In her article entitled Culturally responsive classroom management: awareness into action, Carol Weinstein states that if today’s educators wish to run culturally responsive classrooms, they have to be ready to ask themselves hard questions about their practice, their values and their biases. When addressing behavioral issues in the classroom, she states that today’s educators must be willing to “reflect on the ways that classroom management decisions promote or obstruct students’ access to learning.” Weinstein concludes that “Culturally responsive classroom management is a frame of mind as much as a set of strategies or practices.”

Alfie Kohn’s article, Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!” states that kids have become “praise junkies.” He says that since young children are so “hungry” for approval, adults have a responsibility not to “exploit that dependence” for their own convenience. This is one of the most on-going controversial topics we have explored in our work with parents and educators during the past twenty-three years.

We read an article today entitled “Teaching in a Disruptive Classroom” written by Syracuse University professor Marvin Druger. Professor Druger explained that he teaches an introductory biology class of several hundred students in a large lecture hall. During the class the professor received several complaints about the classroom behavior of others.

Professor Druger decided to send an email message to all the students in his course. In his note he made the students aware that he had received complaints from students who are distracted by certain behaviors and he requested that the few students who were causing the disruption to consider their behaviors.

The week after sending the email to all the students in the large class, the results were very gratifying. “Students had stopped being disruptive and were attentively listening to the lecture and taking notes,” said Druger.

After reading this article we noted how that seemed to be a rather a simple solution. We mused over the image of having this professor teach in some of the challenging classrooms many of us have experienced!

Later, however, we started rethinking the importance of Dr. Druger’s words. Maybe his response wasn’t so simple. As teachers we often try to solve class problems by ourselves, or we go to a colleague, or maybe we just complain about our situation. What we don’t often do is what Professor Druger did: take the issue to our students. Although we are not naïve enough to think this will solve all of the complicated issues of our classroom, it is certainly a place to start. When situations are spoken about honestly and directly with our students, they become part of solving the problem. We might even receive the same response as the professor.

We were struck by one of today’s headlines: “Americans would rather be dead than disabled” (http://www.reuters.com/article). What implications does this have for us as teachers? Each year we have several students with exceptionalities in our classrooms. Just like any other student they want to feel capable, successful, and independent. It is our responsibility to help them progressively feel this way. It is far too common that students with disabilities are simply part of our class: they are welcomed and treated kindly by us. Although this is important, it is not enough. We also need to help these students become capable and contributing members of our classroom and society.

What is the difference between a warning and a choice?

A warning tells of upcoming danger. It is an implied threat, exerting one’s power over another. Here are some examples of warnings.

- “Sit down or I am calling your mother!”
- “If that happens again you’re not going on the field trip!”
- “Knock it off or I am going to send you to the back of the room!”
- “I have told you six times either quit blurting out or you are going to the Time Out Room!”

WARNINGS are usually delivered out of anger or frustration. They direct the child to do something or else they are in big trouble! Although they may work for some kids, they fail for others. They often cause feelings of defensiveness and create power struggles because they encourage to children to REACT instead of THINK. They often evoke thoughts of “You can’t make me!”

Offering CHOICES recognizes the right or power of an individual to freely use her/his own judgment. They avoid setting up power struggles between the adult and child. They cause people to THINK instead of REACT. They help teach children responsibility. Here are some examples of choices.

- “You can either sit with your friend and do your work, or if you continue to talk you will have to sit over here. You decide.”
- “I am having trouble teaching. Your choice is either to participate in the discussion and listen to others or if you continue to make noises you will have to go to the Time Out Room. I hope you decide to stay.”
- “Your choice is either to do your work now when I can help you or do it during recess time. You decide.”
- “You have a choice to keep this a small problem or make it a big one. I hope you can keep it small.”

Learning how to offer choices takes a lot of practice and rehearsal.

Conflict is an inevitable part of teaching, whether it’s an elementary school classroom, a high school classroom or even at the college level. Why? People see things from different points of view and advocate for themselves in many different ways. Teachers need to become more comfortable with managing conflicts in ways that are helpful to students while still maintaining appropriate limits and boundaries.  

So how do we do this delicate dance?

Send us your ideas…and stay tuned!

We find that parents and teachers often share the same dilemmas though from different perspectives. This week a teacher confided to us that she often leaves school asking herself, “What am I doing wrong?” Parents have also expressed a similar sentiment.

As parents and teachers we definitely have very trying jobs. We’re often exhausted and discouraged. But we wonder about the helpfulness of her question, “What am I doing wrong?” This reflection seems to judge, to pre-assign blame to herself. It suggests that WE are the problem.

A more helpful question might be, “What could have been done differently?” or “What could be done in the future?” These questions don’t cast blame. They simply ask us to view the situation from another perspective, almost as a third person or a researcher might do.

How wonderful if every teacher and parent continually evaluated their interactions with children in order to strive to be the best they can be. We think it’s so important to be open to change AND to be nice to yourself.

We’ve just returned from a wonderful afternoon with the teachers at Lake Superior Elementary School. It was an exhilarating session with a group of very committed teachers and staff working hard to meet the needs of their students. They brought up some new questions that we had not heard before. We are also excited at the prospect of some of them registering for our graduate independent study video course of MORE TIME TO TEACH. We’re eager to join them in delving further into classroom management ideas. In the meantime, we invited the faculty and staff to post other questions here, at our ChildSense blog, so we can offer responses as well as others who might have ideas on related topics. We hope to be hearing from many of you.

Last night we had an opportunity to present to a group of parents in the Twin Cities. The topic was setting limits and boundaries for children. It was an exciting evening as we once again experienced the wisdom of parents and the challenge of parenting.

People noted the importance of parenting, while lamenting the lack of training they receive. It was stated that for many of us, the only training we receive is to recall how we were parented and that in many ways parenting is different than when we were growing up. Some of the differences sited this evening were technology, issues of safety, information overload, media, and over scheduling. 

Another difference discussed was how families are less autocratic than they used to be and how kids today are not being told to do whatever adults tell them to do. We think it’s a good thing that kids are being taught that they can be part of family decisions and that they should not do whatever any adult tells them to do. However, this does create some changes in how kids need to be parented these days. If we’re going to teach kids to question adults, guess who they are going to practice on? 

That’s right–US!! So as parents we need to be ready to respond to their questioning and boundary pushing. For many of us, knowing that kids are practicing these life skills on us, in the safety of our homes, we can step back a bit, emotionally, and not always assume our kids are trying to create problems. Author Robert Mackenzie describes this as children doing their “research.” More about this in another posting.

Thank you to those parents who were so generous with their comments last night. As usual, we learned a lot from them.