Teachers

Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? —Jane Nelsen

Conferences are respectful when parents, teachers, and students are all included. 

Do you sometimes have the feeling that your students don’t hear a word you say? You are probably right—especially when a mistaken goal is involved.

Maya Angelou once shared, “I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

Rudolf Dreikurs shared “Making mistakes is human. Regard your mistakes as inevitable instead of feeling guilty, and you’ll learn better." Dreikurs’ perspective is supported by current day research. For example, Carol Dweck has found that students who perceive mistakes as opportunities to learn are more successful compared to students who avoid difficult tasks for fear of making mistakes. Dweck points out that students who are taught to embrace mistakes as opportunities develop strategies that lead to greater academic and personal success. 

Last week during our class meetings, I noticed a disturbing habit developing among my students. Sometimes they don't want to switch seats and move away from their best friends, and sometimes they want to be the last one standing (when we do an activity that has us sit down after our turn). Then we talked about how this might make everyone else feel and how it might affect our class community. We agreed that this was a problem because it did not make everyone feel welcome. Finally, I asked them for suggestions to solve the problem.

I'm a French as a Second Language teacher in the elementary school system in Toronto Ontario. I've been teaching French on rotary for 8 years. There have been many challenges and it has been 3 years that I have been using Positive Discipline in the Classroom to help with these challenges.

As a fourth grade teacher I rely heavily on Positive Discipline tools to help create a positive environment for learning in my classroom and help teach my students important life skills. The tools help me see everyday challenges as opportunities to teach.

The student who operates from the mistaken goal of assumed inadequacy (because of a mistaken belief about her capabilities) may not cause you many problems during the day, but may haunt you at night when you have time to think about how she seems to have given up. Unlike the student who says, "I can’t," just to get you to pay attention, the child operating from assumed inadequacy really believes she can’t.

If you feel hurt or find yourself saying, “I can’t believe he/she just did that,” this is your clue that the student's mistaken goal of the misbehavior is revenge. When people feel hurt, they hurt back (often without even realizing what they are doing). For the mistaken goal of Revenge, the student’s belief is “I don’t belong, and that hurts, so I’ll get even by hurting others.” The coded message that provides clues for encouragement is “I’m hurting. Validate my feelings.”