What do I have to do to get students to apply themselves to their work and stop fooling around and being disruptive?
“What do I have to do to get students to apply themselves to their work and stop fooling around and being disruptive?” That is the bottom-line question of Discipline. Many teachers spend a disproportionate amount of energy deal- ing with it. Some then leave teaching because they find they rarely deal with anything else. There is no question that good discipline is a prerequisite for good education. We must bring all of our best knowledge to bear on it to stop the needless dissipation of both teacher and student energy that it causes. We have the knowledge and capability to retire this issue and move on to the ques- tion most teachers are more interested in: “How do I build self-discipline and responsibility in my students?” In this chapter, we address both questions. We
There is no question that good discipline is a prerequisite for good education.
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | DISCIPLINE
urge staff developers, principals, and instructional coaches to pay particular at- tention to this section.
Our approach is organized around the following assumptions:
p All behavior has an origin or cause.
p There are at least 12 different causes of inattentive or disruptive behavior.
p Effective responses to disruptive behavior are chosen from a repertoire to match the cause or causes.
p Effective discipline is built on a comprehensive approach that includes four levels:
1. Laying a foundation of sound classroom management, solid instruc- tional design and delivery, and building relationships with students;
2. Establishing authority by communicating expectations, setting limits, and eliminating disruptions;
3. Building a strong classroom climate that nurtures cooperation, respon- sibility, and self-discipline; and
4. Being familiar with more complex models of discipline that may be nec- essary to implement with a very small percentage of especially troubled or recalcitrant students.