Students Not Knowing How to Do Expected Behaviors
Students bring to school both the manners and the cognitive habits they have learned elsewhere. Failure to meet teacher expectations for lining up without running, listening to directions, lining up their work neatly on paper, or for putting materials away in an orderly way may simply come from the fact that they don’t know how to do so. It is a fact that some kindergartners don’t know how to walk rather than run in certain situations (which is to say they don’t know how to predict consequences, control impulses, or plan physical move- ments). For some children, it is important to directly teach some of the hid- den rules of school and formal behavior: classroom survival skills such as how to stay in their seat, how to participate appropriately, and where to put their things.
Some older students don’t know how to categorize objects to expedite a cleanup, much less plan their time and movements during it. In these cases, teaching the behaviors step by step, not clever consequences or contracts, is the antidote to the disruptive behavior. There’s no use trying to motivate students to do some- thing for which they lack the tools. Assumptions can cause teachers to overlook these possibilities. It may simply never occur to them that the deepening cycle of threats and punishments has its origin in simple ignorance. We urge teachers facing disruptive behavior to examine their students carefully. More often than is realized, teachers assume capacities that are not there in students’ behav- ioral repertoires. In these cases, putting the behaviors into their repertoires is
Discipline/ Learning Environment Self-Assessment
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | DISCIPLINE
needed. A question not to overlook when trying to figure out a resistant class or individual is,