Tumblr Teacher: Girl with a Lesson Plan: 0162: An insidious idea behind classroom management.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Tumblr Teacher: Girl with a Lesson Plan: 0162: An insidious idea behind classroom management.

departuresandarrivals I agree with you wholeheartedly. I applaud your school for being vigilant in purging a teacher using such practices. Punitive discipline of any sort is quite harmful to humans in general. I’ve done you, and any reader a disservice in allowing you to think that I practice such techniques in my classroom. My classroom is quite the opposite, so much so that I rather oppose the term classroom management because it evokes tr managerial model of managing people rather than encourage them to grow as free functioning and thinking human being. But, that can be left for later or a matter of semantics. I am an anti-punitive discipline advocate on multiple levels. First, in my classroom. And then, in working to provide positive behavior alternatives to teachers through professional development. Finally, on a legislative and not-for-profit level. But, that is neither here nor there. We must all see to it that the learners in our care, but also within our schools, districts, and so forth are treated humanely. This article is the beginning of an attempt to unravel the history of classroom management, the language behind it, it’s genesis, how it relates to other forms of discipline. Philosophy begets theory, theory begets practice, and often the genesis is forgotten, but hides subtly in the practice. Many schools are a part of the school-to-prison pipeline as it is called. These schools unfortunately function much like prisons. They implement punitive discipline in some cases, and in others use very behavioral and behaviorist techniques. Different settings schools, prisons, other institutions receive varying levels of controls. Even something as simple as training a small child to walk in line with rewards, punishments, praise, external motivators, while not inherently harmful, falls in with a larger system of external controls and can be a slippery slope. Some recover, some don’t. There is much discussion to be had and many hairs to split. I thank you for your earnest response and collegiality. I hope to continue the vein of discussion, learning, and thought. I am grateful to have colleagues to share in the development of ideas. Please message me if I can explain anything deeper or need anything at all. Thanks, ETD

departuresandarrivals:

educatedtodeath:

[snip]

#education #discipline #SOSchat

Classroom management is successful only when the following is true in some form:

“The ideas of crime and punishment must be strongly linked and ‘follow one another without interruption… When you have thus formed the chain of ideas…

Ok, just, what? The original poster has done almost no research in classroom management, obviously. I agree with the commentary already stated.
I wanted to add: you need to check out some methods actually meant for children and adolescents. Or something on behavior analysis. Grab the white book, anything by dick malloit (sp), just anything that isn’t a) punishment based (punishment has more to do with making the authority feel better than changing behavior) and b) not meant for the group of people you are working with.
Also note: We fired someone this winter for using non physically violent prison behavior management styles with students. So watch out for your job if you are a teacher and this is your behavior methodology.