Reading Response- Week 9 (Management)
- cannfitzgerald
- Oct 22, 2015
- 2 min read
Alfie Kohn’s Beyond Discipline is an article that illustrates a different approach aside from cooperative or assertive discipline. His central focus is to involve students in the discipline process instead of resorting to rewards and punishments (Charles & Senter, n.d.). My teacher and I worked together to involve our fifth graders in the discipline process after an incident at lunch. Our school implemented a new program in which each class starts with a green cup on their table at the beginning of every lunch. If the lunch staff has to talk to them about their behavior or noise level, they will get moved down to a yellow cup. If it continues, they will be moved down to a red cup, and this starts over again each day. One day, our class was on yellow, so we went back to class and had a discussion with the class. We reinforced the expectations again and expressed our disappointment that our class couldn’t follow the guidelines that day. Each student took a piece of paper and wrote down what happened at lunch and how they think we should fix this for next time. This allowed each student to explain their perspective and voice their opinion. It was much more effective than punishing them because as stated in the article, “When students are punished into compliance, they usually feel no commitment to what they are doing” (Chales & Senter, n.d., p. 191). This activity gave them responsibility, which is more meaningful than any punishment because they were involved in the decision-making process.
The article also gives three key facts about teaching that Kohn believes in: “1) Students learn best when they get to choose which questions to explore, 2) All of us are happier and more effective when we have a say in what we are doing, and 3) When student choice is not allowed, achievement drops” (Charles & Senter, n.d., p. 194). This is very important for me to remember as a fifth grade teacher this semester, because my students are old enough to be making decisions about what they do. It is also critical that when I question my students, I allow them to explore these questions in depth and with meaningful connections so they can retain this information rather than testing on it and forgetting it. Kohn also agrees with many others that class meetings are very effective for sharing, deciding, planning, and reflecting (Charles & Senter, n.d.). I have found that by facilitating morning meetings every week, I also agree with Kohn about the effectiveness of class meetings. I am in favor of Alfie Kohn’s ideas about classroom discipline and I will take his ideas into consideration when making decisions about discipline, meaningful lessons that will facilitate higher order thinking, and class meetings for my future classroom.
Charles, C., & Senter, G. (n.d.). Alfie Kohn's Beyond Discipline. In Building Classroom Discipline (Seventh ed., pp. 189-204). Allyn and Bacon.
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