Greetings and Welcome to the 2005/2006 School Year,
It is hard to
believe that it is almost October and I have yet to send you all
greetings from the folks at The Human Connection. I imagine that your
summer break is simply a dim memory right now. Even so, I hope that
you did take time to rest and relax and are continuing to do so on a
daily basis.
This summer and now
into the fall I have been busy traveling throughout this wonderful
country of ours. At the end of each journey, when all the schlepping
and inspecting and riding on every conveyance short of a pogo stick is
over, I always find the neatest people all of whom are wonderful
dedicated professionals. And they usually know the best places to eat
too. How great is my job!
As I spoke to large
and small groups of educators from K-12 this past year, I often found
myself telling folks that if I had to write my book Discipline That
Works-5 Simple Steps over I would make step number 5, step number
1 instead.
For those of you
who are not familiar with the book, step number 5 in Discipline
That Works is “Focus on the Positive.” The purpose of the chapter
is to encourage parents and adults working with children to stay
focused at all time on a child’s natural character strengths and
positive personality traits. This is especially true if the child or
teen makes a habit of acting out in a negative fashion.
There is nothing
more important and effective in getting a child or teenager to
cooperate with you than your ability to tell them what is right about
them. This information is what you need to be able to say to a
student “This is what I like about you.” It also helps you and them
to distinguish between their behavior and their personhood.
When young people
believe that you genuinely see what is good about them, and that you
are willing and able to tell them, then they are far more willing to
do the things you ask of them and even rise to the level of your
positive expectations.
Without the
awareness of a child’s strengths and positive characteristics, it is
all too easy to begin to see the child as the sum total of their
negative behavior which, in turn, begins to erode your expectations.
If I see a student as a trouble maker only, then the student somehow
feels obliged to prove to you that they are really good troublemaking.
This may seem like
simple common sense to many of you, but it has been my experience over
and over, that both parents and teachers often have a difficult time
seeing the good in a very challenging child or adolescent.
Keep in mind that
the natural strengths of a child are the primary tools with which you
have to work in helping that child or teen make positive behavior
changes. Not only that, we all work better “You I like. You are an
extremely creative, high energy person with the ability to command
people’s attention. Your behavior has to go. It will not work in my
classroom.”
Take a moment to
think about a student with whom you have had to struggle. Ask
yourself how he or she could use the same behavior for the good if
they were trained to do so or inclined to use it for their own good or
the good of the group. It might be an interesting exercise for you.
If you need help with this take a look at pgs.102-105 in Good Kids,
Difficult Behavior.
Next month I’ll
talk more about how to help a student raise expectations of himself.
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August 3, 2005