Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child  – Part 4

The ground had been prepared and now the teachers were keen to learn.  I believe that the time spent discussing the issue, teacher’s viewpoints and experiences and shining a torch on the reality, had been crucial to creating a positive atmosphere for learning new approaches.

The current discipline system is Negative Behaviour Management.  A child does something wrong or makes a mistake and they are punished.  There is no effort on behalf of the teacher to correct the behaviour and model what should be done instead.  The teacher assumes that the child just knows what to do but doesn’t do it.  This is often not the case.   Positive Behaviour Management is based on praising good behaviour and rewarding good choices in order to teach children the skills of behaving appropriately.

Positive Behaviour Management is a system that is based on three pillars – Rules, Rewards and Consequences.  Often, adults assume that children know how to behave and know what is expected of them without actually being explicit.  In the same way that children need to be taught how to read, write and count, they need to be taught rules, how to behave and how to take responsibility for their own actions.

That is the difference between punishment and consequences.  Punishment, is an adult decision which requires no self-regulation on the part of the child. Whereas, consequences are the result of a choice that the child has made or an action they have taken.  The responsibility lies firmly with the child.  It teaches them to self-regulate and take responsibility for their own actions.

The rest of the day was spent introducing the strategies to create a positive learning environment.  Then we moved on to the “consequences” part.  Everyone sat up. The reality is that there will always be children who present challenging behaviour and there are circumstances in which consequences are required. However, the consequences are clear, the child has been explicitly warned and the focus is on the child making a good a or bad choice.

Once teachers have these strategies, they feel more confident and in control.  We also learned about some general class management approaches – simple but effective.  The challenge was for the teachers to demonstrate their learning by delivering a short lesson on a subject of their choice but focusing on Positive Behaviour Management Techniques.  They did very well and were able to critically assess each others’ performance. The day ended with a very positive vibe.

I am not naïve.  Do I think corporal punishment has ended as a strategy for all of these teachers?  Probably not. But change is more often a process than a single event and we’ve got to start somewhere. Hopefully, today we started the process.