Teaching Outside the Box by LouAnne Johnson

Author:LouAnne Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-11-15T16:00:00+00:00

Rules for Creating Rules

You may have to experiment to find the best discipline methods to fit your unique personality and your students, but you are much more likely to succeed if you focus on these three key concepts as you create your classroom rules:

Limit the number of rules.

State rules positively.

Consider the consequences.

The more rules you create, the more time you must spend enforcing them, the more complicated your list of consequences, and the more likely students are to misbehave out of defiance. Long lists of rules box in everyone, stifling creativity and hindering your efforts to develop a strong rapport and an environment of mutual respect. My preference, after testing many methods, is to create one overarching rule for my classroom: Respect yourself and everybody in this room.

This one simple rule covers any situation that may occur. For example, it is not respectful to chomp loudly on gum, stick chewed gum or candy on desks or books, hit or insult people, carve obscene words into a desktop, arrive late to class, throw litter on the floor, interrupt other students who are trying to work, disrupt the teacher's efforts to teach, and so on.

State your rules positively whenever possible. Remember the old joke that instructs, “Don't think of an elephant”? The same idea applies to rules. Don't give kids more ideas than they already have. Negatively stated rules—such as no gum chewing, no shouting, or no running with scissors—provide a list of suggested misbehaviors for students who crave attention. Negative rules also provide a challenge for students who want to distract you from teaching a difficult lesson or simply want to push your buttons. And, finally, negative rules can inspire further negative behaviors. For example, if you make a rule that no gum chewing is permitted in your classroom, then some students are going to forget they have gum in their mouths or may risk breaking your rule because they really like gum. When those students believe they are in danger of getting caught breaking your no-gum rule, they may hide their sticky wads under their desks, on your bookshelves, or in their textbooks. If, on the other hand, you have a positive rule in your classroom, “Dispose of all gum properly,” then you leave it up to the students to choose their own behavior and they are far more likely to cooperate.

Sometimes you won't be able to state a rule positively. Or you may have to add an addendum using negative words in order to avoid creating a mouthful of gobbledygook. My own one-rule policy, for example, includes a list of prohibitions for those students who require specific information. The addendum specifies no put-downs of other people based on their race, religion, ethnic background, skin color, native language, gender, sexual preference, intelligence, body shape, or body size. But because I state the main rule positively, the overall rule doesn't have a negative connotation and students don't feel compelled to break the rule just to show that they can.

Consider the consequences of your rules on everybody, including you.

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