Lead from the Start by Reddicks Tommy;Seymour Tina Merriweather;

Author:Reddicks, Tommy;Seymour, Tina Merriweather;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Responding Appropriately to Misbehavior

Response to misbehavior is one of the most important areas for defining norms and expectations. There are five aspects of discipline systems that leaders should codify regardless of location, school type, or age level.

1. Classroom management

2. Tiers of behavioral support

3. Levels of infractions

4. Process ownership

5. Expulsion and zero-tolerance policies

We detail each one in the following sections to guide you as you adapt your own norms for the same categories.

Classroom Management

The classroom teacher is typically the first level of discipline in any system. Except for less structured times like before school and lunch period, students spend almost the whole day in the classroom, making it the focal point for establishing a culture of discipline. As the school leader, you should work with teachers to make the classroom management system an extension of schoolwide norms. As with a common language, classroom expectations and norms around discipline and behavior should be duplicated class to class and grade to grade. This allows your teachers to speak a common discipline and behavior language. Using similar language throughout the school also reduces problems because no individual class or teacher appears stricter or more lenient.

As part of classroom behavior norms, there are certain ineffective practices that you should ask staff not to use. These include whole-class penalties, shouting, and lectures on behavior—all examples of student shaming (Goodman & Cook, 2019). Your teachers should never employ these tactics. When teachers address a large group with a nonspecific concern or in a hostile manner, there is no direct message to any individual student. Those redirects attempt to create change through guilt and are not likely to provide the desired outcome, so limit the use of whole-class consequences as a schoolwide norm.

Empty threats are also damaging to a normed culture. They can actually train students to misbehave (Darling, 2011). Teachers struggling with misbehavior often get flustered and make exasperated statements like, “One more time and you’re in trouble,” or, “Knock it off, Jeffrey.” In each of those statements, there is no clear directive for change, no direct prompt for how to improve, and no specific consequence. Instead, it communicates that when the teacher threatens, nothing happens. Never allow your staff to make empty threats—if they call out bad behavior, have them apply a nonemotional consequence.

Another great example of this issue is the “count to ten” method. A teacher gives a student until the count of ten to cease a misbehavior. Between one and four, there is usually no behavior change. Between four and seven, the behavior often worsens in an attempt to complete the bad thing the student is doing. Between eight and nine, the behavior improves, and at ten, it usually (hopefully) stops. The student learns not to worry about the first 80 percent of the demand for correction. A better system would be counting to two. At two, you’re allowing for some reaction time for behavior to correct, but you’re not allowing nine seconds of continued misbehavior. More immediate expectations and consequences, such as receiving

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