Models Reflection

Rank Them:
1. COMP
2. Positive Classroom Discipline
3. Building Community
4. Assertive Discipline
5. Discipline with Dignity
6. Inner Discipline

When looking at my ranking I think most people would find it apparent that i am more of a person who is looking for teacher order in the classroom, but not so overpowering that students loose some of their input in the classroom. In a mathematics classroom, it is very important that students focus in on the mathematics and the procedures being introduced, making it pertinent that students are attentive and focused during the lecture or notes piece of the lesson. On the other hand, I feel it is important that the students do have time to build community and network with each other while doing classwork or cooperative learning activities. Therefore, my discipline is focused on the implementation of rules and procedures to get the classroom work done, but then focus on the students and their needs.

My Buffet from the presentations:

• The action piece from Discipline with dignity talks of being consistent when implementing consequences with students. I think this is very important because if the students know the expectations and what is going to happen no matter who they are, then they will respect you more.
• The Hierarchy of Consequences from Assertive Discipline is really important to me. I think it is important to give students a set of consequences that are going to happen no matter what. Just like above, this means that students see you being consistent.
• The idea of having minimal rules that cover vast areas from Building Community is something I really like. As mentioned in my classroom discipline plan, I like the idea of students being able to think about the rules and their impact on different aspects of the school, others, and themselves.
• From Positive Classroom Discipline I really like the concept of responsibility training. Having a group incentive program that makes the students take care of their own discipline due to holding each other accountable is great. It also allows for some wiggle room for the teacher to better teach the students without as many discipline handling issues.
• From the COMP plan I really like the classroom layout piece of discipline. It is very important that the classroom is set up in a way that is manageable for the teacher. Making sure that every student can see your instruction, as well as the you can get to every student if needed is important.

Encourage Positive Behavior

As with most teachers and teacher candidates, I am very interested in what I can do as a classroom manager to produce positive behavior in my students. After reading the chapter on positive behavior for our cooperative group learning project, I found ideas that have worked for many teachers. Of these, the one I really think will work and have seen in action while in high school was the idea of responsibility training. Responsibility training is the idea of having an incentive program for students in the classroom that uses rewards and bonuses for students when they follow the rules and guidelines, but also has penalties and take-away items when the students do not follow the rules set forth for them.

When I was in high school, my freshmen World History teacher was great with this concept of responsibility training. The idea was that if we as students would work well in the group setting and get work completed we would get to "experience history" for thirty minutes at the end of every week. However, as the week went on and we as students did not follow the rules we would lose time by chunks of five and sometimes ten minutes to the thirty we were allotted at the end of the week. As students we were responsible for holding each other accountable and making sure everyone did their work and stayed on task. You did not want to be the person that kept the class from the "experiencing history" lesson at the end of the week. For example, a lesson would consist of lining the desks on either side of the classroom and having trench warfare for ten minutes with paper balls and then discussing the strengths and weaknesses, as well as what we experienced to what the people of history experienced. It was a great reward to have at the end of the week, but was also not fun when we did not get that reward for whatever reason that may be.

I think positive classroom behavior is important, but as the teacher we have to find a way to encourage positive classroom behavior. This is not something that all students learn on their own, so as the teacher I must encourage this development.