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https://www.ascd.org/books/better-than-carrots-or-sticks?variant=116005

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Nancy Frey is a professor of literacy in educational leadership at San Diego State University where she focuses on policies and practices in literacy and school leadership. Staying true to her belief that it is critical to remain deeply embedded in the life of a school, she also teaches at Health Sciences High and Middle College, an award-winning open-enrollment public school in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, which she cofounded with Ian Pumpian and Doug Fisher.

For over two decades, her work has been dedicated to the knowledge and skills of caring teachers and school leaders needed to help students attain their goals and aspirations. Frey's interests include instructional design, curriculum development, and professional learning. She is a recipient of the Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Teacher Education from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the Early Career Award from the Literacy Research Association.

Frey has published many articles and books on literacy, instructional design, curriculum development, and professional learning, including Student Learning Communities: A Springboard for Academic and Social-Emotional Developments.

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Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management

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Classroom management is traditionally a matter of encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad by doling out rewards and punishments. But studies show that when educators empower students to address

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https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/pod/episode-134/

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 134 Transcript

Jennifer Gonzalez, host

GONZALEZ: When students behave in ways that are disruptive, when they do things that harm others, or when they otherwise make choices that go against established rules, schools often respond with punishment: removal from class, a phone call home, detention, suspension, even expulsion if the behavior is considered extreme enough.

It's been this way forever, at least in traditional western schools, and most of the time, these punishments don't really work. Sure, they remove the student from the situation, temporarily stopping the challenging behavior. And it could be argued that in general, many students choose to follow the rules because the threat of punishment acts as a deterrent; they don't want to get in trouble, so an acceptable level of order is maintained.

But punishments don't really do anything to address or correct the source of the misbehavior, and most of the time, they do nothing to fix any damage that may have been caused by it. On top of that, exclusionary punishments like suspensions create their own set of problems: When students are removed from class, they miss instruction, putting them behind their classmates and making them more likely to fail academically. This often leads to higher dropout rates and puts far too many students-especially students of color-on the path to prison.

After decades of using these ineffective practices, more schools are turning to restorative justice, an approach to student behavior that originated in the criminal justice system. We've talked about restorative justice on the podcast before, in episode 89, where Victor Small, Jr and I did a broad overview to RJ.

Now I'm going to narrow the lens to one specific restorative practice called repairing harm, which is when, instead of simply being sent off to a punishment, a student who has misbehaved is tasked with figuring out how to repair whatever damage was caused by their behavior, and then to actually carry out that repair with everyone who was impacted by their actions.

My guests today are Brad Weinstein and Nathan Maynard, authors of the book Hacking School Discipline: 9 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy & Responsibility Using Restorative Justice. In the book, Brad and Nathan share the restorative justice strategies they've used successfully for years with students, and in this episode, they're going to take us step-by-step through one of those: the process of repairing harm after a misbehavior.

Before we get started, I'd like to thank ViewSonic for sponsoring this episode. ViewSonic transforms classrooms into immersive learning environments. Their education solutions drive engagement, energize and motivate students, and make teaching more fun. From ViewBoard interactive displays and myViewBoard digital whiteboarding software to projectors and monitors, ViewSonic's award-winning solutions are here to help teachers stay connected and collaborate in their classrooms. To learn more, visit viewsonic.com/education.

Support also comes from Public Consulting Group. PCG is a national organization that supports teachers and school districts in providing high quality professional development. PCG's online professional learning catalog is approved for continuing education credits nationwide, allowing teachers a cost-effective and efficient way of engaging in professional development, leading to license renewal and pay increase. PCG's courses range from short 1-hour workshops to in-depth graduate level courses, allowing teachers to create a customized playlist of content to meet their individual career needs. PCG has teamed with leading educational experts to bring you valuable tricks, tools, and strategies for immediate application in your classroom. You'll also receive individualized coaching from PCG's virtual facilitators throughout your course. PCG believes that the learning never ends and they want to help you help your students succeed. Visit cultofpedagogy.com/PCG to find out more and use the code CULT20 to get $20 off your first course.

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast is part of the Education Podcast Network. The EPN family is the home of dozens of different podcasts, and each one is focused on education. Check out all of our shows at edupodcastnetwork.com.

Now, here's my interview with Nathan Maynard and Brad Weinstein about repairing harm.

GONZALEZ: So I'm having you on to talk a little bit about changing the way that we do school discipline. And what we're going to do is we are going to sort of talk broadly for just a minute about restorative justice and what that means so that people listening are kind of on the same page. But then we're going to really, really narrow it down to one specific practice that is related to restorative justice. So before we get started, and we're doing all this because you guys wrote this book, "Hacking School Discipline" that focuses all on restorative justice. So before we get started, just if you could and I'll, Nathan, I'll have you go first. Tell us just a little bit about, you know, who you are and what you do.

MAYNARD: Yeah definitely. So my name is Nathan Maynard. I am the co-author of the book "Hacking School Discipline." I am also the co-founder of BehaviorFlip, which is the first restorative behavior management software system. I also do practice or restorative practices and trauma-informed behavioral practices as a trainer, and I'm a father of a 4-year-old son.

GONZALEZ: All right. And are you a classroom teacher right now? Do you work in a school?

MAYNARD: Yeah, so I was the dean of culture over at a school called Purdue Polytechnic High School. I recently transitioned out at the end of last year to sort of pursue this restorative practices journey.

GONZALEZ: Got it, got it. Okay. And then Brad, how about you?

WEINSTEIN: I, I am also the co-author of "Hacking School Discipline" and the co-founder of BehaviorFlip. Like Nathan said, it's the very first restorative practice software. I have a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, so I'm a little bit busy at home. And I also left to pursue this journey of restorative practices and spreading the word to schools all throughout the world.

GONZALEZ: Got it, got it. And were, were you, both of you or either of you at one point in time just sort of regular classroom teachers, and then you sort of moved in this direction?

WEINSTEIN: I was, I was a classroom teacher for more than a decade, principal, and then I was a director of curriculum and instruction. So I've done multiple roles in education. And Nathan, you talk about what you did.

MAYNARD: Yeah, so I started out, my first eight years I worked in the juvenile justice field, so I worked with kids that were at-risk at a residential treatment care center. So I did that for a while. And then I went into education. So I, I've only been in education for about four years now. I got started as a guidance counselor then went sort of to college career readiness coordinator, then a position similar to an assistant principal, and then I became the dean of culture over at that Purdue school.

GONZALEZ: Got it. Okay, so your background comes from sort of corrections and discipline and, and all of that stuff.

MAYNARD: Yeah, definitely.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit before we dig into this specific strategy about the book itself. Tell me a little bit about what made you guys want to write it. And, and also give us a little introduction to restorative justice and how it differs from traditional school discipline.

WEINSTEIN: Well, when we're, when we're talking about restorative practices and how it differs, it focuses on proactiveness, on relationships, maintaining relationships, and repairing the harm when harm is caused. So in general, how it differs, and we're going to get more into it later of course, but the big difference is that we're looking on ways to build relationships and maintain relationships with students, and how to make things right when something goes wrong. So it's really simple in theory. In action, we're going to talk about some specific strategies that we can do for it. We're trying to get away from the punitive side of things, where a student does something wrong, and then they get punished for it, versus some sort of way in which we can actually help the student learn from it.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

WEINSTEIN: When we're thinking about our book and what made us want to write it and how it differs, what made us want to write it really was that Nathan, when I met Nathan, he had come, and he has a lot of experience working with students and students, people just in general from the juvenile justice system, and I have a traditional educational background. So what happened was is that when we started talking, we realized that we both brought big strengths, because traditionally, a lot of people don't have that juvenile justice background.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: They've only started in the classroom and when Nathan and I started talking, we were combining our ideas for how can we help the kids at the classroom level, but how can we help the kids that need way more help than a teacher can traditionally provide. And when we started talking, what happened was when I was a high school principal, I made this Google spreadsheet where I wanted to actually track behaviors and make sure that when we're looking at a kid, when we have intervention with a kid, are they actually changing their behavior, are they getting the supports that they need? And we're, we're a bunch of data nerds, so what we did was, we realized that we don't have the data we need to make changes, and we don't have the data we need to know if what we're doing is actually working.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: So when we wrote this software idea together, Nathan and I started looking at it, and he was like, hey, we should make this an app. And at first I was like, yeah right, no. We don't know anyone who can make an app, that kind of thing. And then all of a sudden, a couple of months later, he's like, hey, I know this guy. And all of sudden BehaviorFlip was born. So what we did was we took data that was on a spreadsheet and then we put it basically at a whole new level where we have teacher access, student access, administrator access, school district access, and we can really track recidivism and make sure that we're enacting change. And, so, so the software is pretty revolutionary in that no other software out there does restorative practices at all. It's mostly just, you know, getting points and losing points.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: Which doesn't improve behavior in our opinion. That's just a carrot and stick kind of system. Whereas in our system, we want to make sure that a student actually gets the help they need to change behaviors. So if they do something and we want to actually record, did the student repair the harm with an action, instead of, did they mask it with a positive discipline points that is completely unrelated to the action that they caused harm with.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And in general, the more I witness and read and see on social media, the more I realize the punitive practices don't work. We've, we've known for a long time that that's not working, but the interesting thing is, is that even though we've seen all of this data for years suggesting that it doesn't work, it doesn't change things, the same kids keep on getting in trouble, the same groups of students keep on getting in trouble, and nothing is really changing, and we've known this for a long time now, and we're expecting the kids to change, and we're expecting the kids to adhere to our practices, when the reality is that kids are changing and we need to make sure that we can meet their needs. So we, we wanted to actually write a book where we're looking at relationships as a focus. So how do we build relationships, how do we feed those relationships, how do we repair those relationships when damage is caused versus how do we kick a kid out of the room when they're causing the disruption to the class? What we notice is that when students get in trouble at school, and then the students continue to get in trouble at school, I mean if you're suspended once, you have a much higher chance of ending up in the juvenile justice system your freshman year.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: If you get suspended two or three times, you are astronomically at a higher risk of going to the school to prison pipeline. So what we noticed is that we are putting kids into this pipeline who are doing minor things. You know, every once in a while, you know, there'll be bigger issues where students will get in fights, drugs, alcohol, things like that. But we're putting students out of school for minor issues like being tardy, for minor insubordination.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And for little, for little things, and at a much higher percentage of students of color, right?

GONZALEZ: Yep.

WEINSTEIN: So we're a lot, we're a lot harsher and we have a lot more severe punishments in those cases. So when we put students out, that's when that happens, and Nathan and I have both had experiences, where a kid has done something pretty minor. We suspended that kid because that was school policy, and while that kid was suspended, they did something where they got thrown in prison. They had the time to actually, you know, I had a kid who actually committed a pretty bad crime and is in life in prison right now because he, and he did that when he was suspended from school for minor things.

GONZALEZ: Wow, yeah. And it just snowballs from something that probably could have been deescalated or, or dealt with in a different way. So in the book "Hacking School Discipline" you share nine different strategies, or they're called hacks in the book, but these are, these all come from, you know, years and years of restorative practices, you know, from a lot of different practitioners. But these are all strategies for implementing restorative justice. What we're going to do is just focus on one of these, which I, I have seen has been a key component in any restorative justice program, which is called repairing harm. In schools that use traditional discipline practices, students who misbehave are typically given a punishment, which usually excludes them in some way, in detention, suspension, expulsion, and then they return to class. So with restorative justice, the approach is very different when, when there's some type of a misbehavior. So talk us through what it means to do repairing harm as opposed to just punishing a student, and why that works better.

MAYNARD: Yeah, yeah. So repairing the harm as a concept is pretty simple. When you think about it, it's when you break something or damage it, you just have to fix it, that's all. So a lot of the old mantra is, you know, when you have pound of flesh for wrongdoing, we don't need to, you know, sort of, you know, think about that. We need to think about, you know, what was harmed, how to move forward with that. We also need to not take things personal. So especially when we're thinking about the way that kids' brains are developed or underdeveloped in situations and how they respond to it, especially kids with trauma and how they take sensitive situations very personal. We cannot take their response personally when we're dealing out, you know, that next steps. So that's why repairing the harm sort of works. Another reason why it works is because it's logical. It has consequences that match up to the misbehavior, and it doesn't spark as much anxiety in students.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: So the students aren't triggered to their opposition mode and can focus on sort of what happened and how to move forward. Just for like one example is, you know, there's a student that I was working with one time, and I jumped to a punitive situation with her too quickly, and it escalated. She didn't have her shirt tucked in. It was the third time, it was a Friday. I'd asked her multiple times to tuck in her shirt throughout that week. I just said, hey, let's come to the office. I told you before, you know, if the shirt continues to be untucked, we're going to do a phone call home. I didn't really do anything past that. She started to shake her leg a little bit. I could tell she was getting a little bit, you know, anxious with what was going on.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: And she wouldn't tell me. She started to cry. I started to pull out my phone, she grabbed my phone away from me.

GONZALEZ: Oh.

MAYNARD: She pushed it down, and I was like, okay, something bigger is going on, and she walked out of my office and walked out of the school. I mean it was a huge situation. Later I found out that she had the Department of Child Services involved in the home. She knew that her mom was trying to see, you know, what that next step would look like if she was staying in the home and move in with her aunt, and she knew a phone call home was going to be very harmful for her.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: I could have quickly done something with repairing the harm with saying, you know, hey, you know, I saw this is the third time you have your shirt untucked. I've been seeking you out. You know, I want you to come check in with me every, you know, two hours to show me your shirt's tucked in. Just give me a high five so I know your shirt's tucked in, something as simple as that with the repairing the harm. But I jumped to the punitive and I triggered that situation.

GONZALEZ: Yep.

MAYNARD: Sort of just being mindful that, you know, we don't jump to something like that. Also, you know you want to with repairing the harm you want to identify who the stakeholders are that has been affected. A stakeholder is anyone that's a part of sort of that situation or was affected by that. So a lot of the times students don't understand that a behavior is a ripple effect, like throwing a rock into a pond. It affects a lot of different people. We have to understand and show them what those ripples are and who those really are affecting, so when they're repairing the harm we're fixing with these stakeholders, they need to think of each stakeholder individually. That's developing the empathy skills for each and every one of them.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

MAYNARD: Now that you have sort of the stakeholders, you have to come up with the way to fix it with those stakeholders. So as many of them as possible. I like to tier it. So let's say that, you know, I know this affected my classroom, I know that it affected me as an educator, I know this affected your parents and yourself. It's the first time you've done this. Let's just fix it with the classroom. Let's just fix that with me. Sort of focusing on that.

GONZALEZ: Okay. Okay. So, so is all of this happening, that you've described so far, is this just in a private conference with the student? Is this happening immediately after the incident or later on?

MAYNARD: Yeah, definitely. So normally what I normally do is a private conference with the student. So I do a little mediation with them, just me and the student, just come up with what's happening. If there's other students involved, I like to do that separate before I bring them together.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

MAYNARD: I, I find that that sort of lowers down that anxiety. So if I see a student that's really triggered or really upset, I'm going to tell them what's going to happen. I'm going to say, okay, well, I saw that you and this other student have had some words back and forth. I don't want this to escalate more. Let's talk about what's going on. I'm going to seek to understand what's going on in that situation with the other student, then I'm going to bring them both together and then come up with ways that we can repair the harm with how they harmed each other possibly before it turns into like an escalation situation.

GONZALEZ: Okay. Let me stop you for one second, because I'm, I'm thinking about some of my own situations with certain students, and sometimes you can't get past the point of denial of, I didn't do that. Or I didn't do anything. So how do you get to the point where you're talking about all this other stuff, if they're still sort of denying that something even happened?

MAYNARD: Yeah, definitely. And I, I've had a lot of practice with that.

GONZALEZ: I think a lot of us have.

MAYNARD: Because kids are, kids are very, you know, immediately, it's easier to say, like, oh that wasn't me. I mean like even when I first started working, I was 21 years old, I saw a kid smack another kid in the head right in front of me, and I was like, did you do that? And he's like, it wasn't me. I remember thinking, am I crazy?

GONZALEZ: Right?

MAYNARD: Really, truly. I was like, there's something going on. So, you know, my, my background, when I started, I was trained on something called motivational interviewing. That's the way of sort of using open-ended questions, to form cognitive dissonance with students to really create this investment into, let's deal with this now. We know that this situation happened. Take ownership. Let's move forward. So I always tell the students, even when there's a big situation, we got two choices. So I say, okay. I believe this was you, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Let's deal with this situation now, fix it, move forward. Right now it's just between me and you. If I find out later that it's you, then there's just going to be an additional situation. Why not just deal with it right now and then if there's an additional situation, that's showing that you're dishonest, so now I have to deal with what happened and you being dishonest instead of just what happened. You make the choice. I always give kids time to process too. Because immediately if I say something like that, they're still going to be oppositional.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: And they're still going to be withheld. So I say that, and then I give them some time to process what's going on, I back away, say okay, I'm going to give you a few minutes. I mean I even had a student one time that was one of our high fliers, like great kid. He cheated on a test. I had all the evidence stacked up against him, and he continued to say no it wasn't me, it wasn't me. Someone hacked my computer. I mean every, every excuse in the book. I said, okay. I'm going to give you, you know, 15 minutes. I'm going to bring you back to class. After class, I want you to come up to me and tell me what happened. You know, and that's how we're going to move forward. So I let him sort of process that situation.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: Unfortunately he still lied, but again, sometimes you have that, sometimes you don't.

GONZALEZ: Right.

MAYNARD: But again, giving them that time really does help out.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, I would think also that that kind of helps for a lot of kids, anyway, it helps them sort of regain that sense of some control over the situation.

MAYNARD: Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Because when things are moving so quickly, they, they don't know what the right decision is to make, but they, they, so they just feel backed into a corner and that would sort of remove that anxiety.

MAYNARD: Exactly. Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for answering that, because I know that, I'm just thinking, I didn't do nothing, I didn't do nothing, that, that same thing I hear over and over again, and it's like, but I know what I just saw.

MAYNARD: Yep.

GONZALEZ: Or, you know, what can also happen is if you didn't see it, and it's one kid saying one thing and that's just really tough to handle. So, so that was a, that sounds like an, an alternate, an alternative way of handling it anyway.

MAYNARD: Yeah, where we, getting them to that point where they can repair the harm.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

MAYNARD: Because if they're not embracing that and taking that responsibility, you're not going to be able to get that restorative conversation.

GONZALEZ: When you are sort of naming all the stakeholders, do you ever involve the student in that process of helping you think of who else this has affected, or are you just telling them?

MAYNARD: Oh, yeah. So all of the time. So even with my 4-year-old son, you know when I, when he acts out in class or he has something small, because he's got a lot of energy, I had a lot of energy as a son here as a child as well, so like you know when he's out there in class and he's doing something, I'm using open-ended questions to drive him to come up with who he's affected. So I know who he's affected, but I want him to come up with that.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

MAYNARD: And you could do that with any age of students. Sometimes kids, depending on sort of their processing level, let's say that there's, you know, other factors involved, I may help coach them a little bit. If it's my very first conversation with the student too, I'm going to walk them through a little bit more what that looks like and say, okay, you know. When you throw something in a class, and let's say that hits someone else, how do you think their mother would feel if I called them up and said, hey their son just got hurt in class? And I say something like that that's going to drive the empathy and create that sense of, oh, that's another stakeholder is that kid's parent.

GONZALEZ: Right, right.

MAYNARD: After a while, they can start coming up with that themselves.

GONZALEZ: Okay. So, so once you have sort of worked to, to sort of clarify what the incident was, how it impacted people, who it impacted, then the next step is to actually have the student come up with a repair?

MAYNARD: Yes. So now that we have identified who the stakeholders are, who your action affected, we're going to say, okay, what can we do moving forward to fix this? So we're going to identify what the behavior was, who it affected, how it affected them, and what can we do moving forward. So let's say that a student was, you know, yelling at the class or doing something in class. You know, that affects the rest of the class. What can you do to repair it with the rest of the class? You know, sometimes I've had students just go in front of the class and just apologize to the class.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: You know, something like that, embraces, owning that behavior shows the rest of the class that it's not acceptable and sort of just moves forward.

GONZALEZ: You know, and it's funny, because that sounds, I'm thinking about teachers being like, well that's nothing compared to - if a kid throws something at another kid in class and we don't suspend them, that's not enough of a punishment. But I'm trying to rack my brain and think of anytime during my entire teaching career that a kid ever came back from a suspension and had to stand up in front of the class and actually apologize to them. That never happened. And that sort of socially is probably more difficult than just being out of school for a couple of days.

MAYNARD: Absolutely. I mean, and if you think about that too, think about and around all your peers, all of your friends and family, and going in front of them, like let's say at Christmas dinner or something and saying like, hey, I'm sorry for what I did. I mean, that's a lot more tough -

GONZALEZ: It's big.

MAYNARD: - than sitting at home for three days.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Right, right. Okay. Does anything else happen after this or they've repaired and then, and then they're reintegrated into society?

MAYNARD: Yeah, yeah. Society, the class, whatever they affected.

GONZALEZ: Right.

MAYNARD: A big component that I like to talk about and I like to teach people is there, there is this step where you want to keep that relationship strong. You just had that kid stand in front of the class, apologize to the class. They now have some anxiety. There's that social, you know, structure around. Now I want to build that kid back up, but I want it to be real. So I'm not going to say, great job, John, you know, you did a great job apologizing to the class. I'm going to wait until after the class, I'm going to pull them aside like I did to address that behavior, I'm going to say, you did a great job. I know that's tough, to stand in front of everyone and I heard, you know, Sam back there snickering and you didn't say anything, but I'm really proud of you. Something like that builds that relationship back up to keep them as they feel whole again, because again, it's this play where you want to keep that relationship as the core.

GONZALEZ: Right, right. So I'm imagining now teachers listening and maybe, maybe thinking, okay, this sounds like it's doable, but maybe some listeners are having trouble imagining like what do some of these repairs actually look like? And like an apology definitely sounds like one that's probably pretty common. Can you give us a couple of other examples of sort of, you know, maybe just some other repairs that you all have done with students where it can really help teachers listening to get an idea of what this looks like?

WEINSTEIN: Sure. Now when we're looking at specific things that students can do, and a lot of teachers do get stumped at this point, it's, it's a lot more simple than we think, because it's very logical and you have to pair it to what the student actually did.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And what they found is that when students felt part of the process and Nathan mentioned before about having the students come up with the way to repair the harm, when students feel part of the process, and they think that, you know, and they felt like they were heard, they're much more willing to accept what happens next. Like they feel like they're more invested in fixing it and making it right. And sometimes when students refuse to repair the harm, that's, that's when you take away, you know, you can either fix it with me or I'm going to come up with what it looks like to repair the harm. So that, and when student [INAUDIBLE] kind of get a little bit, you know, insubordinate or a little more heightened up, then you say, okay. We got two options here. So an example that's really good with repairing the harm that I have come across and I've actually done as a high school principal involves the cafeteria. So I, I want to put out there, sometimes sorry isn't enough. Sorry is great. Sometimes there's very empty apologies, and sometimes a student does something that more than a sorry is needed to repair that harm. So prime example, cafeteria. Student throws food across the cafeteria. You know, they, they pour their milk all over the floor and they walk away. They throw food at somebody else. They cause a big mess in the cafeteria for some reason. So if they cause a little mess in the cafeteria, you know, they just leave their trash and then they walk away. So that's, you know, if we, if we let students do that, then that's the norm, right? So if students can do that, your whole cafeteria is going to look extremely messy every day.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: But, if, when a student does that, and they have to repair the harm of that, it might be as simple as they have to clean up their entire table, and they have to wipe it down. So that's something where a student does something just very minor. And they'll probably come up with that themselves.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And if they come up with something that doesn't satisfy that, if they come up with that and just say, I'm sorry, you just say, I'm glad that you apologized, but, you know, I think we're going to have to do something a little bit more, because you caused a mess.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And when you cause, and then you start to have that conversation like Nathan said, you know, who, who are the stakeholders involved? They might realize that, you know, there is somebody that has to clean up after them, and they're going to take away time from their job -

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: - as, as, you know, as somebody who cleans the tables, I have to go home 20 minutes late now, because I'm cleaning your mess.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: So if they do something bigger, like they, they actually throw food across the room, they spill milk all over the floor, it might look like cleaning all of the tables, and it might look like mopping the floor, and they might be working with the custodian to help clean, because when they cause harm to the environment, which was the cafeteria, a good way to repair that harm is to make that environment clean.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: So that's an example of a cafeteria. If I were to take that kid and put that kid in the office and just put him in detention for the rest of the day, or ISS for the rest of the day, that would teach that kid to not get caught next time instead of how - they wouldn't have any understanding of who they hurt, why what they did was, you know, a bad thing, and how they can repair that harm.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: If they have to actually clean what they caused, they're going to be a lot more likely next time to think about that before they do it, versus next time when I throw milk, I'm going to make sure no one's looking.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: Because - so it doesn't make sense. So the students are going to not, you're not going to feel good about sitting at a lunch detention or sitting somewhere else, because they're like, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't actually relate to what I did.

GONZALEZ: Right, right. Sometimes I think schools get a little bit hung up on this area because they think it's more important to give the same punishment to all kids so that we can put it in our discipline policy and say, first offense this happens, second -

WEINSTEIN: Yep.

GONZALEZ: - and so that everybody can say it was fair across the board, but that doesn't necessarily change anybody's behavior.

WEINSTEIN: No. We need to treat people consistently inconsistent.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And what I mean by that is that one student might really care, like Nathan mentioned, that you're going to call home.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: Another student might not care at all.

GONZALEZ: Yep.

WEINSTEIN: So why would I say I'm going to call home to a certain kid if you don't do this or this, when they, when the certain kid's like go ahead, make, go ahead, do it. Go ahead do it.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: But you know, so you have to know what the student values and what they care about, and you have to get deeper as to why they actually are doing that behavior in the first place.

GONZALEZ: Yep.

WEINSTEIN: And another example, being tardy. And I know this is not something that really impacts many schools, right. Like, I know students all across the country are on time all the time.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: Especially in the high school and middle school level. So something like being tardy, it could be simply if a student came in two minutes late, they have to apologize the first time, because they might not realize who the stakeholders are. They might not realize that I am actually when I come in late, who I'm impacting is the class, because the whole class has to stare at me, everyone's looking at them when the door opens, the teacher has to then restart what they did, the teacher has to come up to them and get them back on pace. They don't think about all those things most of the time.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: Like, not everyone, you know, you're not hardwired with empathy. You're not hardwired with a lot of those skills on how you affect others. So being tardy the first time might be you have to apologize to the teacher, you know. If you continually be tardy, you know, if you came in two minutes late, you might have to stay two minutes after. So what's going to happen is that when you take away my time, you're going to have to make that time up is a very common thing you do with being tardy. But what's more important than the tardiness is why are they tardy? So you can't say, one tardy is this, two tardies is this, three tardies is this. One kid might be tardy because they have a boyfriend and girlfriend they have to see between classes. Another student might be tardy because they are disorganized and their locker is such a mess that they can't actually find their stuff in between classes.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: Another, another, another reason for being tardy, you know, they might have to go to the bathroom in between periods, and they do not know how to plan their time, and another, another restorative consequence might be that I'm going to walk your schedule with you from this class to this class, and I'm going to show you how we can get there on time, because they might not actually have good strategies for how to manage their time in between. Because the class before, they might have been packing up their stuff after the bell. In other words, they're not packing up on time.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: So when I identify why they're being tardy, I can make a much better decision on what that logical consequence is and how I can have them repair that harm and actually give them a replacement strategy so that next time they'll know better, and they can have a strategy for it.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

WEINSTEIN: So it's really important to know why. Like, why did they do the actions they did? And that will be very beneficial when they came up with the way to repair the harm.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

WEINSTEIN: When we're talking about a student causing harm to another student specifically, because you know the first two examples we've talked about, the student mainly impacted, not other students. They impacted just the teacher or just the custodian. But when a teacher, when the student does something to someone else, so for example we go outside at recess and another student is playing with a tennis ball and they throw it really hard off the wall, and then it bounces off and hits somebody in the face. They, they were not playing safely.

GONZALEZ: Okay.

WEINSTEIN: They, they were not making sure everyone was good. So that student who got hit in the face, they're crying, they're upset, and they might become physical. Right? So when a student throws somebody to somebody else, if we just go back to class, and I took that student who threw something against the wall, and I've, and I've put them back into the room or I send them to the office, it's not going to fix the fact that that one kid is angry at them.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: That, that's a lot, that's a big mistake that we make is that we punish the kid, we put that kid in detention, we call their mom. But when Johnny sees Susie tomorrow, Susie's still mad because she got hit in the face, so there's going to be continual problems with that.

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: So instead of, you know, thinking the punishment took care of it, it didn't it, because now there's still this tension, there's still this, you know, the, the things are not resolved with these two students.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

WEINSTEIN: So when we talk, so I would sit those students down for a minute and say, hey, Susie, you know, when you got hit in the face, how did that make you feel? Like, what, what, why did this upset you? Because the other kid is more focused on the fact that Susie is a snitch or Susie's a crybaby or I got put into, they called my mom, and he might be more mad at Susie than actually thinking about how I impacted Susie.

GONZALEZ: Yeah, right.

WEINSTEIN: So, so when we think about that, you know, Susie's like, you know, I was just playing, I was just playing outside at recess, things were good. And all of a sudden I got hit in the face and for no reason, and that really upset me, and that hurt. So it's kind of hard for this student at that time who threw the ball to kind of, they'll be like, oh, you know, I didn't actually think about it, and then, and then you might bring up, okay, well what if, what if Susie would have really gotten hurt? Like, what if it actually would have hit her in the eye and caused some type of damage to her eye? You know, how do you think her mom would feel?

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: So the student's like oh, this student also, like my, my classmate also has a parent.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

WEINSTEIN: And I didn't think about if they had to go to the doctor here's what would happen, and how, how do you think I would feel if I had to call Susie's parents and tell them what happened at recess? Then the student's like, oh, well I guess it would have impacted you too as the principal or as the teacher, right? So then we say, okay, how do you think, how do you think you can repair this with Susie? Nine times out of 10 the student's going to apologize. If I say to the student ahead of time, let's just say I brought the two together and say, you know what? You need to apologize to Susie, and there was no conversation?

GONZALEZ: Right.

WEINSTEIN: That student's going to be like, screw that. Susie's just a crybaby. I, I didn't do anything. You know, that's ridiculous. But, when I say to the student after he hears what Susie he had to say, you know, what do you think you can do? And it's the student's idea? Nine times out of 10 they apologize. Or, so, it's all, it's all about getting the students to understand the other person's perspective and giving them some control of how they're going to fix it, and when students feel that they have some control, they're way more likely to actually make things right.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Okay. I'm glad that you included that last example, because that is a, that's a really, really common behavior issue that usually happens between two students and not just one student working alone. So when you have, you know, I'm, I'm assuming you worked with teachers for a number of years on, on trying to adopt these practices. What, what objections do they tend to have at first, and, and what is your response to those objections?

MAYNARD: So there's two common ones. The first one is it, it takes time.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: It takes more time than what I, you know, what I have right now. You know, there's all the different components of restorative practices. You know, there's the circles in the classroom, which is the 80 percent you know proactive component. There's that 20 percent reactive with those mediations, conferences.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: You know, we get a lot of, you know it takes time. One quote that we put in the book, you know, that we really like and a great author, Pam Leo, she said either we spend the time meeting children's emotional needs by filling their cup, or we spend the time dealing with the behaviors by, caused by their unmet needs.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: Either way, we're sort of spending that time. So you know, that, that quote really resonates with, you know, restorative practices as you know you're going to spend the time either way.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

MAYNARD: You know there's an Edutopia article that just recently came out that says, classroom management takes about 144 minutes per week out of that lesson. So if you think about 144 minutes per week out of like that lesson, what can you do to sort of integrate this proactive approaches and meeting those kids' needs.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: So that's sort of how we address that. The second one is, you know, with, with punishment, it makes us feel better sometimes.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: You know, someone did something wrong, you know we want them to, to have a punishment is the initial sort of reaction. You know, they, they harmed me, I want there to be some sort of harm. We've heard someone say before, you know, you disrespected me, so now you need to suffer a little bit. You know? And, and that statement, outside of being something that we would never encourage, shows that they, they do want to show the students how to be empathetic and realize how they felt. Restorative practice is the way to do that, but it's just less traumatic. It's more sensitive. And it's a way more effective way to open up that child's eyes to how their behavior made us feel.

GONZALEZ: Yeah.

MAYNARD: And it actually changes that behavior.

GONZALEZ: So I am going to be, you know, over on the website I'm going to be giving people links to your book. Hopefully we can provide some sort of like an infographic or something sort of outline some of these major steps here. But if people want to learn more from you, where can they find you guys online?

WEINSTEIN: We are very big on Twitter and connecting with people who have read the book. So on Twitter you can follow me @weinsteinedu and Nathan's Twitter is @nmaynardedu. We also have a Facebook group called Hacking School Discipline that is very active. You can also look, go to our website at hackingschooldiscipline.com. And if they're interested in our behavior app, it is behaviorflip.com.

GONZALEZ: Great and we'll, I'll, I'll put a link to that also over on my own website so that people can, can check out that app and I'm interested in it too because I have a tech guide that I put out every January, and we have a classroom management section and a behavior section, so I'm going to be checking it out myself too.

MAYNARD: Great.

WEINSTEIN: Great.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Thank you guys so much for coming on and, and sharing this. I, I really hope that it changes some things in some schools.

MAYNARD: Yeah, well, thank you. We do too. Thanks for having us on.

For links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, including Nathan and Brad's book, Hacking School Discipline, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 134. To get a weekly email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.

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Episode 134: Repairing Harm: A Better Alternative to Punishment

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 134 Transcript Jennifer Gonzalez, host GONZALEZ: When students behave in ways that are disruptive, when they do things that harm others, or when they otherwise make choices that go against established rules, schools often respond with punishment: removal from class, a phone call home, detention, suspension, even expulsion if ...

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Listen to my interview with Michael Linsin ( transcript):

Sponsored by Write About and Peergrade
In my first few years of teaching, student talking was like popcorn.
I gave the class instructions for some kind of work; let's say journal writing. And for a few seconds, they did it. Things were quiet. Then, like that first kernel of popcorn, one student said she didn't know what to write, so I walked over to her desk to help her. While we talked, two more raised their hands-two more pops-and said they were stuck, too. I signaled to them that I'd be over in a minute, but in the meantime, someone else was closing his journal, finished already. Another pop. The two who were stuck asked him what he wrote about.

The room needs to stay quiet so we can concentrate, I told them.

Someone else had a question. Another pop. I squatted by her desk, and behind me, a conversation started between two others. Pop pop. Another journal closed while a different hand went up.

Okay people, I said, this time louder. Let's keep it down. And with rascally smiles, they turned back to their journals to pretend to write some more. At this point, it had turned into a game.

Someone needed to sharpen their pencil. Pop. Someone else decided to race them over to the sharpener. Pop. In a matter of seconds, the whole room had erupted, a huge hysterical bowl of popcorn, exploding all around me, and I couldn't find my way out.

And then I yelled.

If this sounds anything like you, you're not alone. I hear it from teachers all the time. One of the things they don't teach us in our education courses is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down in order to get anything accomplished.

To find solutions to this problem, I went to Michael Linsin, the creator of Smart Classroom Management and my go-to person for all classroom management needs. Last year, he taught us how to set up a clear, simple classroom management plan. Now he's going to help us understand the causes of excessive talking, what you should be able to realistically expect from students, and how you can fix the problem.

First, two quick caveats.

One: I believe students need to talk. People need to talk. So if you're shooting for a classroom environment where students sit silently and do rote seat work all day long, where they never have an opportunity to talk to their peers, where they never get out of their seats, and where the work is not engaging, you are going to have problems.

Two: A big part of good classroom management is building good relationships with your students. If you haven't taken the time to get to know them as individuals, if you mispronounce their names, if you regularly use sarcasm or make them feel stupid for asking questions, then they aren't going to want to behave well for you. And that's a different problem.

So this post is based on the assumption that you're planning engaging lessons and you have a decent relationship with your students. Without those two, these solutions might kind of work, but you're still probably not going to love your job.

Why It's Happening

Before you can solve this problem, you have to understand its cause. According to Linsin, excessive talking-talking that occurs during independent work time or direct instruction-happens for two reasons.

Reason 1: They don't believe you mean it.

Despite the fact that you specifically tell students not to talk, deep down they don't believe you mean it. "Or they don't care," Linsin says.

"At some point," he explains, "Your authority has faded. If you're able to teach to a quiet classroom in the beginning of the year and now you're not able to, or if it happened right off the bat, then somehow at some point, the students' respect for you and for the process, for the classroom, and your authority has faded."

So even if they hear you, even if they understand that you want quiet at a certain time, they don't believe anything negative will happen if they ignore your request. If they come to you with this behavior, it's likely that it has just been part of their conditioning.

"Because so many teachers struggle with this problem," Linsin explains, "many after a while kind of throw up their hands and just decide they're going to talk over students, they're going to do their best to keep things as quiet as possible during independent work time, so the students come to you (from) classrooms where the teacher asked them to be quiet but doesn't really follow up on it."

Reason 2: They don't understand what "no talking" means.

This one is going to be harder for teachers to believe, but bear with us here: "No talking" may not mean exactly the same thing in different contexts, and if your students are talking more than you want them to, there's a good chance you're working with different definitions.

"When they come to your classroom," Linsin explains, "and they've had teacher after teacher say the same thing, yet continue to allow it to happen in the classroom, then students think, Well, he or she just means we need to kind of keep our voices down, or We're mostly quiet, but if we have important things to say to a neighbor, then we're allowed to do that. And so they're confused as to what the definition of 'quiet' really is."

In many cases, Linsin notes, the problem is likely being caused by a combination of both of these reasons. But notice that neither reason is a blanket statement about students being disrespectful. This is why I like Linsin's approach: He puts control for classroom management in the teacher's hands, rather than placing blame on the student. That's not to say that you won't have disrespectful students, but shifting the blame to them means you have no power over the situation. Blaming the students simply isn't a useful way to address the problem.

"When students are not doing something that you've previously taught them how to do," Linsin says, "whether it's talking or entering the classroom, and they don't do it well, even though the students are responsible for their behavior, when most of the class is not doing what you ask, it's on you. It's about you. There's some disconnect there, there's something they're not understanding."

What You Should Be Able to Expect

Some teachers might wonder whether it's reasonable to expect students to be quiet at all, especially if they are younger. Linsin says yes without hesitation. "You should absolutely expect, no matter where you're teaching or what grade level, that the students are able to sit quietly while you're giving instruction or directions, and they should be able to sit quietly and work during independent work times."

Should there also be times when talking is permitted? "Absolutely," Linsin says. "It's really important to give students an opportunity to express themselves, to get up and move around, to work in groups and pairs and discuss. Classrooms should be vibrant and interesting, exciting places, and so I'm all for getting students up and moving and having fun. Those things just make classroom management stronger, and they free you to ask anything of your students, including silence."

The Solution

If you came here looking for a few tricks to end excessive talking, the bad news is that you won't find anything clever or earth-shattering. The good news is that the solution is pretty simple, and it requires no behavior charts, tokens, or Jolly Ranchers.

Step 1: Define expectations in explicit detail.

"The fix," Linsin says, "is to define, in detail, exactly what you want during independent work time and when you're teaching a directed lesson."

If you believe you've already done this, and it hasn't worked, the issue is probably lack of detail in your explanation. Linsin says you need to go far deeper than what most teachers probably do.

"So you may bring a desk or a table up in front of your classroom, sit down, and pretend to be a student. You may have other students acting as models also. Show students how you expect them to behave while you're giving instruction, and then how you expect them to behave when they're doing independent work."

"It's also important to include what not to do," he adds. "So you'll model those exact behaviors that you're seeing, those exact talking behaviors, whether it's side-talking or standing up and whispering to someone, or whatever your classroom looks like. Even if it's chaotic, whatever that chaos looks like exactly, you want the students to be able to see themselves in your modeling and what isn't okay."

Step 2: Have students practice.

Once you've modeled the desired behavior, have students practice it, just like you'd have them practice any skill you're teaching.

Linsin gives an example of what this might look like. You'd start by saying, "'I'm going to give you 60 seconds, and I want you to show me what good listening looks like, and no talking. So let's pretend I'm standing and giving you a lesson. I want to know what that looks like.' And then you'll stand and maybe you'll cross your arms and put your hand under your chin, and you'll watch them."

Keep this instruction light, he says. Keep it fun. "You'll stare at them and you'll walk around the room, and you'll watch one of them, and you'll nod your head and say, 'Mmhmm, okay, that looks good. Mmhmm. Chin up a little higher!' It's okay to have fun with it. None of this is a punishment. It's just good teaching. Whether you're teaching how to find a topic sentence or how you want your students to line up before recess, it's all teaching. So it's okay to have fun with it. It's okay for them to laugh at some of the things you say or to see themselves in the behaviors, which they love, by the way, especially if you exaggerate it and have some fun with it."

The Sign Strategy: Students are often put in an awkward position when a classmate tries to talk to them during these quiet times. They want to follow your guidelines, but they also don't want to be rude to a classmate. Agree on some kind of physical sign they can give each other at these times. "It can be a scissors or peace sign or whatever's culturally acceptable wherever you teach. And all they do is just hold the sign up, and the sign means, 'I'm really sorry, but I have to listen to the lesson,' or 'I'm really sorry, but I have to do my work.' And you can tell them that if they give the sign and that student who sees the sign turns and gets back to work, you will not enforce a consequence, because they're showing responsible behavior."

Step 3: Teach the consequences.

"Walk them through the exact steps that would happen if they turn and talk to a neighbor, for example," Linsin says. "The exact steps a misbehaving student would take from your initial warning to contacting parents or whatever your consequences look like."

In order to do this, you have to know what your consequences are. Spend some time making sure you're clear on that. If you need help, read our post on creating a classroom management plan.

Step 4: Do it for real.

Once students have been taught your expectations and have practiced exactly what they look like, it's time to apply it in a real lesson. "Have a directed lesson ready," Linsin advises, "to have them prove to you they can do it in practice."

If you've taught the expectations in detail, students should do a good job, but if they don't, you need to enforce your consequences exactly as you described. "You almost hope during that first wonderful lesson, that one student maybe turns, and so the class can see that you're holding them accountable."

If enforcing your consequences is difficult for you-and for many teachers, it will be-read Linsin's post on why teachers struggle to consistently enforce consequences.

Step 5: Continue to define expectations in small chunks.

This last step is crucial. From this point forward, keep telling students what is expected of them before every switch in classroom activity. When you are about to do group work, let students know that talking within the group is okay. If you then switch to independent work, remind them that absolute quiet will be expected. Briefly describe what that will look like, even spelling out what not to do if that fits the activity.

Taking time to do this might seem unnecessary, but being clear ahead of time will prevent problems. "Anytime you can give a reminder before misbehavior," Linsin says, "it's a good thing. Anytime you give a reminder after you see misbehavior, it's a bad thing. You should be holding students accountable, but be preemptive whenever you can."

Learn More from Michael Linsin
The Happy Teacher Habits
(Links to this book are Amazon Affiliate links, which means I get a small commission on purchases you make through my links at no additional cost to you.)

There's more where this came from.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Come on in!!

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What they don't teach us in education courses is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down. Help is on the way.

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https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/episode-48/

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Jennifer Gonzalez, host
See All Podcast Episodes
Listen to this episode:

[powerpress]

I share a lot of other people's blog posts on my Facebook page, and the person whose stuff I've probably shared the most is Michael Linsin, the teacher behind the website Smart Classroom Management. Every time I go to his site, I just keep saying "YES" over and over. I really believe that any teacher who needs guidance on classroom management will find the best stuff there. So my main goal in this episode is to introduce you to Michael Linsin, give you a taste of his philosophy, and urge you to visit smartclassroommanagement.com.

In our interview, Michael and I talked about how teachers can start the school year on the right foot by setting up a simple, clear classroom management plan. We talk about what the plan should look like, and more importantly, how teachers should introduce that plan to their students. And that's the real key, the thing that makes Linsin's work so special; it's his highly detailed, super specific approach to teaching rules and consequences that's different from anything else I've ever been exposed to on classroom management. I'd go so far as to say Linsin has found the secret sauce to running a classroom that's well-behaved, cooperative, and happy. By the time you're done listening, you will definitely have some new ideas for how you can run your classroom this year.

Before I play the interview, two things: First, I want to thank those of you who have left a review for this podcast on iTunes. This really helps bring more listeners to the show, and I absolutely love finding new reviews to read, so if you're enjoying this podcast, take a few minutes to go over to iTunes and tell me what you think.

Second, I want to mention another podcast you might enjoy. It's called the Hack Learning Podcast and it's hosted and produced by my friend, Mark Barnes. In 2015, Mark and I co-wrote a book called Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School. Since then, Mark has developed a whole series of books he calls the Hack Learning series, and he now does a podcast where he talks about hot topics in education and shares some really cool ideas. In episode 49, Mark talks about how teachers can use the free book previews available on Kindles to engage reluctant readers. In Episode 25, he shares some really interesting thoughts about that really snarky sign that went around social media a few months ago where the teacher announced that no extra credit would be offered. The episodes are quick and practical and I think you'd really like them. So again, that's the Hack Learning podcast, and you can find it at hacklearningpodcast.com.

Okay, let's get to the interview: While you're listening, notice Michael's tone of voice, his calm demeanor. I want to point this out because I think that's another big key to his success as a teacher. I've heard so many teachers who speak to their students in tones that are bossy, sarcastic, or just harsh, or they use what they think is a "teacher voice," which can often come across like they're talking down to students. If I imagine Michael Linsin talking to his students with the same quiet confidence he has in this interview, I can see how that calm would rub off on students as well.

Now here's my interview with Smart Classroom Management's Michael Linsin.

GONZALEZ: Michael, welcome.

LINSIN: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.

GONZALEZ: I have actually wanted to have you on my podcast for a while, because I am constantly sharing stuff from your website with my Facebook audience. If I get questions from people about classroom management, I'm constantly sending them over, and I say, "If you just look at Smart Classroom Management, you will find what you need."

LINSIN: Wonderful. Well, thank you.

GONZALEZ: You are still currently in the classroom, correct?

LINSIN: I am. I have a 50 percent assignment in high school. For the first time in 25 years, I'm teaching part-time, and I write the rest of the day. I teach half the day and write the rest of the day.

GONZALEZ: Oh, that's a nice arrangement. That's great.

LINSIN: Yeah. It's good.

GONZALEZ: Right now, are you teaching English?

LINSIN: I'm teaching physical education, PE.

GONZALEZ: Did you at one time teach English? For some reason I thought you were an English teacher at some point, but maybe I'm mixing you up with someone else.

LINSIN: I have an English credential.

GONZALEZ: OK, that's what it is.

LINSIN: But I'm not using it at this time.

GONZALEZ: OK. The main source of a lot of your information is Smart Classroom Management, but you have also written four books. You've got a book called Dream Class from 2009, The Classroom Management Secret, which you wrote in 2013, and then you did a book that was specifically for art, music and PE teachers, and that was 2014. And then just this year you have released your newest book called The Happy Teacher Habits, which I am reading right now, and I am loving it so much. This to me, from what I can see, is your first real broadening out from just specifically on classroom management.

GONZALEZ: It is wonderful, and I'm going to link in my show notes to all of MIchael's books, and maybe I can have him on some other time to talk about The Happy Teacher Habits, because I'm only halfway through, but it is a fantastic book. We'll talk more about that some other time.

LINSIN: Thank you. I appreciate that.

GONZALEZ: What I wanted to do in this episode was just to give my listeners something that they can take with them at the beginning of the school year to get off on the right path, because one of the things you do on your site a lot is you talk a lot about the missteps that we take in classroom management and how they end up being counterproductive.

LINSIN: Occasionally I get accused of blaming teachers, which I never want to do, but I think it's instructive to show some of the mistakes that we made, and I think when teachers see themselves in those things, then the solution becomes that much more powerful.

GONZALEZ: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that you advise people to do is to keep a very simple, clear classroom management plan that you introduce to students at the beginning of the school year. If you could, just give us an overview of what your most basic classroom management plan would look like. This is a system of rules and consequences.

LINSIN: Let's take rules first. I think it's really important, regardless of the grade level you teach or the subject that you teach - whether it's you're down in kindergarten or you're teaching juniors and seniors - I think it's important just to think about how you can protect your students' right to learn and also protect your freedom to teach. You want to think about all those behaviors from your experience that are interfering with those two goals, and you create a set of rules as boundaries that protect that freedom, that box inside. Listeners can't see me right now, but I'm creating a box with my hands. I like to think of it as there's freedom within the box or within the square, and then we have borders. Our rules create borders to protect, or boundaries to protect the freedom to teach and the students' right to learn and enjoy school, have fun and enjoy learning.

GONZALEZ: So what do those rules actually look like, the rules that protect the students' right to learn and your right to teach? I know that you really are a strong advocate for simplicity.

LINSIN: Yes. They certainly can vary, again, depending on what you're teaching, but I definitely recommend a listening and following directions rule. I think that probably shifts regardless of what you're teaching or where you're teaching. I think it's important, and we can flesh this out a little bit, but I think it's important that students raise their hand before speaking or leaving their seats, even at the high school level. What's nice about that rule and with all rules is that you can define them, we can talk about that also, through modeling in the beginning of the school year, so you can define your rules to make them fit your situation or what you want from your students. If there are times when you want them to be able to call out, then you define when those times are.

GONZALEZ: The default setting is, Unless I say so, we're all going to raise hands before we speak and before leaving your seat, just to keep a level of courtesy in here and so we all know where we stand.

LINSIN: You can certainly do it that way, or it can be a particular routine, so there can be a time of day, so you set that up beforehand, so that at this time of day you can always do that.

GONZALEZ: Got it.

LINSIN: Like, when the lesson is finished, or whatever, when I'm finished speaking, then if we want to call out during a particular time, I think that's OK. I think those times probably are pretty far and few between. It might be a very small portion of the day, because you can lose control very quickly if you don't ask students to raise their hands. It also isn't fair. The students who are shy or less outgoing get lost in the shuffle. That would be the first two rules. A third rule would be respecting each other and respecting the teacher. Again, it's a very broad rule, a general rule, but you would define it, you'll define exactly what that looks like in your classroom through modeling and practicing in the beginning of the school year. The younger the students are, the more you would model and the more detailed you would model. The older the students are, you would still model but maybe less so. You would be very, very specific about what it looks like, even using examples, the most common examples that you've seen through your teaching career.

GONZALEZ: With kids of that age group, yeah.

LINSIN: With kids of that age, so you would proactively describe and then model the exact behaviors that you've seen, and say, "OK, this behavior breaks this rule," etc.

GONZALEZ: OK, good. That is something that we're going to talk about. Once we go over what the rules and consequence look like, we'll talk more about how you advise teachers to roll this out to their students, and it sounds like modeling is a key part of that, actually showing them what it looks like when you are following or breaking one of these rules.

LINSIN: Yeah, it's really important that you put yourself and your students on record that this is what this is ahead of time, so there are no arguments or misunderstandings down the line. It's important to mention that in elementary school, you may only have four general rules that pretty much can cover everything, but in high school, you may have 12, 14, 15 rules, because those students really are adept at finding loopholes. The longer you teach, the more you add to those rules, because those students can be so creative.

GONZALEZ: So you've got, listen and follow directions, raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat, respect your classmates and your teacher, and then there's one about hands and feet.

LINSIN: Oh, OK, yeah. In elementary school, that's important to keep hands and feet to yourself. It's certainly important as a PE teacher, so that's a rule that I use. I think that's a good one to cut down on play fighting and that kind of thing.

GONZALEZ: Once a teacher's got these general rules established, and there's going to be some teaching of them, we're going to talk about some ways to do that, then you're also introducing the consequences for not following these rules. We talked a little bit ahead of time, and what you were telling me is that your original set of consequences was more geared toward elementary, but we're going to talk about how that can be adapted for middle and high school kids also.

GONZALEZ: So the consequences would be what?

LINSIN: I think it's really important to have a warning, regardless of what grade you're teaching. A warning is a courtesy. It's not really a consequence, it's a consequence by name only. It's a way of saying, "You messed up, but you have a chance to fix it. You have an opportunity to fix it." And I think that's really important, and I think it's important for students to be given that opportunity. The second consequence, for elementary anyway, and at least through sixth grade, and I think middle school teachers have to determine whether time-out is appropriate or effective after sixth grade. I think it depends on the school, it depends on you as the teacher, and the culture of the school. The students, how mature the students are. But anyway, I do believe in an in-class time-out where students don't participate in the class, but they are required to listen and do all the work that's required of the class.

GONZALEZ: They're physically, even though they're still in the class, they're physically set to the side somewhere within the room, separated?

LINSIN: Yes. And it's more of a symbolic separation than it is a physical separation, so it doesn't really have to be ... we don't want them isolated. I prefer just kind of at the side of the room, just to show that right now you're not a member of the class, you're not an official member of the class right now. You have to behave a certain way, and if you're interrupting teaching and you're violating those rights of the rest of the class to learn, then we have to pull you out for a time.

GONZALEZ: Let's talk for just a second, because I know that this scenario right here is something that teachers deal with a lot: You ask the student to go to whatever the time-out location has been established as, and the student resists going. So then what do you do?

LINSIN: Nothing. You don't do anything, at least immediately. I'm a really strong advocate, and over the years, I've really worked this out and tested it. All of my advice I test in the actual classroom and with other teachers, and I believe in never ever creating friction with students. I believe in never lecturing, scolding, any of that kind of stuff, because every time you do it, it just makes managing your classroom more difficult. We want to create leverage. We want that student to respect their teacher, love being part of the class, and because they have the freedom to enjoy the classroom, and because they love being there, this gives the teacher this great feeling of leverage. You have the feeling that when you give a student a warning it really matters to them, it really means something. When you send a student to time-out, they go to time-out, because they know the mistake they've made. When they're sitting in time-out, they then reflect on their mistake rather than being angry at you. Instead of seething in anger at you or being angry because they feel they didn't do anything wrong, and I know I'm going into a lot here, but because you defined everything in the beginning of the school year, they understand that they've made a mistake, that it's not you, right? Because you did it politely and, in a way, almost robotically, more as a referee, they go without complaint 99 percent of the time. Then when they're in time-out, it matters to them, it really means something, and they don't want to be there. They want to be part of a class they love being part of. When there's that separation there, it's very powerful. So if a student refuses to go, I wouldn't do anything. If they don't go, I wouldn't do anything.

GONZALEZ: You just keep teaching, continue on ...

LINSIN: Keep teaching and wait for them to calm down, and then I'd wait until they've forgotten about it.

GONZALEZ: Hmm. OK.

LINSIN: And then I go over and ask them again to go to time-out, and then let them know that I'll be calling home later that day, that we'll go to the third consequence. This is at an elementary school setting.

GONZALEZ: Right. It sounds like all of these conversations are happening privately. This is not you across the room saying to them, "Get over to time-out."

GONZALEZ: And that's a big key, right? We're trying to avoid a big public power struggle with the students?

LINSIN: Yeah. And you're also going to, in the beginning of the school year, you're going to model exactly how you'll speak to the students and what you'll say. You'll say, "I'm going to say this to you, and then this is what you'll do." And you'll sit in the student's chair, in their seat, and you choose a student to play the part of the teacher, and you're going to goof around or talk when you're not supposed to or whatever, and they're going to put you in time-out, and you're going to show them exactly how to go to time-out. You're going to tell them what you do in time-out, how you reflect on your mistake.

GONZALEZ: OK.

LINSIN: I also recommend the student deciding when to leave time-out.

GONZALEZ: Oh, that's good.

LINSIN: That doesn't mean that they stand up and leave whenever they want. They have to ask. But they're going to ask you-and this is again something you'll model-they'll call you over, and they'll say, "I'm ready now. I understand the mistake I made. I'm ready." You're not going to force this out of them. You're not going to question them or force assurances from them. They just have to say that they're ready.

GONZALEZ: OK. That's huge. Honestly, I think that's going to be such an epiphany for a lot of teachers that the student decides when they're ready, but it is not them sneaking back or trying to get away with something. So much of this is built on the relationship that you've established with these kids at the beginning of the year.

LINSIN: Yeah. Everything is very honest and upfront and transparent, and "this is how we do things." We do it in such a way where we're very respectful of the students. They know that we're never going to pull them aside and embarrass them. We're never going to pull them aside and scold them or point our finger at them or give them dirty looks or anything like that, that every day is a new day, and that student who had a bad day the day before, we're going to welcome them and be excited to see them the very next day. It's a really powerful approach. I use the word "leverage" a lot, because that's the feeling. When I'm standing in front of the classroom, I know that I have the upper hand in the relationship, because they love being there. They want to be there, and they'll do anything not to sit in time-out.

GONZALEZ: I'm thinking about some teachers listening to that, and they will be thinking about specific students of theirs, and they will be thinking, "That kid does not love being there, so I cannot use that as leverage." And I know that for you, a lot of that leverage comes from the quality of your instruction and a lot of the things that you do with the environment to make it a really welcoming and exciting place for the student to be in the first place.

LINSIN: I really believe in shifting responsibility to students. When I visit classrooms, really most teachers are walking around with the weight of the world on their shoulders. They take all responsibility for student learning, if students are struggling, if students are misbehaving, they take all of that upon themselves, and the students are gadding about without a care in the world. We need to shift that. I really believe teachers should teach, and students should learn, and that there's a very clear definition, a clear difference between the two. I won't do anything that is a student's responsibility.

GONZALEZ: OK. Give me some examples.

LINSIN: I have an article called "Why You Shouldn't Care if Your Students Misbehave." Because I really don't give a wit at that time when it's happening, because it's not me, it's a choice they're making, and there's a consequence for that choice. I'm not going to take it personally. I'm not going to personally take on and feel like that student is doing that because of me or somehow that I'm causing that or that I have to take the burden of that misbehavior upon myself, if that makes sense. We can unpack that a little bit more.

GONZALEZ: It does make sense. I really think one of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make with classroom management is taking things personally, because then your emotions get into it, and you start making really bad choices as a teacher. Having a little bit of professional distance from the situation helps you to make smart choices.

LINSIN: Yeah. It's one of those things where you're incredibly personable with the students, and you build really close relationships, but when it comes to classroom management, you're an unfeeling robot, almost. Or a referee on a football field. You call them like you see them. Present the facts at parent conferences, or if you have to call parents, you just give them the facts, and that's it. "I know you'd want to know."

GONZALEZ: Yeah. Without using judgmental language, just describing what you have observed, and this is what's happened.

LINSIN: Exactly. No judgment whatsoever. This is what happened. It may sound incredibly altruistic maybe, I'm not sure, but it's really selfish in a way, because I want to love my job, and I want the students to be eager to listen and learn, and this is the way to get there.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. We got to what the rules and the consequences are, I'm going to review them really quickly, and then it sounds like a big key to this is what you actually do in the first couple of days to introduce your policies to the students. In general, we've got listen and follow directions, raise your hand before speaking or leaving your seat, keep your hands and feet to yourself, and respect your classmates and your teacher, and there may be some adjustments for older kids. And you are actually working on an ebook right now for middle and high school teachers to talk about some of the finer points of these things for them.

LINSIN: Yes, and it should be ready this month. I think the date is July 27th.

GONZALEZ: That's perfect, because this episode will come out right around the same time, end of July, early August, so we'll link them right to that.

LINSIN: OK, great.

GONZALEZ: And then the consequences would be the first time is just sort of a courtesy warning to let them know that they have started down that path. The second, for younger kids anyway, is a time-out, and there may be some alternatives for older kids, and then the third time would be contacting home. And would that also be for older kids, contacting home?

LINSIN: Yes. Uh, yes. It's either the third or fourth consequence, but we can talk about that. It's really important to mention that there is no magic in the rules and consequences themselves, right? They mean nothing, really. It's how you present them and then how you fulfill them.

GONZALEZ: Let's talk about that. How do you present them?

LINSIN: If we talk about how we present them, we're going to present them in, we talked a little bit about this before, a most transparent way. With the rules, it's going to be in a highly detailed way, and transparent in that we're going to let them know ahead of time, we're going to cover everything, we're going to lay it all out on the table right up front. It can avoid drama and arguments and trying to convince students to behave, which is a no-no in Smart Classroom Management land. We don't convince students to behave. We create an atmosphere they love being part of, and then we hold them accountable, we protect that sacred place, your classroom. We model those rules so there are no misunderstandings about what they mean, and what behaviors that they cover. And we do that through highly detailed modeling. We model very, very specifically what those things look like, and then the path the misbehaving student would take from warning to call home and, to the most extreme, if they continue to misbehave later in the day, we need to send them back to time-out, continue to cycle them right back to time-out.

GONZALEZ: Walk us through that, if you will. Think of a rule that you think not enough teachers model, and they end up having a lot of problems because they don't. And how exactly would you model this for your students? Because I know you were talking at one point about swapping roles with them and having you be the student and having one of them be the teacher. What does that actually look like in one of the first few days of school for you to model a rule like that?

LINSIN: As far as teachers not modeling enough rules in enough detail, it's all of them. Almost every teacher doesn't model with enough detail in the beginning of the school year. You would model from your perspective as the teacher and as a student, so you may be sitting in a student's chair with the students surrounding you showing them precisely how to raise their hands. The more detailed you are, even to a ridiculous degree, the more effective and powerful it is. I may show them the actual bend in the elbow of how to raise their hand, the finger placement ...

GONZALEZ: And the kids are probably making fun of you this whole time, like, really?

LINSIN: Yeah, well they think it's hilarious. They think it's fun. And that's the other thing. I make it fun. I want the modeling to be fun, and so I'm going to exaggerate their behaviors. If it's stomping and complaining about this and that, I'm going to model those student behaviors in an exaggerated way, and so I'm going to make the lesson fun. I'm going to make them enjoy it. The more detailed you can make it, even if you add in insignificant details, funny insignificant details about things, it's memorable, and it's impactful. They tend not to do those behaviors that you've made fun of, for lack of a better phrase, so if you really exaggerate those behaviors, they tend not to repeat them.

GONZALEZ: I'm thinking about the pencil tapping with middle school boys. They just want to keep tapping those pencils over and over and over again, and it's not any particular rule that they're breaking, so you have to show them and have the kids help you identify, "This is what that looks like, this is what rule you're breaking," and then you'd actually walk through the process of how you would respond as a teacher?

LINSIN: Yeah. And that's a good example of something that might be very specific to you, so you would add that as a rule. You could have a different consequence for that. I'm not sure if that's a behavior thing, but it could be that you, I don't know ...

GONZALEZ: I think that's respect for your classmates and your teacher, maybe, it's making it hard for them to listen.

LINSIN: Certainly. I think you're right. And so, yeah, if that's been a big problem, you'd have it as its own rule. And that's the thing. As the students get older, you want to have those very specific rules, you know? You can add, "No throwing the volleyballs at each other," you know? That kind of thing.

GONZALEZ: Right. So you're teaching this the same way that you would teach any other content, with examples and modeling, and you test them, right? Not written tests, but you ask them, you've made a point about being skeptical when you're teaching these. Not being sure that they've got it, so asking them to model it for you? LINSIN: Sure, yeah. After you model, then you have them model. You may have the whole class showing you how to raise their hand, how to get up to get a tissue. You may have one model, and then you'll have five model, and then you'll have them all model at the same time. Yeah.

GONZALEZ: Once this is all sort of in place, and would you just not teach any content at all the first couple of days? Just really devote the first few days of school to just teaching how the classroom is run?

LINSIN: First, it's all teaching, and it's all good. A lot of teachers will say to me, "I don't want to teach routines." And I always say, "What's the difference? It's all teaching. It's all the same, good stuff." It's good teaching. You'll model everything you do. Modeling is good teaching. You'll teach very specific everything you do. You want to make everything as crystal clear as possible. You want to give your students the best chance to succeed, and so you're going to walk them through what they need to do to succeed, whether it's lining up to go to lunch or being respectful to each other, what that looks like, or dividing fractions.

GONZALEZ: Right. Yeah, that's a good point.

LINSIN: I do believe it's important, on the first day of school and the first week of school, I think it's important not to just do classroom management all day long. I think an hour is OK. I think it's really important to preview for your students what the classroom is going to look like. It's not just expectations, it's, "Here's what the experience of being in this classroom is going to look like." I think it's important that they're excited about it too. You have to sell your program. My number one goal is not that at the end of the day that they know the rules and consequences. My number one rule is that they're happy and excited to be part of the class. That they run home to their parents and say, "Oh my gosh. I have the best teacher. I have this awesome class. We're going to do this and that this year. It's going to be great." Because then that's what's going to give you the leverage. The classroom management secret is to create a classroom that students love being a part of and holding them firmly accountable, you know?

GONZALEZ: And that's the leverage.

LINSIN: Yeah, that's the leverage.

GONZALEZ: It's that they want that.

LINSIN: You asked about academics. I think it's really important to jump into academics on the very first day of school all the way to the last day of school too, because that's what we're there for. We're going to do academics also on that first day.

GONZALEZ: If I'm a seventh grade teacher and I've only got 50 minutes and maybe the idea is do an overview of the rules and consequences, model some of the most important ones that are likely to come up soon, and then get into something kind of fun and exciting that's academic also? LINSIN: Yeah, because let's say you have time to only model one rule, right? If you model it in a highly detailed way, it transfers. They begin to understand that you're going to expect that with everything. Routines also. The first routine you teach of the year, you want to teach the heck out of it ...

GONZALEZ: Got it.

LINSIN: ... to a remarkable, ridiculous level, because what it does is you're not so much teaching the routine, you're teaching how to do things the right way. You're teaching excellence. You're setting the tone for "this is how we do it here." We do things the right way, and we pursue excellence in everything we do, even lining up. Because then that will transfer to our math lesson, that will transfer to the way we treat each other, all of those things. So if you see a teacher who kind of lets them line up, you know? They're going to bring that to everything else they do also.

GONZALEZ: You're teaching a whole value system, really, with that. I'm thinking back to my years of teaching, and that was my number one mistake was at the beginning of the year I was like, everybody's behaving really well right now, so I'll wait until a problem comes up, which sounds like if I had done it your way and gotten really detailed on one procedure or one rule, then they understand that that is going to transfer over to everything else.

LINSIN: Yeah, and this is a big leap, but even if you're really focusing on excellence in everything you do, and you're really expecting that, you're creating this atmosphere they love being part of, and you're holding them strictly accountable and you're consistent, and they know you're consistent, and they know you're going to follow through, those misbehaviors really disappear, they really do. And then what's really crazy is you'll wonder, "Oh my gosh. Why are my test scores so high? I didn't do anything. I didn't even talk about testing," and then, "Why are my students performing so much better in everything? I'm not really doing anything more than I'm just kind of really, really teaching expectations about everything we do." I'll give an example. I think it's really important to teach students how to take a test.

GONZALEZ: OK.

LINSIN: You want to just put yourself in their shoes, and you want to give them the tools to taking a math test, for example, and how to do that. You want to do it to a degree where you're even going to show them how to get up out of their seat and carry their paper to turn it in. You're going to put a little piece of tape down on the floor where they stop, and they have to look at it again and go through all their answers again. And then they're going to turn around and go back to their desk and look at it for a second time. Right? And then they're going to go up and they're not going to cross that piece of tape, they're not going to cross that line, unless they know for a fact it's the very best they could ever do, right? It sounds like a ridiculous thing, but it changes them, it changes how they behave, and they go on to the next year, and their next teacher is like, "Oh my gosh. We have some students who are so far ahead of everyone else. Where did they learn how to do this? Where did they come from? Why are they telling me that I need to do this, this and this to be a better teacher?"

GONZALEZ: That's exactly what you want us to teach. For some of these kids, all of that stuff is going to come natural, because they're very detail-oriented kids who are always going to want to double check things and make sure they're doing things the right way. For other kids, they've never even been exposed to that kind of thinking, so you're teaching them how to treat all of the moments of their lives with a little more care than what they're used to doing, and that transfers over to a lot of other areas.

LINSIN: Yeah, you're teaching them how to be successful. The idea of classroom management, of my website, is not just to get through the day. Right? It's to create an experience those students will remember for a lifetime, and it's to make an impact on them that lasts for years down the line when they contact you 20 years later. When they don't remember any of their elementary teachers except for you.

GONZALEZ: This is why I want to send people to your website. I want to ask you two questions before we finish up, because this has been so great so far, but I'm hoping at the beginning of the school year, I know right now I'm going to have a lot of teachers listening, and they've already at least one of these two things in place. They've either got a reward system in place, some sort of a token economy or a sticker thing or whatever it is. And/or they've got some sort of a public behavior chart with the clipping up and clipping down or something where the kids move their dot to one spot or another. Tell me a little bit about your feelings about these extrinsic rewards and consequences for behaviors.

LINSIN: I think token economies are the absolute worst thing for kids.

GONZALEZ: All right. Tell me why.

LINSIN: Absolutely awful. And the research backs me up on this. Despite what you'll hear, that it's research-based, the fact is in the moment you can get a student to do something or a person to do something by rewarding them, but when you do that, you take the intrinsic value of doing that, whatever that is, you strip them of that, you take that away from them. If you have a token economy where you're paying them for everything that they do, for behavior, for listening, and all those kinds of things, you're taking the joy out of learning. You're taking the joy out of being part of your class, out of building relationships, out of the joy of succeeding, of not being able to know how to do something or to be struggling with something and then to overcome that. You're taking that away. You're bribing them for their behavior. You're paying them to do something that already has value.

GONZALEZ: So you're substituting another false value for something and so then they don't recognize the true value of it.

LINSIN: It cheapens the transaction. And some students, who are already intrinsically motivated, deep down inside they'll say, "Please don't do that to me." And then when we do it for difficult students like through behavior contracts and stuff, we're patting them on the head and say, "You know what? We know you can't do it, so we're going to trick you into doing it. We're going to manipulate you into doing it." They may smile. You gave them a fake certificate and a Jolly Rancher, and they may smile and everything, but deep, deep down it's crushing to them. If you didn't earn it, it means nothing, and they know it.

GONZALEZ: Well I hope that is going to give some teachers a little bit of pause as they are preparing these other systems and have them consider something that is a simpler system and replace something like that with just ... I hate to say it, but better teaching.

LINSIN: There are a hundred more reasons why not to use token economies, I just touched on a few, or to use any rewards whatsoever. I don't believe in using any of them. And praise for only things students are worthy of it. That creates a joy-filled classroom of mature students, hardworking students who love their teacher. Here's the thing. It sort of builds on itself, it gives the teacher the freedom to be an inspiring teacher, right? And so it just gets stronger. Because the more the students like being there, and the more they want to behave, the more freedom the teacher has to really be a teacher. A lot of these teachers, they haven't developed any skill for performance, any skill for drama or for storytelling, because they're just yelling at the students, and they're glaring at them, and they're trying to control their classrooms.

GONZALEZ: Yeah. It's all about coercion instead of ... I'm on your chapter in "Happy Teacher Habits." I just got started. And I just posted, actually a quote of yours, on Instagram about once you remove the rewards and consequences, that's when the real performance can start to kick in, and you were doing the Kennedy Center analogy of you're actually walking your students through this beautiful lobby and they're wearing their fancy dresses, and it's an event now, it's not just forcing compliance out of them with cheap rewards.

LINSIN: I got goosebumps.

GONZALEZ: I'm telling you, man, that's a great, great book. We could probably do nine more hours on all of this. And that's the thing about whenever I go to your site, I find all of these threads to other articles that really get into the finer points of a lot of these. Before we started recording, you were saying that there are so many different directions to go, so my goal here is just to introduce people to your overall sort of theories and then send them over so they can find a lot more.

LINSIN: That would be awesome.

GONZALEZ: Thank you so much for giving me this time.

LINSIN: Anytime. Anytime. I'm happy to come back and talk about high school classroom management plans or whatever you want.

GONZALEZ: Good deal. Good, good. This has been really enjoyable. Thank you so much. You have a good rest of the day.

LINSIN: Thank you.

For links to all the resources mentioned in this episode, including all of Michael's books, go to cultofpedagogy.com/pod and click on Episode 48. To get weekly updates on all my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks for listening, and have a great day. ♦

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Episode 48: Classroom Management with Michael Linsin

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The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 48 Transcript Jennifer Gonzalez , host See All Podcast Episodes Listen to this episode: [powerpress] I share a lot of other people's blog posts on my Facebook page, and the person whose stuff I've probably shared the most is Michael Linsin, the teacher behind the website Smart Classroom ...

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The new question of the week is:
What are strategies schools can implement to reduce and eliminate disparities in discipline affecting students of color?
Today, Angela M. Ward, Ph.D., and Mary Rice-Boothe, Ed.D., contribute their reflections.

Strategies 'Have Created the Current State of Disparity'
Angela M. Ward, Ph.D., is an anti-racist educator with over 25 years of experience in education. She is focused on creating identity-safe schools and workplaces. Follow her @2WardEquity on Twitter & Instagram and visit http://2wardequity.com/blog/ to subscribe to the 2Ward Equity newsletter:
In my opinion, strategies are exactly the things that have created the current state of disparity. Educators are expected to use strategies to get students to comply, to help students pass tests, and to make the schools' scores look good. Very rarely in my experience did I witness collaboration among a group of educators who resisted compliance measures, behavior-modification strategies, and the standardization of schooling.

Nationally, educators are rewarded for following the scripts written by uncritical leaders who climb the ladder of success in their district by maintaining the status quo. Operating in schools without a critical consciousness harms students and the adults responsible for their care. Instead of strategies, I invite educators to shift their mental paradigms about what schooling is and should be.

Humanize teaching, learning, and being in schools. Address this pervasive issue with love. Love yourself enough to show compassion, find empathy, and build relationships to understand who you are as a teacher in relation to your students and colleagues. Also, learn who your students are, understand what they value, what their families believe, and what they dream about.

A student-centered approach is a humanizing approach. Resist the temptation to follow the compliance measures put in place to control students. Instead, question the root cause of behaviors that you are expected to curtail by inserting the compliance measures. Create space for children to "just be" in school. Build relationships and establish trust; students will tell you what bothers them.

Engage in critical conversations with the adults in your school(s). Hold each adult accountable for their role in adding to ongoing disparity impacting nonwhite students. Students matriculate out of high schools every four years, middle schools every three years, and elementary every five years. As educators, we know that the adults stay in the schools much longer than the students. If that is the case, who is most responsible for the data and the historical reality of the data in the school? Is it the students?

Review data from a historical context. Don't just look at the last five years. Look at the history of discipline affecting nonwhite students in your schools, district, and state. You should know and be able to discuss how your students have fared in your school, district, and state over the last 30 years if you truly care about reducing and/or eliminating disparities in discipline policies and practices that affect students of color.

When discussing discipline with educators in schools, I draw from my learning and preparation from my bachelor's degree in criminal justice. From my studies, I know that most prisoners in the criminal-justice system can point to elementary school as the place where their life took a turn. As an elementary school teacher, I draw from firsthand knowledge of dismal data. If a child is not reading on grade level by the end of 2nd grade, they are more likely to drop out of school and end up in prison.

A crucial strategy schools can implement is to teach children that no matter their background, to read, write, and think for themselves like their lives depended on it. For students of color, their lives do depend on it.

'Shift the Power Dynamics'

Mary Rice-Boothe, Ed.D., joined the Leadership Academy in 2015 with more than 20 years of experience in education as a teacher, principal, mentor, curriculum designer, and coach and currently serves as executive director, curriculum development and equity. She is the author of Leading Within Systems of Inequity in Education: A Liberation Guide for Leaders of Color and can be found on Twitter @mriceboothe or by reading her newsletter:

Shift the power dynamics from teacher to student: The concept of cogenerative dialogues was reintroduced in Christopher Emdin's book "For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too." Emdin connects the experience to a hip-hop cipher. The teacher and a small diverse, representative group of students engage in reflective conversation with the sole purpose of discussing their experiences within the classroom and walking away with an action plan for improvement. Regardless of how the teacher sets up the experience-it is a student-driven practice focused on shifting the power dynamic away from the teacher and into the hands of the students.

Leverage asset-based mindsets (while actively dismantling deficit-based mindsets): Once the power is in the hands of the student, it creates the conditions for them to drive their own learning. The premise of Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir is to teach through an asset-based mindset. In order to meet that goal, the book provides strategies for empathy interviews, student-led conferences, and centering students' voices. Engaging in a variety of conversations with students provides spaces for their strengths to be identified and become the basis of their learning versus their deficits.

Engage in short cycles of continuous improvement to find the right path forward for your context. There is not a single model that will eliminate discipline disparities because every school community and every student has different needs. That is why schools must engage in cycles of continuous improvement in order to try out new approaches and assess their impact: What's working? What's not? What needs to change? These experiments should be focused on systems, processes, and policies, not people. They also need to be time-bound, measurable, and do no harm to students or families. The Leadership Academy's Portrait of a Culturally Responsive School provides reflection questions that school teams can use to generate potential experiments that focus on systemic change.

Moving toward an asset-based, student-centered approach to schooling where students are seen, heard, and valued are strategies that will bring joy to the classroom and eliminate the persistent disparities we see in disciplinary actions.

Thanks to Angela and Mary for contributing their thoughts!
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign-new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 10 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

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To End Discipline Disparities Affecting Students of Color, Challenge the Status Quo (Opinion)

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The new question of the week is: What are strategies schools can implement to reduce and eliminate disparities in discipline affecting students of color? Today, Angela M. Ward, Ph.D., and Mary Rice-Boothe, Ed.D., contribute their reflections. Angela M. Ward, Ph.D., is an anti-racist educator with over 25 years of experience in education.

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One thing you can do is model the behavior you want to see. I answered questions about this topic for Character Lab as a Tip of the Week:
What does it mean to be kind, and why is it so important?
Kindness is any action that you perform that's not designed just to help yourself but to improve the well-being of somebody else. That can include acts of cooperation where two people mutually benefit, like working on a project together. It can also include altruism, where you help somebody else and don't benefit yourself-for instance, donating to charity. Or, at an extreme, one soldier sacrificing their life for their comrades.

Why is it so important? I would say that human beings are not that impressive as a solo species. If we had to do everything alone, we simply would not have survived. What we do that's special is work together, and cultures of collaboration and camaraderie are built on our willingness to show up for other people and to fulfill their needs, not just our own.
What do you think people get wrong about empathy and kindness?
A lot of people think that kindness is something you do for others that has to basically hurt you, that there's no benefit to acting in a kind way. It's almost as though people believe kindness is zero sum-in order to make somebody else happy, I need to sacrifice myself. The good news is that kindness is not zero sum. And when you give, you also tend to receive.
What's the easiest thing parents and teachers can do to help kids practice empathy?
One thing adults can do is model behavior-it's important to lead by example. I hear from parents who say that they encourage empathy in their kids. But then I ask them, how are you acting empathically in front of your kids? And they draw a blank.

Another important ingredient is what we reward kids for. Many people tell me that they think empathy is important, but then they praise kids mostly for their individual successes. We can focus instead on what kids are doing for each other. Ask kids at the end of the day not just how you did on that exam but what's some way that you helped somebody today.
A kid might point out that sometimes, people actually aren't very nice. How should parents and teachers respond?
I definitely would believe a child who told me that somebody had been unkind to them. But I think it's also important to ask, does that mean that my class overall is unkind? Does that mean the world is unkind? And they would probably say no.

It's very easy for particular instances of unkind behaviors to live in our mind. We remember them vividly. But if kids look around more carefully, I'll bet there are a lot of people who value kindness quite a bit and are there to support them.
Sometimes, kids can be self-centered. Does that mean they lack empathy?
Not at all. Empathy is something that ebbs and flows with the situations you're in. If you're stressed, it can be hard to be empathic. If you feel lonely, it can be hard to be empathic. So the last thing that we want to do is have a lack of empathy for somebody who displays a lack of empathy.

You always want to look under the hood. If a kid acts in a way that doesn't seem very empathic, what might be leading to that behavior? Oftentimes, we find that underneath what seems to be unempathic, even cruel, behavior is a lot of pain or uncertainty. Digging into that can uncover a whole bunch of empathy that wasn't immediately apparent.
Is there something you've learned recently about empathy that surprised you?
I've learned just how much people underestimate each other. My colleagues and I have asked people at schools, at companies, in nationally representative samples, how empathic are you? And how empathic do you think most people are?

It turns out, there are two answers to that. The real answer and the real average in all of these communities is really high empathy. But the perceived average is low empathy. So we actually care a lot more about each other than we believe.

I wish that people knew that they're underestimating the folks around them and that their communities are probably much kinder than they realize. If they did, it would open people up to being more vulnerable, more open with each other, and maybe feeling safe expressing their own empathy as well. Because it's more common than they think.

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What Teachers Need to Know About Empathy (Opinion)

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One thing you can do is model the behavior you want to see. I answered questions about this topic for Character Lab as a Tip of the Week: What does it mean to be kind, and why is it so important?

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Students aren't consumers of facts. They are active creators of knowledge. Schools aren't just brick-and-mortar structures -- they're centers of lifelong learning. And, most important, teaching is recognized as one of the most challenging and respected career choices, absolutely vital to the social, cultural, and economic health of our nation.

Today, the seeds of such a dramatic transformation in education are being planted. Prompted by massive revolutions in knowledge, information technology, and public demand for better learning, schools nationwide are slowly but surely restructuring themselves.

Leading the way are thousands of teachers who are rethinking every part of their jobs -- their relationship with students, colleagues, and the community; the tools and techniques they employ; their rights and responsibilities; the form and content of curriculum; what standards to set and how to assess whether they are being met; their preparation as teachers and their ongoing professional development; and the very structure of the schools in which they work. In short, teachers are reinventing themselves and their occupation to better serve schools and students.

New Relationships and Practices

Traditionally, teaching was a combination of information-dispensing, custodial child care and sorting out academically inclined students from others. The underlying model for schools was an education factory in which adults, paid hourly or daily wages, kept like-aged youngsters sitting still for standardized lessons and tests.

Teachers were told what, when, and how to teach. They were required to educate every student in exactly the same way and were not held responsible when many failed to learn. They were expected to teach using the same methods as past generations, and any deviation from traditional practices was discouraged by supervisors or prohibited by myriad education laws and regulations. Thus, many teachers simply stood in front of the class and delivered the same lessons year after year, growing gray and weary of not being allowed to change what they were doing.

Many teachers today, however, are encouraged to adapt and adopt new practices that acknowledge both the art and science of learning. They understand that the essence of education is a close relationship between a knowledgeable, caring adult and a secure, motivated child. They grasp that their most important role is to get to know each student as an individual in order to comprehend his or her unique needs, learning style, social and cultural background, interests, and abilities.

This attention to personal qualities is all the more important as America continues to become the most pluralistic nation on Earth. Teachers have to be committed to relating to youngsters of many cultures, including those young people who, with traditional teaching, might have dropped out -- or have been forced out -- of the education system.

Their job is to counsel students as they grow and mature -- helping them integrate their social, emotional, and intellectual growth -- so the union of these sometimes separate dimensions yields the abilities to seek, understand, and use knowledge; to make better decisions in their personal lives; and to value contributing to society.

They must be prepared and permitted to intervene at any time and in any way to make sure learning occurs. Rather than see themselves solely as masters of subject matter such as history, math, or science, teachers increasingly understand that they must also inspire a love of learning.

In practice, this new relationship between teachers and students takes the form of a different concept of instruction. Tuning in to how students really learn prompts many teachers to reject teaching that is primarily lecture based in favor of instruction that challenges students to take an active role in learning.

They no longer see their primary role as being the king or queen of the classroom, a benevolent dictator deciding what's best for the powerless underlings in their care. They've found they accomplish more if they adopt the role of educational guides, facilitators, and co-learners.

The most respected teachers have discovered how to make students passionate participants in the instructional process by providing project-based, participatory, educational adventures. They know that in order to get students to truly take responsibility for their own education, the curriculum must relate to their lives, learning activities must engage their natural curiosity, and assessments must measure real accomplishments and be an integral part of learning.

Students work harder when teachers give them a role in determining the form and content of their schooling -- helping them create their own learning plans and deciding the ways in which they will demonstrate that they have, in fact, learned what they agreed to learn.

The day-to-day job of a teacher, rather than broadcasting content, is becoming one of designing and guiding students through engaging learning opportunities. An educator's most important responsibility is to search out and construct meaningful educational experiences that allow students to solve real-world problems and show they have learned the big ideas, powerful skills, and habits of mind and heart that meet agreed-on educational standards. The result is that the abstract, inert knowledge that students used to memorize from dusty textbooks comes alive as they participate in the creation and extension of new knowledge.

New Tools and Environments

One of the most powerful forces changing teachers' and students' roles in education is new technology. The old model of instruction was predicated on information scarcity. Teachers and their books were information oracles, spreading knowledge to a population with few other ways to get it.

But today's world is awash in information from a multitude of print and electronic sources. The fundamental job of teaching is no longer to distribute facts but to help children learn how to use them by developing their abilities to think critically, solve problems, make informed judgments, and create knowledge that benefits both the students and society. Freed from the responsibility of being primary information providers, teachers have more time to spend working one-on-one or with small groups of students.

Recasting the relationship between students and teachers demands that the structure of school changes as well. Though it is still the norm in many places to isolate teachers in cinderblock rooms with age-graded pupils who rotate through classes every hour throughout a semester -- or every year, in the case of elementary school -- this paradigm is being abandoned in more and more schools that want to give teachers the time, space, and support to do their jobs.

Extended instructional periods and school days, as well as reorganized yearly schedules, are all being tried as ways to avoid chopping learning into often arbitrary chunks based on limited time. Also, rather than inflexibly group students in grades by age, many schools feature mixed-aged classes in which students spend two or more years with the same teachers.

In addition, ability groups, from which those judged less talented can rarely break free, are being challenged by a recognition that current standardized tests do not measure many abilities or take into account the different ways people learn best.

One of the most important innovations in instructional organization is team teaching, in which two or more educators share responsibility for a group of students. This means that an individual teacher no longer has to be all things to all students. This approach allows teachers to apply their strengths, interests, skills, and abilities to the greatest effect, knowing that children won't suffer from their weaknesses, because there's someone with a different set of abilities to back them up.

To truly professionalize teaching, in fact, we need to further differentiate the roles a teacher might fill. Just as a good law firm has a mix of associates, junior partners, and senior partners, schools should have a greater mix of teachers who have appropriate levels of responsibility based on their abilities and experience levels. Also, just as much of a lawyer's work occurs outside the courtroom, so, too, should we recognize that much of a teacher's work is done outside the classroom.

New Professional Responsibilities

Aside from rethinking their primary responsibility as directors of student learning, teachers are also taking on other roles in schools and in their profession. They are working with colleagues, family members, politicians, academics, community members, employers, and others to set clear and obtainable standards for the knowledge, skills, and values we should expect America's children to acquire. They are participating in day-to-day decision making in schools, working side-by-side to set priorities, and dealing with organizational problems that affect their students' learning.

Many teachers also spend time researching various questions of educational effectiveness that expand the understanding of the dynamics of learning. And more teachers are spending time mentoring new members of their profession, making sure that education school graduates are truly ready for the complex challenges of today's classrooms.

Reinventing the role of teachers inside and outside the classroom can result in significantly better schools and better-educated students. But though the roots of such improvement are taking hold in today's schools, they need continued nurturing to grow and truly transform America's learning landscape. The rest of us -- politicians and parents, superintendents and school board members, employers and education school faculty -- must also be willing to rethink our roles in education to give teachers the support, freedom, and trust they need to do the essential job of educating our children.

Judith Taack Lanier is a distinguished professor of education at Michigan State University.

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Redefining the Role of the Teacher: It's a Multifaceted Profession

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A closer look at what being an educator really means.

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Fall-Hamilton Elementary: Transitioning to Trauma-Informed Practices to Support Learning

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Effective classroom design can help elementary students develop skills like organization and task initiation.

At the beginning of a new school year, many of us spend a lot of time working on our classroom design-arranging desks just so and putting up engaging bulletin boards.

But designing a space is not decorating. Instead, it should impact learning and have a purpose. Teachers often re-create the same classroom year after year without assessing whether their design guides students' learning. Websites such as Pinterest give teachers ideas for decorating a room, but do these ideas support student learning?

Good classroom design supports the acquisition of not only content skills but process skills. We believe that when students are aware of the purpose of the process, they are more likely to internalize these processes. This year, we are intentionally designing spaces that give students opportunities to learn content and also executive functioning process skills.

Executive functions are process skills that allow us to successfully complete tasks. In any given classroom, there will be a wide range of students with a variety of executive functioning skill levels. These skills include working memory, task initiation, organization, metacognition, inhibition, planning and prioritizing, time management, emotional control, sustained attention, flexibility, and goal-directed persistence.

Executive functions develop biologically but also through experience. Students need to practice executive functioning skills just like they need to practice phonetic skills, math facts, and reading comprehension skills. Therefore, teachers have a responsibility and, more important, an opportunity, to cultivate these skills. The design of the classroom is one way to support these skills.

How Classroom Design Impacts Executive Functioning

1. Working memory. Working memory is one's ability to hold information in order to complete a task. It's been described as a "sticky note" to help students complete their work. Good classroom design supports working memory by limiting teacher language and verbal directions. When the design of the classroom tells students what to do, it frees up working memory for learning content rather than procedure. The design creates routine and transparency for the students.

Classroom teachers should create visuals to support their daily routine, which will limit teacher directions. These visuals could include anchor charts that outline the procedure of the daily routines, checklists, or visual cues to help with classroom organization.

2. Organization. The design of the classroom should help students organize their bodies, their materials, and, most important, their thinking. There need to be clear systems in place. For example, your classroom meeting area needs to have enough room for each student.

To help organize materials, homework should be dropped off in the same place each morning. Teachers need to be consistent so that students internalize the systems.

A well-designed classroom models for students how organization helps accomplish tasks. We realize that when teachers model structures, students can start to generalize and implement these structures with their own work and thinking. An outsider should be able to walk into a classroom and understand most of these systems.

3. Task initiation. Task initiation is one's ability to start a task independently. The setup of your classroom should prompt students and help them prioritize the steps of a routine.

For example, if supplies are clearly marked and accessible, students can initiate their work independently. It's important that the materials do not distract students. When too many materials are available, students have difficulty assessing what is necessary and can become focused on the materials rather than the task.

4. Inhibition. Inhibition is one's ability to self-monitor one's own behavior. When design is clear and simple, students won't be as easily distracted and can better regulate their own behavior. Color can be a good tool to organize information, but when color does not have a purpose and instead is used to decorate, it can confuse students. For example, alternating two colors when listing steps can help; however, rainbow information can hinder production.

Design should not be stagnant. Your students' work and product should help you decide if your classroom is working. Teachers spend time creating their classrooms prior to student arrival, but often the design that works in September is not the design that works in January or in May. It's important to continually reassess your design choices. Students' perspectives can be an important part of the design assessment. When students' input is included, the process becomes more transparent, and students can understand that design has purpose.

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4 Ways Classroom Design Impacts Executive Functioning

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Effective classroom design can help elementary students develop skills like organization and task initiation.

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

In the 1950s, psychologists Jacob Kounin and Paul Gump discovered a curious side effect of discipline: If a student was being disruptive and the teacher responded with strict disciplinary measures, the student might stop-but other students would start exhibiting the same misbehavior. Kounin and Gump called this the " ripple effect," and it demonstrated that efforts to control a classroom can backfire.

"The teacher who is interested in controlling ripple effects can generally do so best by giving clear instructions to the child rather than by exerting pressure on him," Kounin and Gump wrote.

Decades later, classroom management is still a thorny issue for teachers. Nearly half of new teachers report that they feel "not at all prepared" or "only somewhat prepared" to handle disruptive students, in part because the average teacher training program devotes just eight hours to the topic, according to a 2014 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. This lack of training comes with a cost, as teachers report losing 144 minutes of instructional time on average to behavioral disruptions every week, which comes out to roughly three weeks over the course of a year.

Recent research confirms what Kounin and Gump discovered decades ago. A 2016 study found that while negative attention-reprimands like "Stop chitchatting!"-may temporarily stop misbehavior, students eventually became more likely to engage in disruptive behavior. Students in the study felt disengaged, had difficulty concentrating, and weren't able to effectively regulate their thoughts and emotions-a vicious cycle that "actually amplifies students' inappropriate behavior," the study authors explain.

8 Proactive Classroom Management Strategies

Instead of handling disruptions after they've happened, it can be more effective to set up conditions in which they are less likely to occur. Here are eight classroom strategies that teachers have shared with Edutopia, all backed by research.

1. Greet students at the door: At Van Ness Elementary School in Washington, DC, Falon Turner starts the day by giving each of her students a high-five, handshake, or hug. "During that time, I'm just trying to connect with them.... It's kind of like a pulse check to see where they are," she says.

In a study published last year, greeting students at the door helped teachers set a positive tone for the rest of the day, boosting academic engagement by 20 percentage points while reducing disruptive behavior by 9 percentage points-adding roughly an hour of engagement over the course of the school day.

For older students, give plenty of warning if you need them to follow instructions. Reminders and cues are helpful ways to encourage students to follow instructions without being overtly controlling or forceful. For example, if you can anticipate a disruption-such as students getting out of their seats if they finish an assignment early-give a short reminder of what they should do instead.

Reminders are commonly verbal, but can also be visual (flicking the lights to signal that it's time to be quiet), auditory (ringing a small bell to let students know they should pay attention to the teacher), or physical (using a hand signal to let students know to get back in their seats).
Courtesy of Emily Polak
But that doesn't mean choice is always bad. Giving students a sense of ownership in the room, paired with clear expectations for behavior, can have surprisingly positive effects. A welcoming space can reduce anxiety and boost academic performance. Emily Polak, a ninth-grade teacher in Madison, Alabama, gave her room a cozier feel by adding a couch, a loveseat, rugs, a coffee table, and posters. Her students decide where to sit-but if they can't get their work done, they get moved back to a desk. "Discipline issues have significantly decreased. My students seem to feel more relaxed and more motivated in a setting that honors their choices," Polak says.

It's also helpful to avoid using the word don't, suggests Alyssa Nucaro, a sixth-grade English teacher in Memphis. Students are more likely to listen to instructions that include clear reasons.

6. Set clear expectations: Instead of just displaying rules for behavior, have a discussion with your students about why those rules matter. Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher in Portland, Maine, works with his students to create a list of norms-words such as inclusive, focused, and considerate -to build a sense of community. "It helps us own the behavior in the classroom," Shaddox says. "Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together. These are words that we believe in."

A 2017 study found that a teacher's nonverbal cues-such as smiling and making eye contact-can "reduce physical and/or psychological distance" with their students, boosting students' positive feelings toward the teacher and the course material while improving behavior.

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New teachers-and experienced ones too-can find ideas here on how to stop disruptive behavior before it begins.

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60-Second Strategy: Appreciation, Apology, Aha!

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

A simple technique that takes just a few minutes can help an agitated student regain the state of mind needed for learning.

So often we find students in a stressed or anxious state of mind. The most telltale signs are inappropriate behaviors or outbursts, negative comments, and anxiety-ridden movements such as fidgeting, leg shaking, and fist clenching. These signals should raise immediate concern and indicate to educators that a response may be needed. The goal is to guide the student to a self-regulated mindset, but how does a teacher do that?

First let's review what is going on with a student in the middle of an outburst. Cortisol, which is responsible for keeping people alive in the face of danger, is being released. Often referred to as the stress hormone, cortisol plays a crucial role in our ability to protect ourselves. When we experience stressful situations, the release of cortisol helps us respond rapidly, but it comes with a cost, as it negatively affects the brain's ability to function at an optimal level.

Think of it like this: You're in the ocean on a surfboard waiting for the perfect wave. A short distance away, you see a shark fin pop out of the water, heading your way. Immediately two chemicals- cortisol and adrenaline-are released and you enter the fight, flight, or freeze response: You can fight the shark, flee by paddling as fast as you can, or freeze and hope the shark loses interest in you. Whatever your response, you find yourself in a moment of stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and fear due to heightened cortisol levels.

Now let's consider how this might look in a learning environment. At the end of a class, two students learn that they have received a poor grade on a science test. This is not a life-or-death situation like the approaching shark, but the physiological response is the same. The students' cortisol levels are high and they are anxious, a state of mind that doesn't support clear, conscious thinking. Upon entering their English class, the two students are visibly upset. One heads straight for their seat and begins to cry, while the other throws their book bag on the floor and punches the desk. For the teacher, recognizing these signs before beginning class is important.

The Stress Response and the Brain

The young brain can be confusing, complex, and often misunderstood, not only from the perspective of adults but more importantly from that of the students themselves. In order for students to understand how their brain functions, it's important to teach them about a few parts of the brain and their functions. To keep it simple, teach them about the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus.

The amygdala directs rapid responses when necessary-the fight, flight, or freeze response. When the amygdala detects a threat, it responds faster than the prefrontal cortex, which directs the ability to make decisions and problem-solve, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for remembering details and storing memories. The two areas of the brain most needed for academic work are thus bypassed. As a result, an anxious, stressed, or fearful state of mind can lead to poor decision-making, inability to think with clarity, and impulsive behaviors.

Learning how to calm ourselves is imperative for our well-being, and the following technique, which is designed to decrease negative impulses and emotions, can be shared with students. The goal is to lead them to more regulated thinking and learning.

A De-escalation Technique

Let's go back to the two upset students in their English class. They aren't ready to work, but the teacher can help by taking a few minutes to guide them back to a state of calm.

This process should take anywhere from four to six minutes and be centered on the student. I've provided a sample of what a teacher might say at each stage, but you should modify those statements so they feel natural to you.

If you have a paraprofessional or in-class support teacher, you can ask a student who seems upset to step out into the hallway or into an area of the classroom set aside for de-escalation. Or you can do this as a whole-class starter activity for anyone who might have something worrisome on their minds. Students can either choose this de-escalation technique-thinking over their answers instead of sharing them out loud-or engage in a warm-up activity connected to the class such as completing a journal entry or worksheet.

Give the student time to regain their calm: Say, "I notice you're really upset. Let's work together on breathing slowly for one minute in order to manage your impulses."

Direct the student to be aware of their thoughts and feelings: Say, "What's going on in your brain and body right now? Tell me how you feel and what you're thinking, and if you're ready to focus on moving forward with getting calm."

Have the student redirect their thoughts: Say, "Take a minute, close your eyes, breathe slowly, and think about something that makes you happy. I know you told me how much you love your grandma's fresh-baked cookies. Think about walking into grandma's house in a calm state of mind as you smell the cookies, taste the cookies, and feel the warmth of them right out of the oven."

Give the student positive feedback on becoming calm: Say, "Now open your eyes. How are you feeling? If you need more time to settle down, let me know. You should feel happy and excited about your work in getting to this point."

Give the student a little more time to refocus: Say, "Take a minute and do something for you. Go for a walk and get some air, or tell me about your baseball game the other night."

Have the student reflect for the future: Say, "The next time you're feeling this way and I'm not with you, what can you tell yourself in order to take charge of your thinking and behavior, and get yourself to a regulated place?"

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A De-escalation Exercise for Upset Students

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A simple technique that takes just a few minutes can help an agitated student regain the state of mind needed for learning.

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In a vibrant, multicultural society, representing the richness of students' lives in a class or school library takes a conscious effort. Including writers and fictional characters with a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and life circumstances is a way to increase the chances that students will find, to use the metaphor that Rudine Sims Bishop popularized, both windows and mirrors in the library-books that reflect their lives, and ones that give them insight into the lives and experiences of people who aren't like them.

No book shelf is going to represent the fullness of this nation. From the descendants of people who arrived here more than 15,000 years ago to the newest immigrants, we're simply too much. But the inclusive set of books below-many of which were recommended by multiple teachers-span all grade and Lexile levels up to 1140L, and include award winners and best sellers, books that have stood the test of time and newer options. We hope they reflect human diversity in the broadest sense, addressing race and ethnicity, religion, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and other special circumstances.

Grades pre-K to 2

Deena Misses Her Mom
Deena is a formerly well-behaved girl who has been lashing out in school ever since her mom was sent to jail. Deena's story-sensitively illustrated by Leslie Jindalay Pyo-was written by high school students Jonae Haynesworth, Jesse Holmes, Layonnie Jones, and Kahliya Ruffin to reflect the lives of the children they were tutoring in Washington, DC. Parental imprisonment is a shockingly common occurrence in America: More than 5 million children in the U.S. have had at least one parent in jail.

Grades 3 to 5

Grades 6 to 8

The Arrival
A sepia-toned marvel, The Arrival conveys in images-there is no dialogue-a man's journey from his troubled home country to a new one. Artist Shaun Tan places the reader in the immigrant's shoes by using an invented alphabet on the signs in the strange new world he enters-the language is as impenetrable to the reader as it is to the protagonist.

Ghost
A National Book Award finalist, Jason Reynolds's Ghost is the story of an African American middle school runner with the talent to qualify for the Junior Olympics-if he can learn to control his temper. Money is tight and his father is in jail, and Ghost has been having a lot of what he calls "altercations." This is the first in a series of books about the members of a track team.

George
George is a transgender fourth grader who wants to try out for the lead role in the school production of Charlotte's Web so that her mother will see her as a girl. Alex Gino presents George's struggles with both bullying and the painful reassurance that she will "turn into a fine young man." George won a Stonewall Book Award-and made the American Library Association's 10 Most Challenged Books list in 2016 and 2017.

Grades 9 to 12

Bless Me, Ultima
A classic of Latino literature, Rudolfo Anaya's coming-of-age tale is an exploration of faith-Antonio, the young protagonist, makes his First Communion in the Catholic Church but also finds a spiritual guide in Ultima, an elderly curandera, or healer, who helps him explore indigenous traditions of New Mexico.

The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas's debut novel was a sensation when it was published in 2017, remaining on The New York Times best-seller list for 50 weeks. It centers on the killing of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer, a shooting witnessed by 16-year-old Starr, whose days are split between her black neighborhood and mostly white suburban school. The killing of her friend Khalil drives those two worlds farther apart than ever.

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22 Diverse Book Choices for All Grade Levels

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Suggestions from teachers who are working to offer students at every grade level book choices that represent their lives.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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https://www.heinemann.com/products/e11829.aspx

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"My wish," writes Berit Gordon, "is for there to be more joy and less struggle in a profession where people put in such tremendous effort and do such essential work." No matter what supports you might have in your school or district, you can take charge of your teacher growth and craft your own professional learning journey.

The Joyful Teacher provides a structure to help K-12 teachers across all content areas reflect on their professional development needs, set goals that work, and access practical strategies that will help them meet those goals. While anyone can pop in and pull out strategies for what's needed right now, the goals and strategies are organized in a progression to set teachers up for the most success and highest impact. Coaches and administrators will also find numerous ways to support the teachers they work with and help them feel and be effective.

Each chapter begins with a self-assessment checklist to help you find which goal and strategy will be your entry point. Within each strategy you'll find step-by-step instructions, explanations for why and how the strategy works, a detailed "how to," supports and indicators to help you know if the idea is working, and references to help you continue exploring if you want to learn even more. Berit includes grade band suggestions and grade level modifications to help you make the strategy work best for you and your students.

There is no "right" place to start and no goal that is more sophisticated or more important than any other. The Joyful Teacher helps you prioritize what is most essential for what you need and choose goals and strategies that work for you and your students. Where will your journey begin?

JoinThe Joyful Teacher Facebook Group! This group is for educators looking to take charge of their professional learning journey, to feel empowered in their work, and to create a greater impact for all the students in their classroom.

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The Joyful Teacher provides a structure to help K-12 teachers across all content areas reflect on their professional development needs, set goals that

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What No One Told Me About Classroom Management

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What No One Told Me About Classroom Management

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https://www.ascd.org/blogs/what-no-one-told-me-about-classroom-management-as-a-new-teacher

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https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/

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"We initially chose IRIS because of the past experiences and their credible research-based, high-quality modules that align with specific areas of growth and need to support a state-directed corrective action plan in our region."

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"We initially chose IRIS because of the past experiences and their credible research-based, high-quality modules that align with specific areas of growth and need to support a state-directed corrective action plan in our region."

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https://www.understood.org/en/articles/understanding-universal-design-for-learning

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework developed by CAST, an Understood founding partner. UDL guides the design of learning experiences to proactively meet the needs of all learners. When you use UDL, you assume that barriers to learning are in the design of the environment, not in the student. UDL is based on brain science and evidence-based educational practices. It also leverages the power of digital technology.

Imagine this: Your students are going to write an essay on the stages of butterfly metamorphosis.

Some students have seen butterflies grow through the different stages at a local science museum. These students are excited to share what they know. Other students don't know anything about butterflies and are nervous about writing on this topic. And some students don't like to write - they dread this activity from the moment you say "essay."

In any class, you know there's a wide range of enthusiasm, background, and skills among your students. When you plan with this range in mind, you can approach the lesson in several ways.

You could share a mini-lesson on butterfly metamorphosis and have students use a guided worksheet as they write. Or you could set up stations where students are grouped using flexible grouping around understanding of the topic, language ability, or reading level.

But take a step back. In any lesson or task, you can anticipate this range of variability among your students. There's another approach you can take to plan for this variability in all your lessons: Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Why use Universal Design for Learning?

The ultimate goal of UDL is for all learners to become "expert learners." Expert learners are purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, and strategic and goal-directed about learning.

UDL is a powerful approach because from the very start of your lesson, it helps you anticipate and plan for all your learners. It can help you make sure that the greatest range of students can access and engage in learning - not just certain students.

You don't need specific tools or technologies to follow UDL's principles either. Instead, your students choose from the tools and resources you already have. They might use them in different ways.

Also, UDL may change how you think about what prevents students from learning. Instead of thinking that something needs to change about the students, UDL looks at the learning environment. The learning environment can include barriers to learning, like the design of the curricular goals, assessments, methods, and materials. In this way, the learning environment itself can be "abled" or "dis-abled."

UDL gives you a framework to follow so you can reduce the barriers to learning. The main way to do this is to prepare a learning environment where students have what they need to flexibly meet learning goals.

What does UDL look like in the classroom?

Universal design can be found just about anywhere you look - both inside and outside your school. Curb cuts change sidewalks so that they're accessible to the greatest range of users, including people who use wheelchairs and those pushing strollers. Closed captions make television accessible to people who are deaf or who have hearing loss, as well as people at the gym or spouses who can't agree whether or not to keep the TV on at night. No two forms of universal design are the same.

Universal Design for Learning looks different in every classroom. But there are commonalities. To start with, there's always a focus on building expert learning for all. Other common elements of a UDL experience include:

All learners knowing the goal

Intentional, flexible options for all students to use

Student access to resources from the start of a lesson

Students building and internalizing their own learning

In a UDL environment, students rarely do the same task in the same way at the same time. The flexible options will differ across developmental ages. But the framework for having clear goals and flexible options is consistent no matter the grade level or content areas.

How can I use the three principles of UDL?

UDL describes human variability based on parts of the brain that manage the "why" (affective network), the "what" (recognition network), and the "how" (strategic network) of learning. Watch as CAST co-founder David Rose explains why UDL emphasizes variability instead of disability.

CAST developed UDL guidelines that are based on three main principles that align with these learning networks. The three UDL principles are engagement, representation, and action and expression.

The chart below includes the three UDL principles adapted from CAST. It also gives you some questions to consider and lists some examples of the principles in action. You can print a one-page version of this chart to have on hand while planning a lesson, activity, or routine for your students.

How can families support this at home?

Families may not be familiar with the concept of students being active participants in setting their learning goals. They may have questions about letting students make their own learning choices.

Explain at back-to-school night or in a class that you'll be using Universal Design for Learning. You can even share a family-friendly article about the UDL approach to teaching.

Assure families that you have high expectations for all students to become expert learners in your classroom. And explain that you'll keep working with the students and their families to build the skills and interest to make that happen.

Additional CAST resources to explore

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL): A teacher's guide

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UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning. When you teach using UDL, your lessons are designed in flexible ways to meet the needs of individual learners. Read more about UDL.

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As more schools move toward inclusion, integrated co-teaching (also known as collaborative team teaching) is becoming more common. However, not all teachers are familiar with co-teaching models, the planning and collaboration it takes, or the different ways it can look in a classroom.

Co-teachers are often general education teachers and special education teachers working together in the general education classroom. You plan lessons together and teach together to support the diverse academic and social-emotional needs of all students - those who have been identified as having a disability and those who haven't.

Studies show that this co-teaching can successfully meet the needs of all learners when the co-teachers:

Have ample time to build a trusting relationship with one another

Have shared planning time

Each have the chance to use their expertise in the classroom

There are six basic models of co-teaching. Read on to learn how each model works, what it looks like in the classroom, and when to use it. You'll also learn about the benefits and challenges of each co-teaching model.

1. Team teaching

In team teaching, both teachers are in the room at the same time but take turns teaching the whole class. Team teaching is sometimes called "tag team teaching." You and your co-teacher are a bit like co-presenters at a conference or the Oscars. You don't necessarily plan who takes which part of the lesson, and when one of you makes a point, the other can jump in and elaborate if needed.

Team teaching can make you feel vulnerable. It asks you to step outside of your comfort zone and allow another teacher to see how you approach a classroom full of students. However, it also gives you the opportunity to learn about and improve your teaching skills by having a partner who can provide feedback and - in some cases - mentorship.

In team teaching, as well as the five other co-teaching models below, a teacher team may be made up of two general education teachers, two special education teachers, or one of each. Or in some cases, it may be a teacher and a paraprofessional working together. Some IEPs specify that a student's teaching team needs to include a general education teacher and a special education teacher.

Here's what you need to know about the team teaching method:

2. Parallel teaching

In parallel teaching, the team splits the class into two groups and each teacher teaches the same information at the same time. Parallel teaching works well to differentiate instruction when the content being taught is particularly challenging. Students can benefit from learning difficult material in a smaller group.

Parallel teaching can be a comfortable way to start co-teaching. You and your co-teacher plan together to make sure you're covering the same material. And since you're teaching your half of the class, you're less likely to feel closely observed by your colleague. Here's a closer look at parallel teaching:

What it looks like in the classroom
The class is divided into two groups, and both teachers teach the same information simultaneously in different sections of the room.

Benefits

Provides both teachers with an active instructional role

Lowers the student-teacher ratio and reduces the load of teaching a large class

Allows for small group instruction, which can be especially helpful for students who learn and think differently

Gives students the chance to ask more questions during lesson time

Provides a chance for students to work in heterogeneous groups (made up of varying abilities instead of groups of students with similar strengths and challenges)

Keeps the academic rigor of a demanding lesson, but splits the responsibility between both teachers

Challenges

Requires both teachers to have strong knowledge of the content so students will learn the same thing

Can be challenging to control for noise, distraction, and space when working in the same classroom

Requires careful timing to make sure both teachers end the lesson at the same time

3. Station teaching

In station teaching, the class is divided into three or more groups and the classroom has multiple learning centers. As the students rotate through the stations, the teachers teach the same material in different ways to each group. For example, fractions may be taught with a fraction line at one and with cubes at another. If there are more stations than teachers, some stations may be student-led and at least one will focus on independent work or practice opportunities.

Both you and your co-teacher are responsible for planning and teaching an in-depth concept that helps meet the overall lesson goal. Learn more about station teaching:

What it looks like in the classroom
Different learning stations are set up in various areas of the classroom, one for each teacher and at least one for independent student work.

Benefits

Provides both teachers with an active instructional role

Allows teachers to use flexible grouping to tailor teaching to each group's needs

Lowers the student-teacher ratio

Resets student focus with each station rotation, increasing engagement

Provides time for students to engage with the content on their own as well as with teachers

Supports a UDL approach to teaching

Allows for more material to be covered in a shorter time frame

Provides a clear teaching responsibility for each adult in the room

Challenges

Requires significant planning for teaching and material preparation

Students may not get to all of the stations if they're not moving at the same pace

May be noisy and distracting for some students

Requires pre-teaching around expectations for independent work time

4. Alternative teaching

In alternative teaching, one teacher instructs most of the class and the other teacher teaches an alternate or modified version of the lesson to a smaller group of students. Alternative teaching is also sometimes described as "big group/small group" teaching.

Small groups are often put together based on students' learning needs. You and your co-teacher will need to find time to look over student data. This will help you figure out which students need support filling in gaps in background knowledge, which students need remediation, or which students could benefit from accelerated learning because they already know the content or have mastered the skills of the large group lesson. Here's more of what you need to know about alternative teaching:

5. One teach, one assist

In the "one teach, one assist" model of co-teaching, one teacher teaches a full group lesson, while the other teacher roams and helps individual students. This is sometimes called "one teach, one support," because the second teacher often provides additional support for learning or behavior management.

This model of co-teaching can be difficult to negotiate because it may leave one teacher feeling more like an assistant. Building a strong relationship with your co-teacher and talking through when it makes sense to swap roles can make it easier. That's key to making sure that both of you have a chance to teach content and to provide support to students one-on-one.

Debriefing after a lesson is also key. Both of you need to know which students needed extra support during the lesson, what that support looked like, and what each student was struggling with. Here's what you need to know about this co-teaching method:

6. One teach, one observe

In a "one teach, one observe" setting, one teacher serves as the primary instructor, while the other is simply observing students' learning and collecting data, which can be useful in:

Determining what instruction takes place next

Seeing which students need additional help

Deciding what co-teaching model may be used next to address any identified needs

Identifying and tracking helpful school services, such as IEP, 504 plan, functional behavioral assessment (FBA), behavior intervention plan (BIP), or response to intervention (RTI)

Making co-teaching work

Co-teaching definitely has benefits, but it can also be challenging to implement. It can be especially hard for new teachers who are paired up with teachers who have more experience, or for co-teachers whose teaching philosophies differ from each other. But there are several steps you can take to help make co-teaching work:

1. Plan who's doing what. No matter which co-teaching model you use, you and your co-teacher need to thoughtfully plan out which responsibilities each of you will have. Planning is vital to your success as a co-teaching team.

2. Agree on expectations. Having a conversation before the year begins about your expectations for students, behavior, homework, bathroom use, etc., can help you work out any differences you may have and come to a consensus for how your shared class will run.It's also essential that both teachers share behavior management equally. Avoiding a "good cop/bad cop" situation can make it easier to maintain a positive classroom culture.

3. Understand the needs of all of your students. It's critical that both you and your co-teacher understand the needs of all of your students, including those who learn and think differently. Knowing how to read an IEP or 504 plan, implement accommodations, and participate in IEP meetings is a shared responsibility.

4. Use signposting. Making sure both of your names appear on the door, on assignments, and in the classroom can also help your students see you as the team you are.

5. Keep setting aside time to collaborate. Planning and reflecting on the lessons you teach together is especially important. Keeping lines of communication open, raising concerns respectfully, and having a supportive and involved administrator can help bridge any gaps.

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Learn about team teaching and other co-teaching models. Explore the benefits and challenges of each model and learn strategies to help make co-teaching work.

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https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com/faq/what-is-visual-scheduling/

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Applied Behavior Analysis Programs Guide

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Visual scheduling is a systematic technique that enhances learning and communication for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These types of visual supports provide teachers and parents with the tools needed to help children reach development goals and achieve success in life.

What is a Visual Schedule?

A is a graphic representation of scheduled tasks and activities. They are very useful for breaking down tasks that have multiple steps and ensuring that children follow rules and deadlines. visual schedule Visual schedules reduce anxiety by providing consistency while also reducing resistance that comes with certain activities. Although most people associate these visual supports with picture schedules or photographs, events can be triggered through:

The visual schedule itself is a constant reminder to students of:

How to Implement Visual Schedules for Students with Autism

There are some important considerations when implementing visual schedules for autism:

To be effective, teachers and parents should first ensure that the child understands the concept of sequenced activities. Visual schedules are often taught through:

The schedule needs to be manageable. When autistic children are overwhelmed by the sequence of events they may give up. You want to teach them how to be successful and independent not overly frustrated. When you see a child struggling, you can break the picture schedule up into chunks to make it easier to follow.

Most educators prefer to mix preferred activities with non-preferred ones. This helps to motivate children to persevere through non-preferred activities. For example, a good primary intervention is a first-then board. Students with autism are taught that they will be able to do an activity they enjoy if they first perform a behavior that they don't like as much.

Personalize the visual scheduler. The more autistic children can relate to the visual supports, the more likely that they will understand them. For example, including photos of the individual student successfully completing the steps of the process will facilitate learning and improve self-efficacy.

Physical reminders are usually posted on walls, but they can also be portable through a binder or clipboard. Regardless of the locations, the child should be able to see these visual supports to stay on track during the day.

When it is time for a scheduled activity to occur, children are cued with a brief verbal reminder and if necessary, physically guided to the posted visual or picture schedule.

Prompts are given when necessary. Either a verbal or non-verbal prompt can be provided if the student does not respond to the initial cue. Ideally, prompts are phased out as the student learns.

Everyone likes to cross items off their list. It is important to give students a way to show that they have successfully completed an activity. For example, include a "done" checkbox at the end of each step. It will provide a sense of accomplishment and reinforce their efforts.

Speaking of reinforcement, visual schedules need to be accompanied by some form of reward, especially when a student can complete a task independently. This can take the form of verbal praise, a treat, or a fun activity.

Using Visual Supports to Deal with Challenging Behaviors

There will inevitably be resistance against maintaining the schedule. When challenging behaviors occur, teachers focus on completing the task at hand. If the difficult behaviors continue, teachers may rearrange the schedule with a preferred activity as the reward for task completion.

For important tasks that will create challenges, teachers often give a visual schedule reminder during a preferred task. Praise and positive reinforcement for following these picture schedules, completing tasks and successfully transitioning to other activities are very helpful. Some teachers find it is helpful to use a timer to help children stay focused and transition to new tasks.

How Teachers Organize Visual Schedules

When it comes to visual schedules autism, special education teachers creatively use everything from color coding to school bell synchronization. In order to maximize effectiveness, teachers individually organize visual schedules based on the learner's preferences and personality. Every morning, the teacher will arrange the student's daily routine and associated learning materials before the student's arrival. This may require them to verify if objects are gathered in task baskets or in handy aprons that special education teachers wear. It may be appropriate to empower older students to control and enforce their own schedules. For developmentally delayed students of those with autism spectrum disorders, it may be appropriate to physically coach and guide students through the entire process when using visual supports.

A Visual Schedule as an Applied Behavior Analysis Technique

A visual schedule can also be beneficial as an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy technique. Since ABA is a popular and well-researched type of therapy for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, it makes sense that a visual schedule could be a part of that approach. A visual schedule can also be used to reinforce verbal instructions. An ABA visual schedule may follow a Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). PECS was created in 1985 by Andy Bonday, PhD and Lori Frost, MS, CCC-SLP. It was implemented at the Delaware Autism Program with pre-school aged students on the autism spectrum. Since then, PECS has been used with many kids with diagnoses like:

Down Syndrome

Tourette Syndrome

Asperger's Syndrome

Developmental disorders

PECS works in six phases. These include:

Phase I: How to Communicate

In Phase I, the individual learns that the pictures represent an item or activity they want. They learn to exchange the picture for the item or activity. They might exchange a picture of a deck of cards for an actual deck of cards.

Phase II: Distance and Persistence

Individuals still use a single picture and begin to generalize this with different people and places. They also learn how to be more persistent in their communication. Instead of just using the picture in a classroom, they may take their portable schedule with them to the park or out shopping.

Phase III: Picture Discrimination

As individuals get more comfortable exchanging a picture, they begin to use two or more pictures to initiate a request for their favorite items.

Phase IV: Sentence Structure

Students can learn to build sentences using PECS. They can build simple sentences using the pictures in their communication book. These books are designed with a detachable "Sentence Strip" which allows students to put join pictures in a row to make a sentence. They might use a picture with the written words "I want" followed by a picture of an activity or item they would like to have. Pictures are stored in the book so students can easily find the pictures they need to communicate with those around them. As students get more proficient with their communication skills, they can add adjectives and verbs to communicate more effectively.

Phase V: Responsive Requesting

In Phase V, the student uses their communication book to respond to a request. If you ask an individual what they would like to do during free time in the afternoon, they could construct a sentence letting their teacher know how they would like to spend that time.

Phase VI: Commenting

Finally, students begin to use their communication book to share their thoughts and feelings. They become more engaged with their peers and surroundings. Instead of simply asking for items, they begin to make sentences that indicate how they feel or what they see.

Benefits of Visual Schedules

There are several reasons why visual schedules are both popular and helpful:

Visual schedules provide structured predictability. Students with autism or other developmental disabilities may need to know what is coming next so they can emotionally prepare for the upcoming activity. A picture schedule for autism presents the student with expectations that they can then manage, helping to ease transition periods. In general, the fewer surprises the better; unexpected events are usually unwelcome and may lead to acting out behavior. The predictability of a schedule provides visual support and a sense of security. It can also ease anxiety.

These types of visual supports can be used to teach students a daily routine as well as skills to perform a specific activity. A visual schedule for autism classrooms can help students stay on track. For example, a teacher may post the day's picture schedule on a wall or provide pictures that describe steps on how to go to the bathroom. Giving step-by-step visual cues appears to be an effective way for most autistic kids to learn and helps keep them on task. Visual schedules can be created for almost any set of skills, including:

The processing of abstract principles is difficult for any person but is more so for the autistic child. Visual schedules help students understand abstract concepts including time and organization. Abstract ideas are transformed into tangible objects with these visual aids. Turning an abstract concept into something accessible and concrete is crucial to enhance understanding.

The ultimate goal when working with autistic children is independent functioning. The autism visual schedule provides an opportunity for students to learn with minimal outside intervention. Besides mastering specific skills, students acquire the ability to:

These are all crucial abilities for independence. Eventually, they may be able to create and follow their own schedules, indicating their progress toward being more self-sufficient.

ABA Programs Guide Staff
More Articles of Interest for Visual Schedule Autism:

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The Visual Schedule for Students With Autism

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Visual schedules are useful for students with autism. The visual cues remind them of steps and rules and helps with the classroom routine.

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https://www.gvsu.edu/artgallery/visual-thinking-strategies-152.htm

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Visual Thinking Strategies was developed by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawineare. VTS is based on Housen's Theory of Aesthetic Development and corresponding research. You can read a summary of Housen's work and the stages of aesthetic development she identified over the course of 20 years of research on VTShome.org. You can read Housen's full findings in her essay, " Eye of the Beholder: Research, Theory and Practice."

VTS is noted for developing critical, creative thinking skills that lead to increased visual literacy for students across all fields of study.

At the core of VTS are three key questions:

1. What's going on in this picture?

2. What do you see what makes you say that?

3. What more can we find?

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Visual Thinking Strategies was developed by cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen and museum educator Philip Yenawineare. VTS is based on Housen's Theory of Aesthetic Development and corresponding research. You can read a summary of Housen's work and the stages of aesthetic development she identified over the course of 20 years of research on VTShome.org.

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http://www.pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

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PZ's Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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The Toolbox organizes the Thinking Routines into categories that describe the types of thinking the routines help to facilitate. Some routines appear in more than one category, and some routines have different versions that offer modifications for specific age groups or more specific conceptual challenges.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q3C4QZeSd5rTuQbgw0YVPpzgOaqqT6Jv/view

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Students with sensory processing issues have trouble handling sensory input. And at school, they often have to cope with sounds, smells, textures, and other sensations that get in the way of learning.

What classroom accommodations can help students with sensory processing issues? Here are some strategies teachers can try.

Classroom planning, schedules, and routines

Have a daily routine that changes as little as possible.

Give advance warning of routine changes.

Build in brain breaks throughout the day.

Establish clear starting and ending times for tasks.

Post visual schedules, directions, class rules and expectations; make sure the student sees them.

Use visuals with pictures of sensory input choices. (Print a PDF of options.)

Building self-regulation skills

Provide a quiet work space to use when needed.

Seat the student away from doors, windows, or buzzing lights.

Adjust the desk and chair so the student's feet are flat on the floor and hips are at a 90-degree angle, or put a footstool under the desk.

Let the student use alternative seating, like an exercise ball or a stand-up desk.

Consult with the occupational therapist (OT) about attaching a stretchy exercise band to the chair legs or desk for students who need to bounce their feet.

Let the student work in a different position, like lying on the floor using a clipboard or at an easel.

Provide a weighted lap pad, weighted vest, wiggle cushion, or other OT-approved sensory tools.

Provide earplugs or noise-muffling headphones to help with noise sensitivity.

Let the student use handheld fidgets; consider using a fidget contract.

Have chewing gum available or attach a chewable item to the end of a pencil for a sensory-seeking student.

Let the student sit on a carpet square or beanbag during group seating.

Let the student move as needed within a space outlined in tape or at a seat to the side.

Work with the student to come up with nonverbal signals to use when overwhelmed or in need of a break.

Create a proactive behavior plan for handling sensory triggers.

Give advance warning and verbal reminders of loud noises like bells, announcements, or planned fire alarms.

Giving instructions and assignments

Reduce the need for handwriting (for example, use fill-in-the-blank questions instead of short-answer questions).

Allow extra time for writing to accommodate motor skills fatigue and trouble with proprioception.

Let the student use speech-to-text software or a computer.

Reduce the amount of visual information on a page.

Provide colored overlays for reading to reduce visual distraction.

Use blank pieces of paper to cover all but a few of the questions on a page.

Use manila folders as a screen to block visual distractions.

Offer pencil grips, slant boards, and bold or raised-line paper for writing.

Use a highlighter or sticky notes to help the student stay alert and focused.

Allow the student to listen to music while working to keep focused and regulated.

About the author

About the author

Amanda Morin is the author of "The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education" and the former director of thought leadership at Understood. As an expert and writer, she helped build Understood from its earliest days.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Keri Wilmot is an occupational therapist who works with children of varying ages and abilities in all areas of pediatrics.

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Looking for a sensory accommodation? These sensory strategies for the classroom can help kids with sensory processing issues at school.