* This sample is available to administrators as a MS Word document or can be mailed in a hard copy.  Please use the e-mail link above to make this request.

This sample six-part curriculum* suggests the information and skills that might be included in training to help teachers design and implement individual classroom management plans.  It can be adjusted to meet your needs.  Important assumptions underlie it and can be reviewed below the plan.

1. Vision and Self-Management:  Guidance to Promote Effective Choices

            - Articulate a personal vision of your relationships with students, their relationships with each other, and the purpose of discipline in a classroom.  Assess your climate.

            - Recognize best teacher models and their positive disciplinary behavior.

            - Identify your specific problem behaviors and problem teaching settings.

            - Learn that most behavior is chosen for a reason, and how to relate student behavior to academic and personal goals.

            - Process the idea that self-management is a major goal of discipline, and determine how punishment fits inside this model.  Are there other models?

            - Discover that other individuals in your learning group have both similar and different needs and may bring different skills to this process.  Learn to use and support one another.

Segment logic: Effective decisions about discipline can not be made outside the context of identified, articulated personal beliefs (vision) and goals.  Discipline should produce positive relationships, self-management and self-control.  Punishments and rewards usually play a small role.  (1) Homework:  Write a tentative vision statement for yourself as a teacher, including your understanding of classroom discipline and goals for discipline.

2. Starting a Comprehensive Personal Classroom Management Plan

            - Learn about 100% rules, negatives and consequences; positive reinforcement; parent involvement; administrative backup; learning settings and procedures; philosophy; emotional safety; and making your classroom a place where students want to be.

- Discover what rules are (and are not), with examples of good and bad rules.

            - Practice and process:  write and evaluate some rules and consequences.

            - Learn why to avoid negative reinforcement when possible.  Identify climate and trust level you want, and find out why and how inconsistently-applied negatives entertain and reward students in unproductive ways.

            - Define your learning settings and articulate them to others.

            - Decide when communication between your classroom and the office will or may be needed, as well as when and how to do it.  Learn why not to send students out of class without a prior plan and administrative approval.

            - Discover how to teach students goal-building, and find how this can help discipline.

Segment logic:  Teachers must distinguish between rules (which apply all the time) and procedures (which are defined behavior for specific settings).  They must learn to use negative and positive reinforcement appropriately, and that all responses reinforce students.

(2) Homework:  Define and be able to defend your rules.  Describe your learning settings.

3. Tools to Design Procedures

            - Review and get feedback, from your group, about your rules and learning settings.         

             - Get an introduction to the idea of procedure-design and procedure-teaching.

            - Learn, and revise to your needs, the concept of six-inch and two-foot classroom voices.  Devise methods of communication that do not involve the voice.

            - Identify the importance of location, materials and voice level as parts of procedures.

            - See and experience sample procedures.

            - Learn why and how to check student comprehension and how to use this as a setting to build positive relationships and deliver positive reinforcement.

- Role-play teaching a simple procedure and a comprehension check.

- Discover the value of buffer activities; identify where buffers might be useful in your classes.

Segment logic:  A teacher must know how to build, to teach, and to check student comprehension of procedures and routines for his or her classroom.  (3) Homework:  Design procedures for your classroom settings.  Script two of the most critical ones as teaching segments with comprehension checks.

4. How to Teach Procedures: Logic, Design, and Practice

            - Use your learning group to review and comment on your procedures and on the script you created for teaching one of them.

- Learn why teaching procedures is a critical investment of time and how it will pay you back in curriculum time as well as in peace of mind and by creating the climate you want.

- Discover the key steps needed to teach procedures and how to choose language, tone of delivery and timing.

            - Decide which procedures to design and teach first.

            - Learn how to use comprehension checks with examples as you teach a procedure, and how you can use this context to provide immediate positive reinforcement.

            - Practice and role-play several of your procedures and comprehension checks.

            - Learn how to tell when you need to teach a new procedure, or do a comprehension check.

Segment logic:  Creating and teaching procedures are critical teacher skills. Knowing how to check comprehension and when re-teaching is needed follow just behind.  (4) Homework:  Script the teaching and comprehension checks for all your often-used procedures, including buffer settings.

5. Positive Reinforcement: Goals, Logic, Pitfalls

            - Define your goals for positive classroom climate (making your classroom a safe place where children want to be):   attention, emotional safety, and . . . what else?

            - Find out what children and all people have in common:  need for affirmation, attention, affection from others, and belonging to a successful, functional group.

- Learn that when these needs are not met positively, they will be vigorously sought in unproductive ways.  Identify some of these unproductive ways from your experience.

            - Brainstorm ways effective teachers (your teachers and peers) use (d) these understandings.

            - Identify the pitfalls of positives, and learn how to design reinforcement that does not hook kids, reinforce them unproductively or cause you to spend excess energy fulfilling increasing expectations.

            - Plan personal ways to make your classroom safe and positive.  What are you doing now, and what adjustments are needed to personalize positives to work for you?

            - Learn about manipulation and deflection, and how to manage these common and irritating problems with minimal energy.

Segment logic: A basic task of the teacher is to create an environment in which all children can be safe and successful.  Sometimes your classroom is the only place this happens in a students life, and the quality of his or her experience there is formative and role-modeling. 

(5) Homework:  Develop positive reinforcement ideas for every learning setting.  Decide which ones are most comfortable for you to use.

6. Classroom Design, Administrative Involvement, Parent Involvement

            - Learn how changes in seating patterns can affect classroom climate.

            - Reflect on the motivating value of group work, and learn what skills are required to make it work effectively.

            - Find out when an administrator needs to be involved in discipline, and when it is not appropriate.  Learn how to get help immediately and discover the necessity of administrative agreement to those parts of your plan that involve administrators.

            - Identify when and how to contact parents, and when, how and why to script calls.

            - How do you learn from your own errors in practice:  journaling, reflection and . . . ?

            - What are your professional resources for new learning and support?

Segment logic:  We re-frame old (and sometimes mistaken) ideas about other variables that influence control, such as (a) classroom seating patterns, (b) when and how to involve administrators or supervisors in management/decisions, (c) how to make effective parent contact (know what you want, script, stay factual, engage the parents help), and (d) professional self-development.

The following assumptions underlie this plan:

   - A teacher can reasonably be expected to articulate his or her beliefs and philosophy and to develop a management plan that stems from those positions.    Such a plan can be revised as new learning occurs.  A teacher plan should be approved by administration and filed with the school principal or office.  The plan should meet school and district standards and be consistent with school and district policy and procedure.     Beginning teachers (and any others who indicate by behavior or request that this learning is needed) can be trained to develop such a plan.  Few teachers learn these skills in education training, and student teaching classes often have few problems because a skilled teacher has been running the class.   It is an administrative responsibility to determine the plan standard, to assess whether an individual teacher plan meets the standard, and to decide on a course of action if the standard is not met.

  - This training works well with a group.  Group members provide in-session ideas, ongoing support, and group members learn well from each other.  Instruction is 90% interactive, and models cooperative learning techniques.  Teacher participants can copy some of them and are then motivated to learn more about group process and to use it in more often.  This training has internal processing and preparation requirements, without which learning will be far less stable and effective.   This sample curriculum is presented as a six-week, 90-120 minute session series but many other formats are possible. 

   - There are specific and practical ways to support teachers in trouble, but crisis arising from classroom management problems is easily avoided by proper training.  Supervisors and administrators can model the behavior they seek from teachers, and can often lead classroom management training.   In training, group members will often  emerge to lead support sessions.  At the beginning, administrators may need help from a training professional to help plan and facilitate the process.  However, developing in-house leadership eventually will reduce or eliminate dependence on outside contractors.

   - A teacher can reasonably be expected to determine his or her professional developmental needs and to produce (and later self-evaluate) an annual professional development plan.   Some teachers will need initial help to do this.    Teacher development and a new-teacher mentoring/support programs produce superior teaching practice, student success, positive classroom cultures and other improvements that bring long-term benefits to a school.