Author of

 "Good Kids, Difficult Behavior" and "Discipline That Works: 5 Simple Steps" http://www.thehumanconnection.net   Volume 24 September 2004

Note from the Editor:

Dear Educators and Friends,

After a very busy summer school is back in session, in fact most of our schools in Georgia reopened on the 9th of August.  Many of the students and parents feel that is too early to start back, especially in light of the temperatures (not to mention traffic and air pollution) we experience in the month of August.  Many of the schools have had to adjust and limit recess, band and sport activities due to the temperatures. Recent surveys by the news media have indicated that 90% of those contacted want the school season to begin later in the month or even after Labor Day.  We have not heard the last of this issue.

Joyce had a great time at the High Schools That Work Conference that was held in Atlanta the beginning of July.  As many of you may know, Joyce was very pleased with the attendance to all six of her conferences, with some seminars providing standing room only.  Joyce took this occasion to have two of her seminars taped for distribution, and are now being offered in two media versions, audio-tapes or CD's.  The two newest additions to her audio collection are:

Who Is Paying Your Energy Bill? How to Protect Your Personal Energy Supply from Burnout and Exhaustion.

Supervising and Supporting the Struggling Teacher: How to Address Poor Performance, Negative Attitudes or New Teacher Overwhelm.

To see a list of all her books, videos and tapes please visit us at our website at www.thehumanconnection.net.

We also want to remind those of you who may not have had a chance to see Joyce’s new ETA Illustration handout at the conference, that it is now available on the website and has been widely received from all those who purchased the handout.

Check out "Ask Joyce" below for her answer to an educator's question. What would you like to ask Joyce? See how to send in your own question below! We look forward to hearing from you during this school year. Please let us know how it went if you try some of Joyce's suggestions. Joyce really wants to be a help to you.

 

If you like the newsletter, please consider forwarding it to your colleagues and system staff development specialists.

Mark @ The Human Connection

Special of the Month for our Ezine Subscribers

Volume Discounts

  1-99 books for $12.00 each     (20% Discount)

 100+ books for $10.00 each    (33% Discount)

For this month's special we are offering special quantity discounts for those schools administrators and board members that may want to purchase "Discipline That Works: 5 Simple Steps" for all their educators. 

This book offers an uncommon but highly effective approach to helping children learn the things they need to know to be successful and happy in life.  The 5 Simple Steps are bout effective discipline.  Good and appropriate discipline is meant to teach.  In fact, the meaning of discipline is "to teach".  One problem, however, is that discipline often does not get the desired results.  This is because discipline often gets confused with punishment.  Punishment, as is discussed in this book, is not the same thing as discipline, nor is it a substitute for discipline.

As Joyce travels and works with educators all over the country, she is constantly being asked--- "What do you do when...?" questions.  She has the greatest respect for "what do you do when questions" because usually the questioner is genuinely seeking new information and the teacher is willing to be a student.  Each month, Joyce will answer one or more of the most common "what do you do questions".  You are welcome to send one of yours.  She'll do her best to answer it.  Keep in mind, her answers may be different from the customary response but they are tried and true strategies for getting students to do what you are asking them to do.  Give yourself permission to try something new! Email Joyce at joyce@thehumanconnection.net  with any questions or situations you would like input on.  Let us know if we can show the question in a future newsletter or if you prefer to keep it private. We are hoping Joyce can help address situations you encounter and by sharing these questions/answers others can benefit as well.

FROM Joyce:

The Most Powerful Job in the World

For most of you the 2004/2005 school year has been launched and you are well on your way to an exciting new school year.  I hope the summer was a time of rest and rejuvenation.  The wise and fortunate among you took time to play and goof off in order to replenish your energy supplies this summer.  Good for you. 

As you begin a new year with new young faces looking up to you, please take a moment to reflect on the fact that you have the most powerful job in the world.     Why is your job so powerful?  After all, at least half the time you are keenly aware of how powerless you are to make positive changes both in your school system and sometimes in the lives of your students or their attitudes.  Your job is so powerful because everyday that you come to work, even on your worst days, you have the opportunity to positively influence another person’s life for the rest of their life.  Ask almost anyone you know, young and old alike, and they will tell you that they remember a special teacher who treated them kindly and helped them believe in themselves and therefore made a difference in their life.  Everyday you come to your job the possibility exists for you to permanently impact another human being’s direction and choices.  Few jobs offer such powerful possibilities on a daily basis. 

I have asked countless people to tell me why a certain teacher had such a profound impact on them.  I cannot remember even one saying anything like it was because “he helped me master the quadratic equation” or “she really taught me subject/verb agreement.  It is always statements like “she made me believe I could do it” or “he believed in me” or “she helped me go further than I ever dreamed.”  Sometime the answer is just, “he was so kind to me and all the kids”.  These are the experiences that influence all of us throughout our lives.

It is not that teaching Math and English and all the enormous quantities of new information a young person must learn from kindergarten to high school is not important.  After all, that is what teachers are being paid to do.  It is just that teaching young people that they are valuable and capable and loveable and better than they think they are is even more important.  And every teacher has the chance to help children believe in themselves and see themselves in a positive light everyday he or she comes to school.  So as the new school year commences, take time to remind yourself that even in the face of growing pressure to improve test scores, finding ways to do more with less and help the most at-risk students improve dramatically, the truth is that you are in the business of inspiration and encouragement first.  Whatever you teach or however well you teach it, you first and foremost are a person of influence and even with all the challenges you face, your one-on-one interaction or relationship with a single child could make all the difference in that child’s life for the rest of his or her life.  You are their teacher and you have the most powerful job in the world.

Behavior Management Tip #1

The first days and weeks of school are the most crucial for setting the stage for a stress-free teaching experience.  Of course, all teachers will take time to explain rules and expectations and even consequences for infractions.  Now is the time to add one more component to your getting launched routine.  Help your students understand their part in maintaining a pleasant and productive classroom environment. 

The best way to do this is to ask your students to agree on a few basic commonsense ideas, which will make everyone’s daily class experience as pleasant as possible. 

First, affirm for them that you want your class to be an enjoyable and successful experience for them.  I remember all too well going into new classes where the teacher seemed to have the opposite approach.  Some even feel compelled to warn students that their room is a no nonsense environment and issue dire warnings about what might happen if the student messes up.  With all due respect to this “let them know who’s boss” approach, it isn’t good psychology.

Psychologically speaking, people tend to live up or down to the expectations laid before them.  If teachers let students know that they will not tolerate misbehavior and will be hard and tough should anyone try anything, you can almost be certain that there will be students who feel compelled to try something.  It is quite possible, and usually far more effective, to convey your commitment and determination to maintain order and discipline by assuring your students that your expectation is that they will behave well.  They need to know that you are confident in them and want them to have a good time and a successful experience in your class.

After you have affirmed these intentions, you can discuss the rules. Then go to the next important step of asking for their agreement.  The idea is to help your students recognize that the rules that you have just discussed are practical procedures which help everyone get their respective jobs accomplished.  Your job is to teach and their job is to learn.   The rules are commonsense directions for making everyone’s life easier.  Then ask for agreement.

Begin by asking, “How many of you agree that you want to be treated respectfully by both teachers and peers?”  This is usually a good way to start because everyone really does want to be treated well by others.  Be sure to define exactly what respectful behavior looks like.  Remember that most students have yet to develop the ability to abstract think.  Make sure that respecting one another has a concrete definition.  After you have discussed the specifics of respecting one another, then ask them to raise their hands if they agree. Usually you get a unanimous vote. 

Then you are on your way to other important agreements.   Just like a good salesman who knows that once you get your customer nodding and saying yes, you are on your way to closing the sale, you have just taken a giant step toward helping your students recognize why treating others the way they want to be treated makes everyone’s life easier.

Now ask if they would agree to treat one another respectfully.  I always like to add a little bit about what to do if someone treats you disrespectfully.  Keep in mind that many children are not growing up with good role models for responding appropriately when someone treats them with disrespect.  Once everyone has agreed to be respectful of others, you can move toward other important agreements.

The value of discussing behavior standards through the agreement method is at least twofold.  First, it teaches children that they are ultimately responsible for how they behave versus giving them the message that you are the behavior police and it is your responsibility to make them behave.    By getting agreements, you have enlisted each student in the business of making your classroom a positive and upbeat environment.  Second, it allows you to remind students who occasionally forget or ignore proper behavior standards that they themselves agreed that their behavior was not acceptable and therefore it is up to them to make the correction.  When a rule is broken you can go to that student and ask them, “What was our agreement?”  Then you redirect them to the positive behavior.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised that even some of the most difficult students will self-correct their behavior when reminded that they are breaking their own agreement.  Most of all, getting agreements allows you to keep the focus on the behavior you want instead of the behavior you do not want.  The following are some practical agreements to present to your students:

To cooperate, to help others, to keep the standard, to make a sincere effort, to act respectfully, and to support the teaching process. 

For more of keeping the focus on the positive as a tool of effective discipline, see Discipline That Works, Chapter 5.  Next month, see Helping Students Develop Coping Skills.

Inspiration:

Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Taken from ~ http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/index.html

Personal Energy Saver:

All of a sudden your day is over and while you accomplished all the necessary tasks, you did not have one moment to yourself. You did not have a chance to exercise or work out.  Not only that, you are pooped.

If this scenario is all too familiar, it is time to take action NOW.  As the new school year begins, it is all too easy to get caught up in many new activities and put your personal self-care on the back burner or off the stove all together.  The only way to keep this from happening is to make a serious commitment to daily exercise routine and to doing it at the same time daily.  I can hear some of you groan and say, “Yeah, right.”  I understand.  Adding daily exercise to your routine just seems like “one more thing”. The truth is, though, it will be a gift to yourself because it will give you more energy.  And, you will feel the results almost immediately.

Here are a few tips for getting yourself on track.  Keep it short.  Twenty minutes will do. Trying to go longer will only end up discouraging you from keeping your commitment.   Do it before you even start your day.  Even for those of you who are not “morning” people, you will be glad you gave yourself this extra 20 minutes in the a.m.  It is much easier than trying to talk yourself into any kind of workout at the end of the day when all you want to do is collapse.

Pick an exercise you like or one that you dislike the least.  If you really hate jogging, (I do) then don’t commit to a two-mile run every day. You won’t stick with it.    Instead, buy yourself a used treadmill. They are fairly easy to find and are much more economical than the new ones.  Then you can walk on the treadmill and watch the morning news or another favorite program.  You are far more likely to stick with this less serious but equally beneficial exercise than trying to make yourself do something you hate first thing everyday.  Like it or not, a regular routine of active exercise—walking, biking, treadmill, stationary biking, rowing machines, swimming---is the cornerstone of good mental and physical health.           

Make this a commitment to yourself at the beginning of your new school year.  The results can be amazing and will unquestionably increase your personal energy supply.

P.S. You might even get the added bonus of dropping a few pounds.

Just For Fun:  First Days at School

           (From - www.schooljokes.com )

Editor's favorite link of the month:

Education Week on the web.

http://www.edweek.org/

The Human Connection

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Website: http://www.thehumanconnection.net

Copyright 2004 The Human Connection