Reading Response- Week 8 (Management)
- cannfitzgerald
- Oct 13, 2015
- 3 min read
Linda Albert introduces a model that allows teachers and students to work together in cooperative discipline. The goal is based on the three C’s: “Helping all students feel capable, helping them connect with others, and helping them make contributions to the class and elsewhere” (Charles, 2002). This way, students’ behavior is based on their own choices. She also believes that parent-teacher communication is essential for positive behavior in the classroom. Teachers should work with the students at the beginning of the year to create a “classroom code of conduct” and we discussed this in a previous blog post about my classroom’s “Groom’s Pledge.” One of the main areas of focus in this chapter was the three C’s. I have been working hard on these three areas in my fifth grade classroom every week. The first C, capability, is something I work on with my teacher as we teach throughout the day; when we call on a student and they give the wrong answer, we all work as a class to help the student learn from their mistake. They never feel ashamed, because we express that everyone makes mistakes, even the teachers. The second C, helping students connect, is something I accomplish during my morning meetings. I make sure my activities during this time allow for “acceptance, attention, appreciation, affirmation, and affection” for all of my students (Charles, 2002, p. 74). My students grin from ear to ear when I say it is time for morning meetings, and many of them have expressed how much they enjoy connecting with their classmates in this fun and engaging manner. The third C, helping students contribute, is an area that I complete during math lessons specifically. Many of my students struggle with this subject, so I ask my students who have completed their problems quickly to walk around and teach it to someone who is still working on it, as long as they do not give the answer in any way. They understand this and thoroughly enjoy teaching others, which helps them understand the concepts better as well. I was unaware that I was teaching the three C’s for cooperative discipline until I read this chapter, and I think I can follow more of these guidelines to achieve this cooperative discipline completely.
This chapter on assertive discipline, on the other hand, is very different from the previous chapter about cooperative discipline. Assertive discipline is much more teacher-centered, in which the teacher is responsible for planning and preparing their actions for discipline before a lesson (Wolfgang, n.d.). The teacher will establish a classroom discipline plan and get it approved by the principal, and will then reinforce this plan by giving positive recognition and corrective actions (Wolfgang, n.d.). This chapter explains the Teacher Behavior Continuum, which consists of techniques used in the assertive discipline process: “Looking, naming, questioning, commanding, modeling/reinforcement, and acting” (Wolfgang, n.d., p. 88-89). After reading about this type of discipline, I believe that my teacher believes more in assertive discipline and I believe more in cooperative discipline. For example, my teacher uses all of the Teacher Behavior Continuum techniques such as simply looking at a student in a way that they know they have done something wrong, stopping the class until a few off-task behaviors have been stopped, commanding attention, and modeling appropriate behavior. This is a very effective discipline process and it works extremely well with these fifth graders. However, I use more of the cooperative discipline and I have also seen this work successfully. Either strategy can be successful if implemented in the appropriate manner, but I think assertive discipline is more appropriate for the intermediate grades at times. There are certain moments in my classroom where assertive discipline may be needed, so I will use these examples and guidelines in this chapter to help me with this process in the classroom this semester.
Charles, C.M. Linda Albert’s ‘Cooperative Discipline’. In Building Classroom Discipline. Boston. Allyn and Bacon. 2002. Ch.5 pp. 67-84.
Wolfgang, C.H. (unknown). Chapter 4: Assertive Discipline, pp. 79-99.
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