Stirring in the Second Ingredient and making sure that it STICKS!

Well, it has been a long while since my last post. You may notice that I mentioned that "Recognizing that there is a problem is the first "ingredient" in the journey to raise student achievement." Now the second ingredient includes both "equal parts curriculum AND discipline".

I don't want to belabor the fact that teaching to behavioral expectations will take time. But without taking the time to truly walk through HOW our students are to behave, then we simply open ourselves up to disruptions and further issues. The disruptions and issues will only slow down the teaching of your curriculum and frustrate the students who come to you to learn.

At this point, you may be wondering where I got this crazy idea of teaching our students how to behave. Well actually, I first heard about this in the eighties when I was a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati. We read several books by Dr. Madeline Hunter, professor at UCLA. I recall her book Mastery Teaching: Increasing Instructional Effectiveness in Elementary and Secondary Schools. She believed that teachers need to use direct instruction. Direct instruction calls for modeling and examples. Dr. Hunter also pointed out additional steps but to keep it brief, I'll stop here with the mention of direct instruction and move to some examples.

Let's take an example of a possible classroom rule of "sitting quietly at the desk". What does this mean? What does this look like? Do teachers fully explain what this means or do they simply expect the students to know? Is it a case of "they "otta" know by know?"

I'll argue that if you have 25 students in your class, you may get 25 different ideas of what "sitting quietly at their desk" looks like. I'll also encourage the teacher to take the time to "model" this to all of her/his students. Make sure that all of the students are watching and reflecting what the teacher is modeling. Then, the teacher should show the complete opposite of what the student should NOT be doing. The students should never copy this behavior but the teacher should ask the students what the teacher did wrong and what the correct behavior should be.

Finally, the teacher should model the "almost but not quite" way to "sit quietly in the desk". Again, the students should never copy this behavior but the teacher should ask again what the teacher did wrong and what the teacher should be doing to make it correct.

Think about this...teachers spend a large part of their time dealing with discipline issues when they would rather be teaching the curricular material. Taking the time to teach correct behavior may take 4 to 6 weeks at the beginning of each school year, but it could garner great returns in student achievement when discipline concerns become a little or "non-issue".

So make sure that you take the time to "stir in a good amount of discipline with the curriculum" and make it "stick" in the minds of the students. They will learn more and everyone will experience less stress throughout the year.

You may be the best teacher in the world but if students are dealing with discipline issues and the classroom is not conducive for effective learning, what good is the curriculum?