Discipline Question 2

4 thoughts on “Discipline Question 2”

1. Robert Harrell

   August 29, 2012 at 11:05 pm

   You have a tough situation, Sharon. Above all, you need administrative support; I hope your administrators will be at least as supportive as mine were last year with my infamous period 5 class. They wouldn’t move the students out of the class, but one of the Assistant Principals actively made interventions, parent contacts, and encouraged families to put their children in specialized programs (one went to a military academy, another went to a continuation school, another went to another program – just not in time to save the situation).

   I disagree a bit with Ben in that I believe jerk two (J2) is salvageable, but it will take work. I believe you cannot reach jerk one (J1) and should try to get him out. My reasoning is below, along with other comments.

   Tuesday one of the workshops I attended was a presentation by our district’s psychologist. (He used to be the psychologist at my school, and I am impressed with him.) A lot of what he talked about focused on addressing “early stage” behavior problems. Those are the ones we mostly deal with. The comments I’m going to make stem from his perspective, but they make a lot of sense.

   Students behave in certain ways because either they want to gain something or they want to avoid/reject something. In the past their behaviors have gotten them what they wanted, so they continue with these behaviors. Ben addresses this in his book PQA in a Wink! when he talks about Mildred. As Ben indicates there, our district psychologist said that we need to make the behavior irrelevant or unproductive and help the student find acceptable behaviors to get what s/he wants. (That’s what Ben called “personality B”.)

   Now, I haven’t had personal contact with any of the people in this situation, so I am working off of what Sharon posted, and my perceptions may very well be off.

   I believe J1 is not going to change because it is obvious that what he wants is approval from fellow students (hence the looking back and checking with J2). You have already talked with parents without success, so their intervention means essentially nothing to him. His behavior is consistent, which means that this is his well established modus operandi. Should you not be able to get him out of the class (preferred), then try the following: define in measurable terms what the inappropriate behavior is (e.g. turns around in his seat 10 times during a period; blurts out inappropriately 15 times during a period). Then define “ideal” behavior at the times he exhibits inappropriate behavior. Identify the payoff for students who are behaving appropriately. Identify the payoff for J1. Look at the “triggering event” – what happens just before the inappropriate behavior. If it is possible to remove the trigger, do so (i.e. make the behavior irrelevant). If it is not possible to remove the trigger, look for J1’s payoff and try to find acceptable behavior (not the ideal behavior but an approximation) that will give him the same payoff. If he wants approval, help him find approval in an acceptable way. I don’t know how things are in your situation, but I found out at this workshop that I as the General Ed teacher have the power to ask for a student study team to evaluate the student and see if professional intervention is necessary.

   The reason I believe J2 is salvageable is because of the following factors:
   1. He sometimes seems to be trying
   2. He has a girlfriend in the class
   3. He has no home support
   I know #3 seems counterintuitive, but I’ll get there. My guess that the desire to have J1’s approval is competing with the desire to have girlfriend’s approval. There may also be a genuine desire to have some adult’s approval, since there is no approval at home. If you can get rid of J1, you have removed a source of approval. Since girlfriend is on board, perhaps you can encourage her to shower approval when J2 exhibits appropriate behavior, but don’t count on her alone to change his behavior. She is only one factor in the equation and potentially not the most important. In the larger context of his dysfunctional family, perhaps showing him that he can gain your approval and that you will be a constant in his life (that’s why consistency with the rules is so important – he probably has no consistency at home), you will get him to buy into the whole program. Also, as Susan Gross says, see if you can make a lot of deposits into his “love bank” so that when you have to discipline him you don’t go into debt. I’ll bet his “love bank” has an enormous deficit with a lot of people.

   I know that what I am suggesting won’t be easy, but you may be that teacher who makes a profound difference for this student. At the same time, don’t think that you “must save” him. Do a similar behavior analysis with J2 and see what you can come up with. Once you have an acceptable set of behaviors in place, work on moving them closer to the ideal behavior gradually. Also consider background factors as well as triggering events. (You already have some: the dysfunctional home life.)

   Some other comments from our district psychologist included
   -“Your solution won’t be perfect, but it needs to be workable for you and the student”
   -“Some students need greater intervention than a single teacher can give; in our case it doesn’t take a ‘village’, it takes a school to rear a child” [Get some allies – even if it is just another teacher to whom you can send one of these guys to get him out of the room for a while.]
   -“While regression to inappropriate behavior represents a failure, it doesn’t have to represent a defeat”
   -“Prevention is better than reaction” (nice platitude, that)
   -“Becoming emotionally involved in a confrontation feeds the student’s inappropriate behavior. Stay calm and simply re-state the expected behavior.” [Sounds a lot like Ben’s insistence on pointing to the rules.]
   -“Give a student a choice, with consequences for each choice” (e.g. “You can choose to participate in class and get a great interpersonal grade, or you can choose to go to Mr. Jones’s room and make up what you missed after school / and receive a far below basic assessment.”)
   -“Don’t nag. Ask a student no more than twice, then apply the consequences”

   Take what you can use from this, and remember the immortal words of Commander Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”

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2. Ben Slavic

   August 30, 2012 at 9:32 am

   Also what I do is just ask the student to accompany me to Nestor Bravo’s Spanish class across the hallway, where she sits down by herself at a table in the back of Nestor’s room. She gets to do a worksheet in there and I get to walk back to my room sans the kid. I reciprocate with Nestor. Last year we only had to do it a few times.

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3. Liz Hughes

   August 30, 2012 at 10:19 am

   Thanks to you all for such insightful comments. I am an elementary teacher and while those little ones love to please the teacher, comparable issues exist in my classroom also. Robert, thanks for sharing all of that…it seems like you are very well supported.

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4. Ben Slavic

   August 30, 2012 at 6:24 pm

   They are supported by Robert, I might clarify. And Liz great to hear from you and thank you for doing such a great job at iFLT. It’s also nice to know that the little ankle biters can be a pain in the rear as well. We sometimes take things too personally at the high school level.

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