parents, so it is not really a place where several disruptive students can be sent to.
Also, at my school students are never sent of of class, no matter what they’re behaviour is like. The usual procedure is to give them a demerit (a penalty-point system that operates on a whole-school basis) and afterwards write up a referral to their Year Coordinator.
Is there a way to make the discipline system work with these constraints.
Thank you for your note. This will be a longer term project. There is no consensus among colleagues and parents. There are those who want more discipline, those who don’t. No one knows how to go about it. Sometimes I get frustrated at everyone’s powerlessness.
Right now I am having talks with irate parents to explain just what I meant by those rules. Some parents then are surprised at the bad behaviour and agree that there is some sense in the rules and can understand why I distributed them. But I also hear things like “military dictatorship”, “American way of just tromping all over everyone and everything,” and that I have ruined the possibility of ever having a good teacher-student relationship with the teenagers. To my credit, colleagues have since confirmed that my class – including the parents – is a particularly difficult one as far as discipline is concerned. The fact that I was inexperienced when I started with them has created a situation which may be hard to solve harmoniously. If I may venture into wild speculations I think this may have something to do with deep-seated cultural experiences that haven’t quite healed yet, experiences that may even go back to the early part of the 20th century. In Germany the pendulum swung from incredible true restriction of freedom to the wild freedom of the 1960s, and now it must swing more to the middle.
I have noticed little changes. Colleagues are speaking about support for little ways to slowly improve discipline, trying to come up with a plan to reduce the noise in the hall, paying more attention to how the children speak about the teachers (often very disrespectful). The school has some beautiful, wonderful aspects. But the discipline issue is one that is wearing me down after only 2 years. I am paying close attention to how this develops. Nonetheless I am happy this process started – I hope something has started, and that something has shifted. I just can’t really figure out what, yet.
There must be some agreement with staff, administration, and parents on the basis of policy and discussion. I would begin discussions by asking if rationality were the basis of our actions at the school. If there is no agreement that rationality is the basis, then there is no discussion–anything goes. If rationality is the basis, then we can approach irrational ideas one at a time. So to take one obvious example, let’s start with ‘rules as a restriction of freedom’. Yes, rules are a restriction of freedom. The question is whether the restriction of freedom is a bad thing. If someone told me restriction of freedom is a bad thing, I would tell them I would like to steal their money, or perhaps burn down their house, and please not to restrict my freedom. The basic restriction on freedom is when you interfere with another’s freedom, which is what any disruptive child is doing to the freedom of another child in the class to learn. So we need restrictions on freedom. This is to only answer one of the silly ideas apparently held at the Waldorf School you mention, and each in turn can be shown to be irrational by rational discussion. If teachers, administrators and parents are not willing to have a rational discussion of the issue, then nothing can be accomplished and they are just imposing their wills by brute force, which you can also bring up.
I bought the book last week and every word rings true. I have only been teaching since September 2008 at a Waldorf school in Germany, and have discipline problems in my 11th grade class. All the 11th grade teachers have discipline problems. Our classroom work is not effective.
The whole school has discipline problems, students are too loud in class, come late, have no respect for teachers and for each other. The teachers complain about it, the parents complain about it, but every teacher is left alone to deal with the situation. This has been going on for years. Some staff members feel “discipline” only means punishment.
The school is a private one, in a well-to-do area, but the behavioural problems are much the same as the ones described in the book.
My subject is English as a foreign language. There is no Dean, 3 teachers take the role of “school management”. They are elected every 3 years. There is no library, for the upper level there is a sort of “hang out” room that I send students to if they are disruptive. I have no way of checking if they actually go there.
The only disciplinary measure the school offers is a detention before school. Detention after school doesn’t work, each class has a different time schedule. One teacher always comes early, he has a list of students who are scheduled for detention. If they don’t come the first time, they need to come twice. Often students get out of the detention, they simply don’t come and some teachers don’t follow up (I do). I don’t have a classroom. I go around to the students, to “their” classroom.
I introduced a slightly altered version of the Classroom 101 rules. The students absolutely balked. Bedlam. Refused to even let me talk through them. In a way they were in dialog with me, the reaction was to find out the “borders” of the list of rules, with is basically only one rule: “When in class behave yourself”. They immediately found situations not explicitly listed as an offence.
I didn’t tell any other teachers I was going to do this beforehand. I felt this was legitimate in my own 11th class. But the whole thing has EXPLODED. Many colleagues have criticized my actions, have said “you just can’t do that here, people see rules as a restriction of freedom”. They said it is cultural (Germany – I am US-American). One teacher suggested I rephrase the rules to be only suggestions: “we all know that behaviour in class plays an important role, because…so then it is advisable to…” He left any sort of consequence off.
It is very easy for me to get pulled up in the confusing realms of “if this, then that, things have been going on like this for years, we have to accept it, parents will be irate…” I get pulled off center.
Whenever I am able to return to the core of truth in the book, colleagues simply must agree with me: these students already know how to behave. We need good behaviour to work. I am demanding this behaviour. Yes, they agree. That is how it should be and we as teachers should be able to demand that. But we can’t.
I have to back down a bit, lay low. I cannot go against all of my colleagues, many of the parents, and some of the students. Throughout all this there have always been several students who are diligent workers. They are suffering because of the disturbances.
I don’t know what will happen. I feel I have no way of taking on these masses. I am also tired of addressing the trouble makers. There are a few in the class that are willing to work. I will group them up around be and make sure they get a good lesson. The troublemakers I will sit in the back of the class to be among themselves. The rules will still be valid, but I will not discuss them anymore in class. I feel I cannot follow the instructions in the book, to keep on giving them to them and reviewing, because I am being blocked everywhere: by students, parents, and teachers. The uproar is too organized. I will still give detention, but my focus will be on the 3 or 4 students who are cooperating, so this means I won’t see every transgression. I will make sure I connect to those working and give them the best lessons I can in the situation.
It is common at Waldorf schools for teachers and classes to stay together over a number of years. The classes stay together for the course of their school career. So these 11th graders have been in a class together since first grade. The “class spirit” is very strong and uruly. This is “only” my second year with them, and I will give up the class as soon as I can. This class has managed over the course of 11 years to throw 3 teachers out they do not feel is teaching properly, the school has tolerated it. At Waldorf schools, no one fails. There has never been expulsion. The approach is to understand and acknowledge the student. These are great words of truth, but what they mean is interpreted differently by colleagues. For me, giving consequences like detention does not contradict understanding and acknowledging. For some of my colleagues, it does.
This could all still have a very positive outcome. I have everyone’s attention. I feel the uproar is coming from a sense of helplessness at the hugeness of the problem, and not knowing what to do. This is where the book’s message rings true: everyone is deserving of respect. Teachers a right to respectful behaviour. Everyone knows what this is. Everyone profits from the good behaviour.
If anyone has advice for me I am happy to hear it. I know in a strange way that I am on the right track, but have no idea what will happen. For me the situation is unfolding in a way I did not predict, but the message in the book is true. I have to keep coming back to it.
This may cover a lot of area but I have several perplexing situations, that in the past, have created real problems for me and some of them may not just not basically behavior related. I teach in California’s Central Valley and am an itinerant visual and performing arts in the teacher for the 7th and 8th grades. That is to say that I teach at 2-3 schools each day. I find your methods and practices very enticing and appealing but I see many problems in my particular situation. I often end the day away from my first school so giving before school detention is appealing but this cuts into my prep time. I have very limited time during the day and most of that is eaten up with class preparation and travel time. I have just read your advice about alternative detention times and that may be workable but I will have to check with my principal.
The first problem is learning the names of 200-300 students each year. I always learn the names of the problem students and most of the rest as time goes by. It is usually 8 months before I feel comfortable working without the seating chart and I still don’t recognize some students. Again, I only see them for 50 minutes every other day. When I see them elsewhere I can’t put a name with a face or a location where I met them and the student feels as if I don’t care about knowing them. I know the feeling. Please comment, as I will follow up with any clarification that you may need to help me solve these problems and thank you for your support.
Next, there is the problem with making phone calls to parents. Sometimes, it is more efficient and effective to call during class or immediately after class. That way the parent knows that the behavior is enough of a problem that I am calling them in the middle of the school day. It usually works out pretty good too. I also rarely have my own regular classroom so I often come into a classroom that is ending one class and the students are already in their seats to start my class. I only have 50 minutes every other day with these students and all that I have time to do is pass out work folders, start them working on the warm up introduction activity, post the daily lesson on the board, take roll, and get supplies out of my kit for the main lesson. There has to be an easier way. I assign students to help distribute materials in the way you suggested but by the time I get done there are only about 40 minutes left to teach and most of this is spent in getting the class working through direct instruction or guided instruction. I have tried using the classroom teacher’s methods of class control, but I find that this is more suited to the regular classroom teacher, who has these students for the full day, than for my class which is suppose to encourage creative thinking using the “silent” half of the brain.
Next, there is/are the student{s} who simply choose to not participate in the class, but sit quietly during the entire class doing nothing and bothering no one. I can’t seem to motivate or entice them to participate on even a limited basis. These are not special ed, kids but regular student who work in their regular classes. I tell them that they will not get passing grades in this class and call the parents about this behavior but mostly this has little affect. I try to work with the rest of the staff who have them in their other classes, and nothing seems to help. I also have some who do no work in any of their classes and still are disruptive. These I mostly deal with through in-school suspension. The district has laid off all the counselors and vice principals that use to deal with these situations. But this is cheating the students of an education, even though they are the ones actually involved in this behavior.
Lastly, there is the vandalism of the classroom supplies and other student’s work. I have checked out art supplies to students and when I get them back the supplies are stolen, broken or damaged in some way. I went through 2 years of not using anything but the student’s black pencils and my worksheets. I feel this is cheating the entire class out of so much that exists in visual art. Some student’s actually deface other’s work, out of jealousy or hate for the student, me, or the class. I’ve tried stopping this behavior. I deal with this through carefully assigning work that is mostly made of smaller parts of the whole. This way they only vandalize or destroy a small piece of someone’s work and this is easier to repair or replace. The art supplies are either not used or only checked out to specific students and I group them together but the vandals still get some of them away from these groups. I have to do a lot of one on one type of teaching at times to help individual students with understanding and demonstrating details of the assignments and this behavior happens then. I do a lot of “managing by walking around”, but mostly I just can’t keep moving or observing the whole class all the time. I have tried to get the students to supply their own art pencils and such, but there is only so much that can be expected. The parents often cannot afford to replace these things and, due to budget constraints, neither can I. The principal has approved this action of simply not using these supplies but I feel so limited in what I can do to solve this problem.
I’m sorry that this is so long but I am trying to give you the full picture of my situation.
Yes–these green light red light deer crossing signs are methods outside my book, so if they are not working I can’t answer for them. Younger children of course need more training in correct/incorrect behavior, but they also need immediate consequences for poor behavior or they simply learn manipulation and persist.
Craig
ok == HELP! I am the kindergarten/1st grade aide (supporting 5 teachers) at our school and we have had a very tough K class this year in terms of behavior issues:
* hitting/in-in-your-face behavior
* yelling out
* non-stop talking
* mean words to others
* destruction of property
* constant tattling on others to get them in trouble
* total disrespect for one of the newer teachers — talking while she is reading to them. I get so mad I often jump in and start lecturing them in front of her on how rude they are (not good, I know).
Two of the three K teachers are very good at disciplining — one is trying everything she can. We have the “move the pin/stoplight” procedure. Moving from green to yellow is a time out at recess. Moving from yellow to red is a note home in addition. Moving off of red is a visit to the VP.
The teachers also send the students back to their seats when they are being disruptive. This sometimes works but the many of the kids wind up “checking out” or playing with something at their seats.
Here are the problems I observe and WOULD LOVE ANY FEEDBACK!
1. If find a lot of children are misbehaving because they WANT to be removed from the class and then they are not engaged in learning at all. This work then has to be made up either by the teacher or me.
2. Class starts at 8:00 am. By 8:15, I have seen at least three Kindergarteners on RED!!! What happens the rest of the day.
3. We had one child leaving the room to visit the VP several times during the day. He was missing out on instruction time and this was NOT good.
4. I often remove the child and “take a walk” until he or she calms down and can return to the room. Ummm — the kids enjoy walking and talking with me so it is not really a bad thing to “go for a walk.” I also supervise the timeouts and have the children sit in the room with the lights off, heads on the table for about 5 minutes. Talking or fooling around adds minutes. This is effective but I have seen the same kids daily for the entire year. Is this really effective????
5. My feeling at this age is that you need parent buy-in. Some follow-up at home must occur. Some parents are great at this — others could care less. I realize this.
6. I know in the book (which is geared for MS/HS)Craig talks about how the children know how to behave already. This is not always the case for K/1. I think explaining the rules over and over again is a must especially at the beginning of the year. Although here we are at the end of the year with the same behavior problems.
Any thoughts would be so appreciated. I am already getting ready for next year and want to make some changes (as many as I personally can as the aide).
Hello from Australia! I have been doing relief work and have recently started a full time job with a Year 5/6 class with 50% of Indigenous students and a low socioeconomic rural region. I am the third teacher for these students since the year started as the students have been so disruptive. One teacher did not even last a week (we start school end of Jan and go till mid Dec)! The 2nd teacher had them running across the chairs, being rude, etc.
I am fortunate that our school does have a ‘Thinking Room’ where we can send our students with a referral. They are spoken to about the behaviour they have displayed in class then are sent back to class with ‘their plan’ for improved behaviour. Its major flaw is that they are given 3 warnings for disruption before they are to be sent to the Thinking Room.
Before I found out about Craig Seganti’s book, I was giving students a succession of 2 minutes for every misbehaviour to be paid at 2nd break lunch (we cannot ask students to stay back after school). This was quite effective but I got frustrated with all the 2 min interruptions to my teaching.When they came to detention, they were not allowed to talk, move and I did not engage in a ‘chat’ with them. They did ‘the crime, they paid the time’. They really hated losing their play time. But, I felt it was still not achieving the results I wanted.
Craig’s book has helped me formulate my thinking more clearly. I have established procedures for everything, classroom entry and dismissal, small group work, art room and/or library behaviour, going to sport, etc. I have also slightly modified his classroom rules with adding lining up procedure and lunchtime (students spend the first 10 minutes in the classroom and then go out to play). At lunchtime in class, that’s the only time they are allowed to eat and chat quietly.
On Monday, I will be presenting the classroom rules in much more detail and in ‘black and white’ and my detention time will be increased to 10 minutes. They will also have to copy out the rules when they first arrive in class. My procedure will be: teach the rules, that’s my warning, no more. Any further misbehaviour will be an automatic 10 min detention and if they persist, they are given a referral to go to Thinking Room. When they return, before they are allowed to re-enter my room they have to show themselves ready with the right attitude…if not, they get sent back to TR until they are ready. If they are allowed to re-enter and then show they have not improved or are not ‘following their plan’, I send them straight back with their plan or another referral.
I really appreciated the detail of Craig’s rules, they helped me clarify what I wanted the students to be doing exactly. It is so easy to assume students know and will do it. You can never assume, I need to teach it clearly and then be consistent…that’s the biggest challenge.
I feel so much more empowered with these rules and detention. I am looking forward to Monday and the next couple of weeks of
improved and ‘nearly perfect’ behaviour.
Patricia
Hi, LA, I’m also a fairly new teacher. I just moved to California after teaching for two years in Colorado, and I now have my first assignment… a long time subbing gig in a music program (I’m a music teacher) for the last two months of the school year. The last teacher is on maternity leave, she was pretty relaxed in her discipline for the past few months, and would give kids endless warnings and very few consequences that mattered.
All of her classes are packed with kids who did NOT sign up, but were forced to join, and in many classes students are rude, arrogant, disrespectful, and disruptive. The choir is 55 kids strong, half of them did not choose the class, and about 7-10 of them have checked out completely, don’t care what I do to them, what consequence is assigned them, won’t show up for detention, and don’t care if they are suspended. In fact, they might prefer it.
The administration wants me to have heart-to-hearts with the classes, have ice breakers, show them who I really am, and motivate the students to love music and to make an effort, etc. They do not want me sending students out or writing referrals and handing out detentions all the time. I need this administration to like me, because they are my first impression in this state! How they feel about me can determine a lot of what my career is going to be like. But at the same time, I absolutely cannot do what they want me to do and succeed. You cannot have “heart to hearts” with classes that don’t respect you. They will laugh, and they will take it as an opportunity to walk all over you, which is exactly what they did today. (I did this just so I could tell the admin, “well, I tried.”)
I work 3 jobs, 70 hours a week, and it’s difficult for me to find the time to call parents. I also don’t know how well Craig’s method applies itself to music classes. Music can be very political, and if a music teacher is perceived as “too strict” or “not fun” they can find themselves in a whole lot of trouble with parents and admin. *sigh*
I’m in the process of figuring out which direction to go. I think the admin thinks pretty poorly of me already, since I went ahead and implemented Craig’s method. There is no in-school suspension (apparently research shows that it doesn’t work) so I’m having to find other things to do with them that they won’t enjoy. I also shot myself in the foot a bit by relaxing on the rules when I first realized that the administration didn’t want me to be so strict. The kids were good for the first day after the rules (except choir) but now have gone back to being unruly a week later. My own fault. I was not consistent.
Hi I noticed these recent posts. Deborah I would love to hear back from you, i am a new teacher survived the first year, looking at new positions for next year.
It is good to have other teacher friends and i am wondering if other teachers wish to exchange ideas. I was also not allowed to remove kids, and basically my administration allowed as many misbehaviors as the kids could give, and rarely followed up. It took me a while to figure this out, the kids would walk around campus and not come back to class. so i am very interested…….what rules do you have them write out? just the class rules? school rules? love that they have grammar errors, what a great idea! make them learn speech and spelling ……….fabulous.
I look forward to hearing from others on ideas for brilliant consequences.
I understand your frustration totally. I have been in the same situation for three years at my school. I work in elementary K-6. For the little ones K-1 only I implement a sticker program that does allow rewards and immediate time outs for misbehavior. They get the sticker at the end of class, I tell them they can keep it or lose it based on their behavior in the hallway on the way back to their homeroom teacher. I have had to take some stickers away, but it works. Take it away tell them what they did wrong, and move on. Not with the big ones, they already know why. For the little ones noticing them doing something good and a sticker works really well. I tell them that they are my stars, I have them sit quietly when the bigger kids are watching them through the art room window and I stand near the door and say, “Show them how to do it, Kindergarten!” The same way to time out, kind of like baseball you’re the umpire no emotion – to time out and immediately regardless of the infraction. Talking back adds minutes. Baseball players talk back too, but the Umpire rules the game. No one accuses him of being a bad umpire when he has a misbehaving baseball player screaming in his face. He just benches them. A little drama but no harm done. They will really test you on time out. It’s really hard but you have to be consistent. You’re the coach. I’m not always consistent, and you can tell if there is chaos or order in my room if I have been helping myself with those boundaries. For 3-6 I can’t send them out either as our administration is not open to receiving disruptive students and suspensions are rare. Truth be told. they don’t know what to do with them either. I made the mistake of telling a very disruptive kid that I was going to make sure he got suspended, and guess what? Due to a technicality they did not suspend him. This class acts up all the time now because I had no “juice”. So I had to make my own “juice”. Which is parking them in a corner and
having them do more rules work. Make sure it’s not repetitive writing or you can get cited for that. It has to be something that allows them practice – 3-6 can write alot because they are still developing their handwriting skills. There is no detention program in my school either and no where to send the kids that are out of control. In this case I have implemented “in class suspension” which is a desk, a chair and copy of the rules to write. Get a partner teacher and swap the kids out to their classroom if you have to. They sit and write the rules, turned with their backs to the group! Don’t let them face the class during time out, the other kids will tease them. A really interesting way to do this as well is to make some typos on the rules that the kids have to correct (ELA work) independently. You know how Admin. loves ELA. I teach art, so they are removed from session and parked until the rules are done and then allowed to return to session. I am not a perfect teacher, I feel for you, I had a really bad day yesterday, lost my temper, etc. I was quite fierce to say the least. I handled it on my own the best way possible, but you have to make sure you write the kids up and submit to administration so it is on them to suspend the kids. If they don’t suspend you’re covered. Make sure you keep copies for your book and write anecdotal notes to yourself in your planner. You can do it. Work those kids. Keep your chin up. There is no quitting, those kids need you. You can do it!
I agree! I have read several chapters in the book and believe it would do wonders for my students. I teach 5th grade therefore, I cannot suspend from a class nor, can do I have the authority to suspend from school. The school operates on a demerit system which, does not work. Once a student receives 3 demerits he/she is suppose to serve detention which, is held every other Friday after school. Many times students are not assigned detention (monitored by the asst. principal) or do not show up. The school discipline plan states that a student’s third assigned detention will result in suspension from school. This too, is not enforced. I have written referrals several times for major disruptive behaviors, to only have the student return to class. This shows a complete lack of respect for the other students in the class, classroom instruction, and my classroom rules. It is a difflicult atmosphere and would love any advice one could give.
It seems to me that you have a near impossible situation…. You simply cannot be required to house children in your class if they are defiant and disruptive. That puts the education of all the other students in jeapordy. In fact, it puts the rights of other students and other families in jeapordy — it seems to me. In my mind, you have to approach the parent committee and the administration at the same time. Show them the merit of this system and how it recognizes the rights of parents, students, and teachers. Best of luck.
My school doesn’t have a really good place either, but I have arranged with the school secretary and with our accounts payable person (who does have a spare desk in her office) to send the students to them if removal is necessary. While I can’t suspend them for the day or for an extended time period without admin approval, they are out of my classroom and are copying a form of the TIME OUT LETTER that I found on this blog. Then, when they serve detention (which is time out from their anticipated electives) they have to copy the rules. Usually the 15 minutes or so that it takes them to copy the letter is enough to redirect their thinking on their behavior, plus, I get to finish my lesson and they just have to catch up.
If you are required to give the established number of demerits, give them all at once! If you give them one at a time, by the time you get to punishment, the student has forgotton what they did in the first place. My best advice is to employ the help of whoever is there… even the janitor can supervise a student while they write out the rules.