Student Sense of Powerlessness
Schools as institutions can resemble the army, prisons, and hospitals in the way they may systematically make students feel powerless. They can frustrate the basic human need for control by leaving little or no room for initiative, decision-making, and leadership. This environment makes a significant percent- age of children want to push back, and they do. If we use unilateral power, we can control these students—but we will probably also make them hate school and learn less. This is not a pitch for free-for-all schools. Learning is often hard work and requires doing assignments given by teachers, and that is okay. But without compromising high academic standards, teachers can structure their classes so that students feel some ownership and control over their learning experiences. Every increment of progress in this direction takes pressure off behavior man- agement because students’ energy starts to push with instead of against. Later in this chapter and also in Chapter 16, “Classroom Climate,” we elaborate on how teachers can do this “power sharing.”
A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO DISCIPLINE
Figure 10.1 summarizes the elements of a comprehensive approach to disci- pline and represents the necessary sequence to be accomplished for building a powerful learning environment for students. The diagram can serve as a re- source for diagnosis and problem-solving when discipline issues are interfering with classroom learning.
The levels in this figure are sequential and should be handled in priority order. Experienced teachers may be working on climate and expectations at once from day one, but they are sequential in the sense that each requires the one before it to be successfully in hand before accomplishing the next level of tasks. For example, if the environment is poorly structured (e.g., Momentum, Space, Time, Routines), then the class operates chaotically and the teacher has a tough time catching all the disruptions and becoming a person of signifi- cance to the students.
If the rules are unclear (communicating Expectations), the teacher won’t be able to deliver consequences for student behavior without being resisted and
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | DISCIPLINE