WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED

This chapter provides the basic framework for the Discipline with Dignity approach to classroom management. In it, we identify and explain the three dimensions of discipline: prevention, action, and resolution. A major aspect of the Discipline with Dignity approach is the belief that discipline problems are most often the result of one or more unfulfilled basic needs that lead students to act in unacceptable ways. Preventing problems from occurring or recurring is best done through classroom strategies and practices designed to address these basic needs. In the first edition, we implied the importance of having a student-centered approach that addressed basic needs, but we did not articulate what these needs were. Since then, we have spoken and written extensively about these basic needs (Mendler, 2005; Mendler & Curwin, 1999).  School policy and classroom rules need to recognize the internal forces that motivate students to act inappropriately. In formulating school policy or classroom strategy, we may find it helpful to think of three Cs: Connection Competence Control   Does the strategy provide students with a greater sense of connection, competence, or control? We have found that disruptive students invariably have problems because one or more of these needs are unfulfilled. They feel unconnected to the mainstream of what school has to offer, unable to successfully achieve, or incapable of feeling that anybody much cares about their opinion or perspective. By contrast, well-functioning students generally feel connected to the main goal of school: academic success. They feel confident enough to believe that with adequate effort, they will be sufficiently successful. Furthermore, most believe they "matter" to peers and adults. Effective discipline is about addressing these needs so that all students believe they can be successful and feel they matter to important others.  A student with the unfulfilled need for connection is most likely to seek attention from others. If she cannot get this through appropriate actions, she is likely to say or do things that will get her noticed. Students most often make this need known by saying silly things, making noises, and bothering others.  When students have issues with competence, they tend to give up easily or act out when presented with material they find too challenging. The refrains most prominent in the vocabulary of these students are "This is stupid" and "I don't care." What they are really saying is "I feel stupid (so why bother trying)," and "I am afraid to care (because if I did I probably wouldn't do very well anyway, and then I would really feel stupid)." To complicate matters, it is not uncommon for them to reject work designed to promote success as "too easy." Other students are afraid of success. They believe that success will place an undo burden on them for further success. Many of these students prefer to fail, which keeps expectations low.  When problems occur from students with control issues, these usually take the form of power struggles. They feel a strong need to argue and take charge. Such students often act bossy and disrespectful. Deep down, they worry that they do not really matter, so they are constantly doing things in an effort to influence others.

Missing in the discipline plans of most schools and classrooms is attention to prevention. At least as important as rules and consequences is a specific plan that articulates what the teacher will do on a daily basis with the whole class, with selected groups of troubled students, and with individuals to help them feel more connected, competent, and in control. This plan works best when it is integrated into a teacher's plan for discipline that includes values, rules, and consequences. Figure 3.1 provides an example.

Figure 3.1. Weekly Class Plan for Discipline Prevention

Connection Every day I will be at the door to greet each student. I will ask an opinion of at least two students who rarely contribute. I will invite two tough students to have lunch with me at least once.   Competence At least twice this week, I will help Carlos, Joanne, and Mary (three of my lowest-functioning students) to earn A's by comparing their current work to their past work if they make an academic improvement. I will give the class at least two open book quizzes at the beginning of class so that all students on time and with their books can earn A's. I will give each student at least one opportunity to redo, revise, or retake an assignment or test to improve a grade.   Control I will give meaningful choices within each assignment to all students. If a difficult student breaks a rule, before I decide on a consequence, I will first ask the student what would help the student not break the rule again. I will do this at least one time. I will invite a difficult student to help me solve either a class or school problem involving challenging behavior.

Effective discipline is about constructing a school or classroom that encourages curriculum, activities, and interactions to address the basic needs of connection, competence, and control. Consider the following examples:

• George Nelson continually yells during the day. Kicking children out and sending students to in-school suspension does not work, yet he finds himself resorting to escalating threats to try to get the class to follow his rules.
• Sally Aldredge states very clear rules and tells her students what will happen when rules are violated. But Sally carries out her consequences only when she is in a bad mood and usually only with the students she dislikes. When her favorite students break the rules, she reminds them with a slightly hidden smile that if they "do that again, they will have to …"
• Joan Stevenson took a course in behavior modification and learned how to set up a contingency program in her class. Her principal supported the concept and even brought in a consultant who worked with five teachers to set up model programs. Unfortunately, Joan's plan failed. No one bothered to tell her that because her value system was opposed to the philosophy of behavior modification, the plan would not work for her. Joan felt like a failure when the consultant told her that behavior modification was a "proven method" that worked if correctly applied. She hadn't learned that one must believe in what one does in order for any approach or technique to "work."
• Tom Wilson has few problems with most of his students, but he has two students who continually drive him crazy. He has noticed an increase in the number and intensity of headaches he has when he goes home and has taken to carrying his bottle of ibuprofen throughout the day. None of the traditional approaches has worked with these two students, and because the school will not suspend them, Tom must face them almost daily. Unfortunately for Tom, these students are rarely absent.

These teachers and thousands like them all suffer from one basic problem. They do not have an established plan or system for implementing a discipline policy that is consistent with their needs and with the needs of their students. The result is a sinking feeling of helplessness and despair, blaming students, administrators, and professors of education.

Discipline with Dignity focuses on three key dimensions of classroom management that integrate many theoretical approaches developed by educators and psychologists who value maintaining student dignity and teaching responsible behavior.

• Prevention: what the teacher can do to actively prevent discipline problems and to deal with the stress associated with classroom disruptions.
• Action: what actions the teacher can take when, in spite of all the steps taken to prevent discipline problems, they still occur. The focus is on stopping misbehavior quickly in a dignified way while keeping the misbehaving student in class so that the teacher can get back to teaching. The goal is to keep minor problems from escalating into major ones. By stopping a problem in a dignified way, the teacher is also helping ensure that it is less likely to recur.
• Resolution: what the teacher can do to resolve issues with the chronic rule breaker and the more extreme, "out-of-control" student or at least to diminish the intense negative impact such students have on the teaching-learning process.

The Prevention Dimension

The first goal of the three-dimensional approach (Figure 3.2) is to set up an environment in which discipline problems are prevented. Teachers have two different mind-sets when it comes to discipline: intervention and prevention. Intervention, the most common, assumes students are going to misbehave and thinks about what to do after it happens. Here is an example of an intervention mind-set: A teacher writes a number on the board that indicates the amount of play minutes the students get at the end of the day. Every time a student does something disruptive or inappropriate, a minute is removed. This mind-set basically says, "I'm just waiting for you to screw up. And when you do, I will be ready to catch you." This type of teacher creates fear inside the classroom. Students become afraid to make mistakes and walk around on pins and needles all day. Other students satiate on minutes taken away and tell you they don't care. Some students even bet on who can lose the most minutes.

Figure 3.2. The Three Dimensions of Discipline Overview

Prevention Dimension  What Can Be Done to Prevent Discipline Problems: Know and express yourself clearly. Know your students. Make your classroom a motivating place. Teach responsibility and caring. Establish effective rules and consequences. Keep yourself current. Deal with stressful conflict.   Action Dimension  What to Do When Discipline Problems Occur: Stop the misbehavior quickly. Get back to teaching. Keep students in class. Implement consequence. Collect data.   Resolution Dimension Find what is needed to prevent another problem. Develop mutually agreeable plan. Implement plan. Monitor plan/revise if necessary. Use creative/unconventional approaches when necessary.

The prevention mind-set is very different. It assumes students are going to behave appropriately and looks for ways to generate success. This mind-set gets students looking for positive things to do. Prevention starts with defining the difference between fair and equal. For example, tell your class:

I just want to let you all know right now that you will not all be getting the same assignment or even the same test because my job is to help each of you get better today than you were yesterday in this subject. Some of us are better at math right now than others, but all of us can get better than we were yesterday. So if you get a different test or assignment than someone else, that's why. Some of you may not yet have learned proper manners and might even say rude, nasty or inappropriate things to each other. If it happens, sometimes I will give a consequence to one person that is different from one I give to another if I think different people will learn better behavior from a different consequence. [See Chapter 5 for more on this topic.]

I also want to tell you right now that I will only talk to you about you this year. So if you have a complaint, let me know what you think will work better for you. I will not discuss anyone else's grades, assignments, consequences, or anything else. I'm sure you would not want me to talk about you behind your back, which is why I will not be talking to you about anyone else behind theirs. However, I will always talk to you about you. So if you are thinking about complaining about someone else, remember: I'm not discussing anyone else with you.

Prevention is so important when working with tough students. Begin to take that mind-set and start thinking ahead. Teaching becomes much easier.

We think of the prevention dimension as similar to a subject curriculum. The best curricula are goal directed but flexible enough to allow day-to-day changes as new needs arise. They incorporate evaluations of how well the plan is working. The prevention dimension provides structure and direction but is sufficiently flexible to accommodate both day-to-day and long-term changes as you and your students develop new needs and new awareness.

The prevention dimension has seven stages. Let's take a closer look at each one.

Stage 1: Know and Express Yourself Clearly

The first stage of the prevention dimension is to know yourself so that you can communicate your thoughts, feelings, routines, and procedures clearly. Some classroom discipline problems occur because of double messages that the teacher gives the students. For example, Mrs. Jones, a 4th grade teacher, wants to be liked by her students. She has trouble understanding why her children are so rowdy and rarely listen to her. Unfortunately, she is unaware of her soft tone of voice and nonassertive body posture when she tells them to line up or open their books. She is afraid they will think she is mean if she raises her voice. Mrs. Jones, without being aware, is constantly sending double messages. Her verbal message states anger, while her nonverbal message expresses her wish for the students to like her. Mixed signals often lead to agitation and anxiety in students, culminating in conflict, confusion, and classroom management problems.

A reality rarely faced directly by educators is that there are some students we just do not like. In life, it is OK to have preferences for some people over others. It is good to acknowledge at least to yourself and perhaps to a trusted colleague who these children are. Yet on "company time," we must get past the feelings of frustration and dread that often accompany working with difficult students. Try seeing a student who seems not to try despite your best efforts as a child who is overwhelmed by the fear of failure.

Things can change dramatically when an "oppositional defiant student" is seen as a "tenacious leader." It enables us to respond in a much more encouraging way. For example, "Joey, I know I cannot force you to do your work because you have a strong mind of your own, but I can ask you to do a few problems because if you do not, I won't know if I am being a good teacher. So consider yourself asked. Thanks for doing either the first three or the last three." We are much more likely to influence change in difficult students when we invite rather than force them to let go of the familiar.

Sharing your feelings with a trusted colleague can provide some cathartic relief that can be healthy in itself. We are reminded of Jack Washington, a senior high teacher who always appeared uptight. When asked to imagine his most troublesome class in front of him and to express his feelings, he laughed, saying, "That 'shrink' stuff won't work with me." After some moderate encouragement, including telling him that this type of strategy was sometimes used to help major league ballplayers improve their performance, Jack tried the technique. Soon he was crying, sharing a long-standing feeling of inadequacy. After three sessions like this, Jack learned some alternative methods of expressing his feelings. Eventually he was better able to deal with his feelings of helplessness that were in direct conflict with his macho self-image. A month later he reported enjoying teaching more than at any other time in his life.

To help you see the connection between expressing feelings and successful classroom teaching, try keeping a simple journal for one week. The following sample questions and answers can serve as a model for this experiment. Take two or three minutes each morning before your first class, just before lunch, and immediately after your last class to answer the questions.

Monday

Morning: Right now I feel (fill in any four words)

1. __________ 2. __________ 3. __________ 4. __________

Circle the strongest feeling.

Write one sentence about the strongest feeling.

Noon: (Repeat format.)

End of day: (Repeat format.)

Once you have completed your format for one week, answer the following questions:

1. How many words would you classify as positive? How many as negative?
2. How many of your circled words would you classify as positive? How many as negative?
3. Were your feelings more positive in the morning, afternoon, or at the end of the day?
4. Do you see any patterns in your feelings?
5. What methods do you use to express, acknowledge, or deal with your positive feelings about your teaching? Be specific.
6. What methods do you use to express, acknowledge, or deal with your negative feelings about your teaching? Be specific.
7. Think of a student who is difficult for you to handle. What words characterize this student? Are these words mostly positive or negative? If they are primarily negative, can you think of positive word substitutes? Next time you have a demand of this student, imagine approaching him or her as if this student displays these more positive characteristics. What would you say and how would you say it?

The process of knowing and expressing yourself clearly need not be exhausting or particularly time-consuming. We invite you to reflect on the suggestions in Figure 3.3 to see what you think you might change that could lead to more effective behavior management.

Figure 3.3. About My Practices Survey

Read the following statements and decide which you think you do the right amount of and which you think it might be good to do more of to prevent discipline problems. I usually correct behavior in a dignified way. I encourage students to work independently in self-directed activities. I find ways to like my students who try to make themselves unlikable. I allow my students to make some decisions about classroom management. I allow my students to openly disagree with me. I greet students regularly. I laugh a lot in class. I regularly connect with my difficult students around something that interests them. I allow students to redo, retake, and revise their work to improve their grades. When I have a problem with a student, I take some responsibility for contributing to it. I call parents at least twice to share something positive before I seek help with a problem. I have a suggestion box in my class and ask students to contribute ideas that they think will make the class an even better place. I take time to tell my students what they do that I like, and to ask them to tell me what they like about others and myself. I give my students some say in curriculum content. My students are involved in developing rules and consequences.   Now take one statement you want to do more of and list three specific steps you can take to do more of it.

Stage 2: Know Your Students

The second stage of the prevention dimension is knowing what makes your students tick. The needs and desires of your students play a major role in developing a preventive environment.

We recently saw a teacher disciplining a student in a 5th grade class. When the teacher asked the student if he understood her, he did a very quick upward movement with his head. In this instance that small movement meant yes. The teacher, not feeling satisfied with the response, asked him again, this time in a firmer tone. The student, now visibly upset, said, "I already said yes, bitch." A power struggle ensued, and the student was removed from class. Recognizing the nonverbal message might have prevented this incident from escalating.

Here are some other common nonverbal student behaviors:

• Shoulder shrug. Shrugging quickly upward means the student is not sure. In this instance, give her a chance to think about her answer. Or simply move on to another student.
• A student milling around your room. This activity usually means the student needs to talk to you but is not sure how to begin the conversation. A simple "How's it going" or "So what's on your mind?" is a good ice breaker.
• Eye contact. We often hear teachers say, "You look at me when I'm talking to you." However, in life when we are uncomfortable in a situation, our natural instinct is to look away. It is not realistic to expect eye contact until after you've established a relationship with a student. In some cultures, strong eye contact is a sign of disrespect. Some students will make quick eye contact and then look away. This also usually means yes.

The more aware you are of your students, their surroundings, their culture, and their home life, the more connected they will feel.

When we welcome and greet students regularly or spend an extra few seconds to ask or address something pertinent about their day, they begin to believe the classroom is a good place to be. When we take time to teach impulsive students how to quiet themselves or struggling students methods to solve an equation, their competence is enhanced. Figure 3.3 can help you assess the degree to which you do the kinds of things you value that could enhance your classroom management skills.

There are many activities you can use to become more aware of your students that take little time and promote a positive classroom climate. Mendler (2001) offers strategies that teachers can use daily to connect with their students. We advise you to familiarize yourself with all of your students through a cursory glance at their school records. When you discover students who have had an unhappy or unsuccessful prior school experience, it is wise to find out more about those students' interests or hobbies so that you become able to connect with them in a way that promotes positive feelings. If, for example, you know that Howie has been unsuccessful and disruptive in the last several math classes and you teach math, and if you discover that he enjoys baseball, you might greet him with a discussion of yesterday's baseball scores. Nowadays, it is wise to know at least a little bit about sports, music, and video games. Many of our students spend lots of time listening to their iPods and playing video games, so keeping ourselves informed by dipping our toes in their interests makes us relevant to them. The following questions can help us focus on things to do that may prevent problems from occurring or continuing:

1. Think of a student who seems to disrupt class to gain the attention of others or who always seems to be doing something to draw attention. What kinds of things can you see yourself doing in the classroom that might help this student get noticed by others before he acts out?
2. Think of a student who seems to misbehave more when you put her in an academically demanding situation. Can you think of some ways you might present the material to encourage success? What might happen if you had her do fewer problems? Are there things you might regularly say to encourage success? Can you think of some situations where she might actually be able to tutor a younger or disabled student? Might it be possible for you to tell the student in advance which question you will be calling on her to answer, and then give her the answer so she is sure to get it right?
3. Do you have students in your class who always feel the need to be in charge? It may seem as if they are constantly trying to usurp your authority. What things might you do to make them see themselves as leaders or decision makers in your class? Something as simple as regularly asking for their opinion can help. We met one teacher who put her most talkative and disruptive 4th grader on "noise patrol." His job every day was getting the class to be quiet after lunch.

Figure 3.4 is designed to illustrate the importance of knowing who your students are and gaining valuable information from them.

Figure 3.4. Student Knowledge Inventory

Write the name of one of your favorite students on the top of Column 1 and the name of one of your least favorite students on the top of Column 2. Answer the related questions about each student as best you can.
_________________________  Most Favorite Student	_________________________  Least Favorite Student
Favorite in-school activity:  _________________________	_________________________
Favorite hobby:  _________________________	_________________________
Favorite television show:  _________________________	_________________________
Favorite music group or video game:  _________________________	_________________________
Best friend (name):  _________________________	_________________________
One thing this student likes about your class:  _________________________	_________________________
One thing this student dislikes about your class:  _________________________	_________________________
One short-range goal:  _________________________	_________________________
One long-range goal:  _________________________	_________________________
One skill he or she is most proud of:  _________________________	_________________________
Questions Which student do I know more about? Which student do I spend more positive time with? What specific steps might I take to interact more positively with my difficult students? I will __________________________________________________ I will __________________________________________________ I will __________________________________________________ What might I do less of with difficult students to get to better know their strengths? I will __________________________________________________ I will __________________________________________________ I will __________________________________________________   For one week, keep a record of how often you do your six "I wills". See if anything changes.  Change You Expected:  Positive: __________________________________________________  __________________________________________________  Negative: __________________________________________________  __________________________________________________  Change That Was Unexpected:  Positive: __________________________________________________  __________________________________________________  Negative: __________________________________________________  __________________________________________________

Stage 3: Make Your Classroom a Motivating Place

It is impossible to force students to learn. We can quiet them down or stop them from disrupting others, but discipline will never replace motivating activities or effective teaching methods. By connecting to the natural motivation of students, teachers can prevent many discipline problems. Although there are many ways to motivate, inspiration, enthusiasm, and challenge are the keys.

Get your students to believe in their endless possibilities. A wonderful story in USA Today (Fisher, 2007) profiled Jeff Lewis, a high school math teacher in Mesa, Arizona, where he has taught for 29 years. Due to a rare blood infection, Jeff became a quadruple amputee a few years ago and now has prosthetic arms and legs. The story noted that he had recently completed a 4.2-mile race, frequently goes bowling, and occasionally wears shorts to school to show what prostheses look like. The article quoted his students as saying things like, "He is a funny, funny man. … Some teachers can be sourpusses but not Mr. Lewis. He out of all people should be, but he doesn't let his difficulties get to him. … Mr. Lewis always makes geometry fun. You can never guess what will happen because he is so unpredictable." Lewis offers his students and others this advice: "Do not be a spectator. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it."

Mendler (2001), Curwin (2006), Ciaccio (2004), and Rogers (1999) offer very practical guides with many tips that can get and keep students motivated. Chapter 9 provides important keys to motivating students along with several strategies.

Stage 4: Teach Responsibility and Caring

The best ongoing way to promote responsibility is to have students involved in as many decisions as possible. Giving them manageable choices within homework, test questions, and even topics of study helps enhance decision-making skills. Getting them involved in deciding on a proper consequence for an infraction teaches responsibility. For example, "Hidalgo, talking out of turn makes it hard for me to give everyone a chance. We've talked before about this, and it is still a problem. What do you plan to do to solve this problem, because I would prefer that you handle it rather than me? What consequence do you think would be fair in case you forget to follow your plan?"

Asking their opinion about curricula or cosmetic matters and getting them to do for others are additional ways of teaching responsibility. Responsibility can also be enhanced in behavior modification programs by involving students in monitoring and reinforcing their own behaviors.

Stage 5: Establish Effective Rules and Consequences (Social Contracts)

The fifth aspect of prevention involves establishing social contracts with your class. A social contract is a list of values, rules, and consequences that define proper behavior deemed necessary for good learning and teaching to occur (see Chapter 4). A value (e.g., "We solve our problems peacefully") is necessarily broader than a rule because its purpose is to provide the reason for why we need to have rules. Obviously, peaceful problem solving is a value because learning and teaching will not occur if students and teaches feel unsafe. It generally works best when teachers identify the school and/or classroom values and then involve students in defining the rules. In most school districts, key values are often defined at the level of the school board and are contained along with rules in a policy manual.

We encourage schools and teachers to use these points as a good start toward developing classroom rules and expectations. For example, the classroom/school values might be as follows:

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

Take care of this place.

The teacher may then offer specific examples of rules that are guided by each of these values (e.g., "Pick up litter even if you didn't leave it"). Students are strongly encouraged to propose specific rules as well. Encourage discussion seeking consensus. Variations of social contracts include having students propose rules for the teacher as well as for each other. The teacher might say, "I'd like to know what you think I could or should do that will best help you learn. Come up with a rule or two that you would like to see me follow." This process is explained more fully in Chapter 4.

Whether or not students are directly involved in developing rules, specific procedures associated with success need to be identified in order for the classroom to be a predictable place (see Figure 3.5).

Figure 3.5. Procedures Checklist

Before teaching a lesson, it is important to consider what procedures students will need to know. Proper behavior usually requires that you teach and regularly review details regarding each of the following. Make this a checklist of reminders for yourself: How to enter the class appropriately Where to put completed assignments What to do when they enter the classroom Where to find the daily assignment How to get permission to leave the room How to quickly join their work group How to get your attention when they need it and you are working with somebody else What to do when someone says or does something mean to them How to express themselves when they disagree with you How to acceptably leave at the end of class What to do when they are stuck and need help What to do after they have completed a class assignment but before others have finished   What other procedures or expectations of small details do your students need to know that are important to the success of your lesson(s)?

Stage 6: Keep Yourself Current

The sixth component of prevention is learning about child behavior, theories of discipline, and some of the research into psychology and education as it applies to discipline. For example, Charles (2008) offers an overview of various theories and strategies related to discipline and classroom management. Knowledge alone will not make you a better classroom manager, but knowledge can generate alternatives. For example, a relatively new frontier in working with ADHD students is the use of exercise to manage behavior. For reasons only beginning to be understood, movement can be used to get students more focused. One of the authors has had considerable success in getting ADHD students better focused on activities requiring sitting, looking, and listening by giving each a pedometer and having them track the number of steps they take during prescribed periods of movement. The goal is for each student to progressively move faster during these short intervals of only a few minutes. Similar activities have included brisk walks through the building and the use of music stands that allow students to stand while working. The value of keeping current is particularly useful when working with especially difficult students who often do not respond to conventional approaches. Much more on unconventional teaching methods is shared in Chapter 8.

Stage 7: Deal with Stressful Conflict

The final stage of prevention is stress management. It is about teaching our students and ourselves how to remain calm when people push our buttons. Many discipline problems occur because stressed-out teachers are trying to get stressed-out kids to do what they want. Some occur because students or teachers bring their life stress into the classroom, and it impacts what is said and done. Chapter 7 offers several stress management methods that help diffuse tension so that discipline problems are less likely to occur.

The Action Dimension

Despite all your efforts at prevention, conflicts inevitably occur in any setting where several people are together over an extended period of time. The purpose of the action dimension is to stop misbehavior quickly so that teaching can resume with a minimal loss of instruction. In short, we want to quickly get back to teaching without requiring the student to leave unless his presence continues to interrupt the learning process. Finally, the action needs to preserve both the teacher's and student's dignity, and it must be something that does not diminish the teacher's classroom authority.

In addition to stopping the misbehavior, implementation of a consequence is often required and is therefore part of the action dimension. Most often, a simple reminder is all that is needed. For example, "Nancy, thanks for discarding the gum right now and remembering to follow this rule in the future." There are four types of consequences (see Chapter 5 for a detailed discussion of each):

• Natural and logical: those that are directly related to the behavior (e.g., you make a mess, you clean it up)
• Conventional: improving those that already exist (e.g., making detention more meaningful)
• Generic: those that apply to every rule
• Educational: those that teach new behaviors

The method of implementation is at least as important as the consequence itself. Tone of voice, degree of physical distance from the student, body posture, eye contact, and other nonverbal gestures determine the effectiveness of a consequence as much or more than the actual content of the consequence itself. Sensitivity to personal, cultural, and emotional issues is necessary when successfully stopping misbehavior. Merely implementing a consequence in a rote, unfeeling way can become mechanical and dehumanize the whole Discipline with Dignity approach. Similarly, too much emotion or lecturing can undermine the effectiveness of a consequence. Stay away from a scolding expository such as "Nancy, there is no gum chewing in this class. You know the rules. The first violation is a reminder. This is your reminder, young lady!"

The prevention and action dimensions take care of most classroom discipline problems. Only the more troublesome and chronic problems will persist once the first two dimensions are implemented.

The Resolution Dimension

The resolution dimension is comprised of activities designed to reach the most difficult and challenging students. Most of these students have already lost hope and have been overexposed and desensitized to many school and classroom discipline interventions. If you threaten them with detention, many will say, "So what? I already have a ton of detentions to serve. All my friends will be there." If you warn them that they will fail the test if they do not study, many shrug, having failed most of the tests they have ever taken. They expect to routinely get kicked out of class, sent to the principal's office, or suspended. Calling home is rarely effective because many either are raising their parents or have convinced parents that school people are jerks.

Reaching these students requires a great deal of effort with little assurance that there will ever be a payoff. Some teachers wonder if it is even worth the effort to try, given the disproportionate time that they consume. Obviously, every educator must decide how much energy to invest in chronically disruptive students. We know that those we do not reach are at a much higher risk of committing crimes or otherwise being drains on society. So although they take more time and creativity, reaching and influencing them is immensely important.

We offer many alternatives that have the potential for reaching chronically challenging students in Chapters 8 and 10. Most of these strategies are considered "unconventional" because they are not normally included in school policies or recommended practices.

One payoff for the teacher who is willing to try creative approaches is the opportunity to experiment with techniques that are generally considered too radical for the mainstream. Eventually, many of these techniques expand the teacher's awareness of possibilities to teach all children and generate new energy because of the challenge of experimenting with the unexpected. Those who have developed their ability to reach particularly difficult students often become master teachers.

For the Administrator

The Discipline with Dignity approach is a broad-based program flexible enough to fit all schools and most teachers. As the administrator in your building, it is important for you to accept that your faculty is diverse, has a variety of values, and uses a multitude of strategies when managing student behavior. In the same way you might suggest that a teacher begins by working with student strengths, you can begin helping your teachers by identifying their own unique strengths in relation to discipline. Talk to them individually about what you think they are good at. Some teachers are outstanding lecturers. Others are good at facilitating group work. Encourage them to focus on these qualities while improving other areas that might make them better teachers. Improvement in classroom management can be built upon these strengths.

The School Discipline Survey (see Appendix B) can be a useful tool when working with faculty and staff to discover how much agreement and disagreement exists on issues related to discipline. Areas with large discrepancies can cause morale problems and confuse students. Areas with great agreement are sources of strength on which to build. You can use the survey at the beginning of the school year or at the end of the previous year to analyze how to improve school discipline.

To ensure that your teachers receive the support they want and perhaps expect from you, ask each teacher to discuss his or her plans with you for preventing discipline problems from occurring. Suggest that, at the least, teachers provide you with details of their values, rules, and consequences early in the school year so that both you and they are clear about what is expected. Be sure that the rules and consequences are compatible with the school's mission and values. Let teachers know generally what you consider to be valid and less valid reasons to involve you in classroom discipline issues.

To facilitate the process of teachers seeing the benefits of broader knowledge of themselves and their students, you can present the About My Practices Survey (Figure 3.3) and the Student Knowledge Inventory (Figure 3.4) at one of your faculty meetings. Feel free to adapt these tools to include questions or themes that might be more relevant to your school's circumstances. We suggest inviting your teachers to develop methods according to four criteria:

• Does it work?
• Does it preserve a person's dignity, or does it humiliate?
• Does it teach responsibility, or does it rely exclusively on obedience?
• How does it affect motivation to learn?

Emphasize the importance of relationship building. Disruptive, difficult, and unmotivated students are often looking for someone to follow. Give your teachers ideas for how to build these relationships as well as the time to do so. Have open discussions about cultural differences and how they relate to nonverbal communication. Many administrators are afraid to broach this subject.

In many of the schools where we do training and staff development, neighborhoods are changing, in some cases dramatically. Often test scores are lower than before. These changes are occasionally creating fear, misunderstanding, blame, and confusion among school personnel. Administrators can offer comfort, training, emotional security, tolerance, and strong leadership to help their staff recognize and adjust to these changes.

Much of this book is about sharing methods that work, preserve dignity, emphasize responsibility, and do not adversely affect motivation to learn. We have found that schools with the most effective discipline and strongest faculty support are those with an active principal who respects staff and student diversity. The principal is a leader who sets the tone by having clear, consistent rules and is unafraid of holding staff accountable. The active principal is visible in the halls, in the cafeteria, and at the bus stop and greets the staff and knows students' names. Such a principal wants to go into the classroom to spell a teacher because that principal wants direct, positive, instructional contact with staff and students. A "we," not "me," feeling is encouraged through listening and reacting to the individual and collective thoughts of the school community.