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Counterproductive Approaches

October 27, 2011 By

Learning requires motivation, but motivation to learn cannot be forced. Highly effective teachers realize this, so they prompt students to want to put forth effort in their learning by creating curiosity, challenge, and interest in meaningful lessons. In addition, however, and especially with youth in poverty, these successful teachers also create positive relationships with their students by practicing positivity, choice, and reflection. These practices are part of the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model. This teaching model avoids approaches that inhibit motivation for responsibility and learning.

Following are 10 counterproductive approaches that are commonly used. Unfortunately, they are so counterproductive that they actually exacerbate the increasing dropout rate of students—especially in low economic areas.

1. BEING REACTIVE
Teachers too often become stressed by reacting to inappropriate behavior. It is far more effective to employ a proactive approach at the outset to inspire students to want to behave responsibly and then use a non-adversarial response whenever they do not.

2. RELIANCE ON RULES
Rules are meant to control, not inspire. Rules are necessary in games but when used between people, enforcement of rules automatically creates adversarial relationships. A more effective approach is to teach procedures and inspire responsible behavior through expectations and reflection.
See Rules.

3. AIMING AT OBEDIENCE
Obedience does not create desire. A more effective approach is to promote responsibility; obedience then follows as a natural by-product.

4. CREATING NEGATIVES
The brain thinks in pictures, not in words. When people tell others what NOT to do, the “don’t” is what the brain images. Example: “Don’t look at your neighbor’s paper!” Always communicate in positive terms of what you DO want. Example: “Keep your eyes on your own paper.”

5. ALIENATING STUDENTS
Even the poorest salesperson knows not to alienate a customer, but teachers too often talk to students in ways that prompt negative feelings. Negative feelings stop any desire of students to do what the teacher would like them to do. People do “good” when they feel “good,” not when they feel bad.

6. CONFUSING CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT WITH DISCIPLINE
Classroom management is the teacher’s responsibility and has to do with teaching, practicing, and reinforcing procedures. Discipline, in contrast, is the student’s responsibility and has to do with self-control. Having clarity between these two is necessary for both preventing and solving problems. See Classroom Management.

7. ASSUMING
Too often, teachers assume students know how to do what is expected of them. A more effective approach is (a) teaching expectations and procedures, (b) having the students practice, (c) having students visualize the process, and later (d) reinforcing the procedure by having them practice again. This process is necessary in order to have students be successful in performing the activity.

8. EMPLOYING COERCION
This approach is least effective in changing behavior. Although teachers can CONTROL students temporarily, teachers cannot CHANGE students. PEOPLE CHANGE THEMSELVES, and the most effective approach for actuating students to change is to eliminate coercion.
NOTE: Noncoercion is not to be confused with permissiveness or not using authority.

9. IMPOSING CONSEQUENCES
Although consistency is important, imposing the same consequence on all students is the least fair approach. When a consequence is imposed—be it called “logical” or”natural”—students are deprived of ownership in the decision. A more effective and fairer approach is to ELICIT a CONSEQUENCE or a PROCEDURE TO REDIRECT IMPULSES that will help each student become more responsible. This can easily be accomplished by asking people if they would rather be treated as a group or as individuals. They will readily have a preference to be treated as individuals and have ownership in the decision that will help them, rather than hurt them.

10. RELYING ON EXTERNAL APPROACHES
We want to assist young people to be self-disciplined and responsible. Both traits require internal motivation, but rewarding behavior and imposing punishments are external approaches. They also place the responsibility on someone else to instigate a change and, thereby, fail the critical test: How effective are they when no one is around? The greatest reward comes from the self-satisfaction of one’s efforts. In addition, by rewarding kids with something they value (candy, stickers, prizes), we simply reinforce their childish values—when what we really hope to do is to teach them about values that will last a lifetime.

In contrast to these counterproductive approaches, the DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRESS TEACHING MODEL uses approaches that eliminate counterwill, the natural response to coercion.

A more comprehensive list can be downloaded from Counterproductive Approaches.

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An Interview about Where We Are Going – Part IV

October 11, 2011 By

This is the fourth part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:
What kind of assistance is found at your website?

RESPONSE:
MarvinMarshall.com is the foundational site that contains free information explaining the entire system. This site includes such links as The Discipline Without Stress® Teaching Model, The Hierarchy of Social Development, support links, and other links to implement the proactive, totally noncoercive (but not permissive) system .

My aim is to have teachers increase their joy of teaching, reduce stress, improve relationships, and become more effective.

In addition to this main website, there are other sites to help teachers and parents: Discipline Without Stress is the website for the best-selling book on discipline and learning. Three sections of the book are online: Classroom Meetings, Collaboration for Quality Learning, and Reducing Perfectionism.

groups.yahoo.com/group/DisciplineWithoutStress.com is used to post questions, share ideas, and give assistance. Discipline Answers provides a compilation of previously asked questions and posted answers categorized from the above Yahoo site.

About Discipline explains reasons why external approaches—such as rewarding appropriate behavior, telling students what to do, and punishing them if they don’t—are not used. These approaches do not promote long-lasting responsible behavior.

QUESTION:
I think that it is often imperative to review previously learned material. Do you find that some teachers need additional review?

RESPONSE:
A major—if not the major—learning mistake is that teachers assume they can teach something once, or have students read something once, or practice a procedure once and then expect students to remember it. This is simply contrary to how the brain operates. The brain images pictures, not words. The vast majority of material that is read is not remembered—unless it is visualized or experienced in ways that will go into long-term memory.

The same is true with a procedure. Unless a procedure is modeled, practiced, and reinforced in order to make new neural connections, it will be lost. It is rare to be exposed to something just once and retain it with 100 per cent accuracy.

Even though my approach is simple and becomes easy with practice, it also needs to be periodically reviewed. Just thinking with positivity is an example. If your supervisor informs you in the morning to stop by the office before leaving for the day, the mind almost automatically thinks, “What did I do wrong?” This is a negative and disempowering thought. But you have no idea what the conversation will be about. You assume the conversation will be a negative one. The point is that we often leap to negative thoughts. Because of this tendency to think in negative—rather than in positive—terms, we constantly need to review our self-talk.

Here is an example a teacher can use with students. A student’s self-talk can be, “I HAVE to go to school today.” The negative talk prompts a negative, disempowering feeling. Notice the difference when the student’s self-talk is, “I GET to go to school today.” Young people can be taught to think and self-talk in positive terms. But this, too, also needs to be reviewed and reinforced.

Continual practice in thinking and communicating in positive and empowering ways is the way that this new approach becomes the brain’s default. The old negative habit needs to be replaced by the newer, in this case, positive one.

Filed Under: Learning Tagged With: , , , , , ,

thirdAn Interview about Where We Are Going – Part III

October 6, 2011 By

This is the third part in a series of interviews about “Where We Are Going” with Michael F. Shaughnessy of Eastern New Mexico University.

QUESTION:

Your book “Discipline without Stress” has been out there for several years. Any idea as to how many schools use and refer to it?

RESPONSE:
Since the book was published in 2001, 50,000 copies have been sold so far. The next 10,000 copies will be off the press within the next few weeks. I’ve heard it said that the book is perhaps the best ever published on how to discipline and promote learning.

The comments on the homepage for the book give an indication of its popularity. Here is an example I received from a high school science teacher:

“I ordered your book a few years ago. Loved it! Loaned it. And lost it. So I ordered it again. This is the best book I have read on teaching in the classroom.”–Laura Fair, Science Teacher, Kenowa Hills High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

There are a number of schools that have a book club devoted to discussions of the book. When I presented to the Canada’s Alberta Teachers’ Association, the very large room was overflowing with members of, as the association labeled it, the “Marvin Marshall Book Club.” People brought their books for me to autograph and many told me that they were embarrassed by the number of postal notes attached to so many pages. This is a common occurrence since the book is not written as a traditional education book. The entire book deals with “how to” rather than the usual, “what needs to be done.”

The book shares a number of extremely useful concepts that teachers and parents can share with young people.  Here are just two:

Perfection is a burden no human being should ever carry. Excellent work, superior work, outstanding work, yes—but never perfection! You cannot learn and be perfect at the same time.

Regardless of the situation (stress at home? troubles at home?), stimulation (“He hit me first”), or urge (“I couldn’t help myself”), you still have the choice as to your response. You may not be able to change the situation, stimulation, or urge, but when you walk into the classroom you are making a choice—to learn or not to learn.

This latter point was emphasized in my commentary in Education Week, “Rethinking Our Thinking on Discipline: Empower Rather than Overpower.” Of all the ideas in the article, the editor chose to highlight the following:

“Teaching young people about choice-response thinking—that they need not be victims—may be one of the most valuable thinking patterns we can give them.”

To be more specific in answering the question, I have no idea how many people have read or used the book. However, many people have told me to advise others: “NEVER lend the book to someone else because you will never get it back.”

Filed Under: Learning Tagged With: , , , ,

Free Books and Staff Development for USA Schools

May 10, 2011 By

The mindset of current educational approaches regarding student behavior unfortunately focuses  on obedience, which turns out to be a common source of reluctance, resistance, resentment, and even rebellion. Simply stated, OBEDIENCE DOES NOT CREATE DESIRE.

However, when the focus is on promoting responsibility, obedience follows as a natural by-product. The reason is that motivation to be responsible requires a DESIRE to do so. The motivation must be INTERNAL.

Many schools use EXTERNAL motivation of stimulus-response psychology in the form of rewards, threats, and punishments. However, these approaches (a) foster compliance rather than commitment, (b) require an adult presence for monitoring, (c) set up students to be dependent upon external agents, and (d) do not foster long-term motivation for responsibility. In addition, when students start collecting rewards—as in Positive Behavior Support approaches (PBIS)—they start competing to see who can receive the most number of rewards. Since rewards change motivation, one will never know whether people are acting responsibly to get the reward or whether their motivation is to do right because doing right is the right thing to do.

My continuing efforts are devoted to changing the educational mindset away from using external and manipulative approaches. A less stressful and more effective approach is to motivate young people so that they WANT to behave responsibly and WANT to put forth effort to learn.

With this in mind, I have founded  a NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION, “DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRESS, Inc.” The organization’s mission is to promote responsible behavior and reduce apathy toward learning, especially (but not limited to) low socio-economic poorly performing schools. This will be accomplished by donating books and staff development to qualifying schools that are interested in THE DISCIPLINE WITHOUT STRESS TEACHING MODEL.

Applications for any USA school are available at the organization’s website.

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Character Education and Discipline Without Stress

February 3, 2010 By

“If every teacher, at the beginning of the school year, would share this book with students for just 10 minutes a day, by October teaching and learning problems would be reduced to a minuscule portion of the day.”

Linda McKay, Director, Characterplus
Cooperating School Districts, St. Louis, MO

A descriptive table of contents, three selected sections, and additional items of interest are posted at the site indicated at the “book” link above.


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