Look at this! Published in 1997

Ok, so this is from my Special Education course materials.  Credit is given at the beginning of this article.

Is it me or has this method of teaching discipline been used for all students regardless of ability?

GC

   

Ronald Morrish is a behaviour specialist with the Lincoln County Board of Education, he is also the author of “Secrets of Discipline” (book and video). For ordering information contact: Woodstream Publishing, P.O. Box 12093, Fonthill, ON LOS 1EO.

Source: Keeping In Touch,
quarterly newsletter from the
Canadian Council for Exceptional
Children, Winter ’97

“Gambling With Discipline”

 

 

Today’s popular discipline evolved from behaviour modification which relied on rewards and consequences to change behaviour patterns. Many parents and teachers disliked this system. They objected to the heavy emphasis on adult direction and to the cold, impersonal conditioning of children. During the last twenty years, discipline has been transformed by two major social and educational movements. The first was the increasing desire for freedom of choice, not just for adults but for children as well. The second was the adoption of the discovery approach to learning based upon the premise that children learn concepts best when they discover the concepts for themselves.

If you teach exceptional children, then beware of today’s popular discipline. It relies on strategies that are the exact opposite of the way your students learn. The more you use these strategies, the less likely it is that your students will become responsible and cooperative. In fact, they are far more likely to become manipulative and non-compliant. In addition, many of them will underachieve, falling far below their true potential. 

From this came today’s popular discipline, a system which allows children to make many of their own choices in the belief that responsible behaviour can be learned by experiencing the outcomes of one’s decisions. The adult role is to use rewards and consequences, not to reinforce compliance, but to encourage good choices and discourage poor ones. This system is called ‘behaviour management’ and is, in effect, the discovery approach to discipline. For children, this has become a think-for-yourself world, a phrase which is often repeated these days.Well, if it’s a think-for-yourself, then think about this. For children to learn from the behaviour management approach, they must be endowed with a number of abilities. They must be able to reflect on their experiences, comprehend abstract concepts, problem-solve effectively and apply what they learn to future situations. If exceptional children could do this, they wouldn’t have been considered exceptional in the first place (gifted aside). Let’s take a closer look:

 

Reflect On This

 

For rewards and consequences to work, children must recall what has happened to them in various situations and use that knowledge to alter their behaviour when the situation reoccurs. They have to decide if their choices were successful. Did they take the rights and needs of others into account? Would they do the same thing again or choose a different course of action?  Clearly, children with learning disabilities or intellectual impairments would be hard pressed to respond appropriately.

If this is difficult for exceptional children in general, it is virtually impossible for impulsive children. Impulsive children, especially those severe enough t warrant the A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder) label, act before they think. In other words, the moment their brains go into gear, impulsivity governs their thinking patterns and they mess up. These children are at risk in a think-for yourself world because, by definition, thinking is their problem, wonder A.D.D. children seem to be ‘coming out of the woodwork ‘ these days. For impulsive child: to succeed, they need more structure and routine so they can focus their thinking and do it in short ‘chunks’. They also require me adult direction and supervision than is provided by behaviour management.

 

Picasso Would Be Proud

 Perhaps Picasso could handle the abstract nature of today’s discipline but many exceptional children can’t. They are handicapped by the complete lack of a teaching component in-behaviour management. There are behavioural skills which children must learn, including cooperation, responsibility, conflict resolution, and courtesy. Behaviour management assumes that children will learn these skills from personal experience, from the outcomes of their choices. As we know, however, many exceptional children do not learn this way. They require direct instruction along with positive practice and constant review.Many teachers have become so concerned about this missing element that they have implemented social skills programs in their classrooms. Unfortunately, these programs are time consuming and have limited impact. Most teachers would clearly prefer to teach the skills within ordinary, everyday interactions between themselves and children. That approach, unfortunately, is not supported by today’s discipline. 

   

Who Cares?

 The Achilles’ heel of the reward and consequence system is that it only works if children care about the rewards and consequences. Many children learn to defeat the system by developing an immunity to consequences. “Send me to the office. I don’t care”. We hear those “I don’t care” words all the time. Children with behavioural exceptionalities are often well endowed with this attitude. It is one of the manipulative traits that they acquire as a means of getting their own way. 

 But these are just the children who acquire an immunity to consequences. What are we going to do about all the children who have a natural immunity because of all the pain and turmoil in their lives? Many of our exceptional children come from these situations. Maybe they’re neglected, or their family is breaking up, or their parents drink and fight. Add poverty and frequent relocation. The list goes on and on. Discipline fails these children because it relies on them to do something that they are incapable of doing. It relies on them to care.

When You Put It All Together

Many parents and teachers have noticed a dramatic rise in non-compliance and aggression over the past few years. Others worry that children are becoming increasingly manipulative and that they are underachieving in school. Behaviour management allows children to make these choices solely on their willingness to live with the consequences of their actions. 

We want more for our children. We want them to become responsible and cooperative. We want them to achieve everything that their potential-allows, it’s time to get discipline back on track. Real discipline isn’t about learning from your own experience, but from the experience of others. Real discipline limits children to the choices that are theirs to make. Discipline ensures that children are taught the skills and attitudes required for success in the modern world. We can’t do discipline by the discovery approach.

Step 4 Resources – another book and some websites.

Good day,

In Step 3 I mentioned that there is another book that I read that I think will help teachers with behaviour issues.  Additionally, in this post I have a few more websites and, I hope, to add an interesting article from 1997 that almost predicted the challenges we have today.

A.  Behaviour Recovery (2nd edition).  Bill Rogers (author) ISBN 1-4129-0145-6

This is another book that I acquired from the Margaret Wilson Library at the Ontario College of Teachers.  Published in 2004, Rogers provides another example of what is available to the regular classroom teacher.  Rogers breaks down the component parts (Understanding children with behaviour disorders, Exploring key features of behaviour recovery, developing the programme etc.)

Rogers’ work is not easy to implement and he admits that dealing with his behaviour recovery programme will be the tracking and working the programme plan.

 What I really enjoyed is Rogers’ identification of  “disruptive behaviour of behaviour disorder”.   Rogers completely identified my students.  As well, Rogers lays out a complete plan to deal with “student resistance to recovery options.”

Overall, Rogers lays out a good plan that needs buy in from all parties — regular classroom teachers, support staff and resource teachers.  Along with the black-line masters, he has made an effective kit that fits into a back pack.

 

B.  Websites.

http://www.ldac-taac.ca/teacher-e.asp

The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada has a good website that provides help for parents and teachers to identify disabilities. 

http://www.ldonline.org/educators/other/behavior

Learning Disabilities Online is an American site that is well designed and easy to use.   LD Online promotes education on a mutltitude of learning disabilities for parents, teachers and staff.   

http://www.ocup.org/resources/documents/companions/speced2002.pdf

Now off line, the OCUP web site had published some great work and this is a wonderful document.    The 115 page document identifies and suggests strategies to work with children with a number of learning disabilities including behaviour problems.  Published by the Ministry of Education in Ontario, the document tells you what you will see and what you, as a teacher, may do.

Step 3 Thinking about behaviour

During this past month, I’ve read and dealt with a number of challenges regarding behaviours that are occurring in my school and classroom.  In a nut shell, the classroom has become more and more of an experiment in behaviour modification and that the regular classroom teacher (RCT) has to run these experiments.

During my research with a friend and colleague, we discussed the great challenge of behaviour in the classroom.  His reading and research identified two major areas: 

1.  the child who is bored and acts out in class and

2.  the child that is so overwhelmed with the work, anxiety strikes along with the resulting poor behaviour.

While a learning disability does not necessarily bind itself to a behaviour problem……..a behaviour problem doesn’t necessarily bind itself to a learning disability. 

While teachers have and will continue to work within these constraints, my friend started writing about a new model that is beginning to get a great deal of support in the field of Special Education — something called “Response to Instruction”.  It seems that in the field of  Special Education, there is a movement from “identifications based on mental health categories” for educational issues.  

My friend continues ” he categories used in mental health are under attack from the mental health community right now. They don’t hold up well under the weight of new research. There is a push to get away from categories and move to a neurodevelopmental model. So, this is not a time for education to think in terms of categories. That said, there is a push in the USA to move to a functional model for special education – this is the RTI (response to instruction) and a tiered approach to interventions.”

Well, now I’m interested to see what is happening and I started at this site:

http://www.rtinetwork.org/Learn

The program seems to tie research to interventions and academic programming. 

This link is also cited on the California Department of Education site.

A recent piece of literature that I’ve read and think that it might be something I can use (and would like to share) is:

Boys, Girls and Achievement:  Addressing the Classroom issues.  Becky Francis (author).   ISBN 0-415-23163-9

I located this book through the Margaret Wilson Library at the Ontario College of Teachers.    Published in 2000 in England, Francis does make some interesting points regarding boys “laddish” behaviours versus their female counterparts.  “Laddish” behaviours are identified as behaviours  that distract from the learning of the boys and girls in the classroom.   Francis suggests that “laddish” behaviours (speaking out,  work avoidance, challenging teachers ) are systemic in the English education system and that a wholesale change is required to improve the under performing boys and empower the female students.

The female students interviewed by Francis easily identified that these boys could perform academically and socially when not “performing” for their mates. 

Francis’  research discusses current trends in education (e.g. more non-fiction to engage boys to read) and intersperses the reviews of research with her own interviews with students on a variety of subjects.  The focus of Francis’ work is based on secondary school students but she does provide insight of the future of teaching these students.

Francis believes that the teacher needs to inject some balance to the classroom.  Teachers need to treat boys and girls equitably regarding poor behaviour and spend a great deal of time trying to educate boys in the  appropriate expectations of their educational pursuits.

I find that Francis’ work parallels what is occurring in my classroom to a lesser extent.  The behaviours that I see (and I’ve discussed with my peers) is a systemic wide problem within the school and the community. 

It seems that we (our staff) are between a rock and a hard place in this matter.

Please check my next post (Step 4) for my next two reviews.

GC

Step 2 Resources — Ministry and Government.

Hi there,

While trying to make sense of everything to do with special education and behaviours I’ve done a lot of internet surfing and here are a few links you might find very useful. 

The italics are my notes about each link to help you cull the right link for your research.

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/speced.html
If you are teaching in Ontario, you need to look at this link.  It is useful and will give you the correct “terminology” from the Ministry of Education.  Good links and access but it is the similar page as the Teacher link.  The search function is pretty broad in nature…..a problem if you want to target just one thing. 

http://scdsb.on.ca/programs-services/special-education/  This is the link from my school board.  Informative and accessible.  If you haven’t checked your board of education, you should do so ASAP. 

http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/se/ During my time at an American teacher’s college, we researched how each state responded to the challenges of federal budgets and the frequent changes to the educational landscape.  The state of California was always a leader because of their geography (millions of people in the state and millions more wanting to go to the U.S. via California from Mexico); and how 2nd language and special education programming was funded and delivered.  I found that the challenges in California usually spread north and eastward.  To that end, looking at what they are doing always helped me to see what was coming next!

Step 1b) Introduction

Hello,

As I’m working through my Special Education 3 course,  I’ve decided to post some ideas, thoughts and resources for the regular classroom teacher (RCT).  Specifically,  I am very interested in how to deal with students and corresponding negative behaviour.   This year I’m working in a grade 6 classroom and I’ve had my eyes really opened to the behaviour aspect of children from 10 to 12 years of age. 

When discussing “behaviour”,  I focus on behaviour that affects student learning.  Teachers have seen all kinds of negative and positive behaviours that challenge learning in the classroom.  My biggest challenge is how to reel in poor behaviour in the classroom that affects the other students’ ability to learn.  With that in mind, I’m setting off to put out some thoughts and ideas onto this site.

Regards,

GC

Step 1 – Hello world!

This is just a little thing I’ve put together for a really interesting course I’m working on.  The challenge is working with children with “behaviours”.  As a teacher in a grade 6 classroom in a rather large school, I’m noticing a number of troubling things that concern me. 

This site is to help my fellow teachers understand what we are seeing and provide them with some new strategies to perhaps make their classroom a little less stressful for all.

Enjoy and by the way, all the mistakes are mine.

GC