One for all and all for one!

Code of Conduct for a Family

Avoid potential conflicts:
Don’t make food a battleground
Let children eat with adults as soon as possible
Don’t cook separate meals – modify adult meals to suit children
Organize the family room so that you rarely have to say ‘No’ to the child
Keep dangerous/fragile items in a separate room
Avoid putting the child in a position where it is tempted to tell a lie
Respect the child’s routine – taking them to too many adult events (especially at night) can cause spoilt behaviour. If you do this rarely, they may behave well (mine certainly did).

Be consistent on big issues, but flexible on small ones:
Safety
Kindness towards others
Responsibility for actions
Always be honest with children, and impress upon them that if they never lie to you, it is easier for you to back them up
If you have been unfair or ungenerous, it is better to change your mind than stick to your guns.
Allow more freedom and responsibility as the child matures

George Bernard Shaw said, ‘Never strike a child except in anger’.Don’t say ‘Wait until your father gets home,’ punishing the child in cold blood. Despite current theory, the occasional and merited quick smack is more effective than nagging a young child: dogs and horses nip their young to train them.

If either parent is unreasonable, discuss it privately, insisting on fairness to the children but avoiding disharmony in front of them.

Above all: Each person should spend time alone with each other member of the family.

Take Care of Them

Essential Element of Adequate Discipline Model

Respect the basic needs underlies all successful interactions and communication (Glasser: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun)

Physical needs are particularly relevant – are the students hungry towards lunch time? sleepy after lunch? lethargic on a hot day? unsettled on windy days? exhausted the day after the swimming carnival? climbing the walls after days of rain? You may need to modify your lesson. The occasional block of chocolate does not go astray. On an extremely hot day towards the end of the year I arrived in the class room to find my best-behaved class ever lying on the floor. When I raised an eyebrow the most diligent and obliging one of them looked up at me very mildly, and said with a smile, ‘We’re revolting.’ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘Everyone go and get a book and lie on the floor and read.’ I don’t think that did anyone any harm.

Assertive discipline (as opposed to non-assertive or hostile)

Engaging lessons

Student Choice and sense of Ownership

Collaborative Learning and opportunities for Leadership

Challenging and Stimulating Students to extend themselves

Mutual respect and tolerance

Kindness and support

Be prepared to admit mistakes

Community

Don’t have favourites

Cater for different learning styles – or teach in a variety of ways

Use outdoors when you can

Show the students that you have faith in them (One of my most heart-warming moments was when a student wrote a note saying ‘Thank you for seeing things in me that I couldn’t see in myself.’)

Why won't the little sods cooperate?

Improving Student Motivation: Critically reflect on two Psychological theories

In answering this part of the assessment I am reflecting on my experience with a particularly difficult Year 10 class of 15 students (one with intellectual disability, two epileptic students whose medication gave them behavioural problems, one child with ESL, one with borderline ADHD, one school refuser, and the rest a mixture of those who could-if-they-would and those who would-if-they-could.

1. Assertiveness – Lee and Marlene Canter

Create positive student-teacher relationships
Establish rules or expectations
Track misbehaviour
Use negative consequences to enforce limits
Implement a system of positive consequences
Establish strong parent support


There are a number of problems with this model in the real world:
Sometimes even the most willing teacher is not able to establish rapport with particular students.
Canter’s model of establishing straightforward rules (p.84) is non-democratic and draconian and does not allow student input and ownership. Some are inappropriate: ‘Stay in your seat and sit facing the front of the room’ implies the class is organized in rows rather than a more collaborative horseshoe.
Establishing rules and goals democratically works well with some classes and not with others. Students with learning/behavioural problems may resist the rules at every opportunity (sometimes this is outside their control –the two children with epilepsy had medication that destroyed their concentration in the early mornings - three out of five lessons). Tracking misbehaviour through behaviour management sheets was ineffective as they continually ‘lost’ their sheets, failed to show them to the parents, and the parents missed parent teacher meetings and offered no support to the teacher.
Using negative consequences to enforce limits was counterproductive – keeping students back at recess further reduced rapport, increased resentment and also made it hard for the teacher to be ready for the next lesson.
Positive consequences, reward systems, praise encouragement and varied teaching methods were occasionally effective but every time I thought I had achieved a breakthrough, the bad behaviour would resurface at the beginning of the next lesson due to medical/behavioural problems.


Rudolf Dreikurs: Democratic Discipline


Many of Dreikurs’ ‘Do’s’ and ‘Don’ts’ (Edward and Watts, p.106) are helpful, but still not entirely sufficient in the real world (or at least I failed to make these principles work). With this particular class, despite consistently committing myself to strategies which ignored or avoided the negative and built on the positive, several of the students were intransigent. As a consequence I became discouraged and demoralized and was frequently guilty of nagging. Despite my best efforts to show that I accepted them and valued their contributions (if I rejected their behaviour), despite feeling and showing genuine pleasure at their slightest achievement, the students with epilepsy disliked me and English from an early date, and I was unable to counter this.


This particular class led me to think that some students at this age would in fact be better off out of school in the working world, acquiring the maturity and perspective that might have enabled them to value education. In the German education system, for example, there are Hauptschule which lead to trade and vocational qualifications, Realschule (generalist) and Gymnasium – academic schools. I am almost certain that this system would be much more suited to many Year 10 students in Australia.

Bibliography:

Clifford H. Edwards and Vivienne Watts, 2004. Classroom Discipline and Management. John Wiley and Sons, Milton QLD.

Rudolf DreikursPrinciples of Parent Education
http://www.adleriansociety.co.uk/phdi/p3.nsf/supppages/0939?opendocument&part=7

German School System
http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/germanschools.html