Managing the Defiant Child Transcript of Speakers Module 2. Managing the Defiant Child at School Topic A. Powerful Student Discipline Techniques and Strategies Clip 1: Questions Disciplinarians Ask TONY SCANNELLA : And we hope that what we can offer you are some practical strategies and solutions to prevent most discipline problems in the school, and also to give you some insight into the root causes of misbehavior and the root causes for disruptive kinds of behavior of kids today. And one of the things that we did before we start the program is to let you know how we developed this program. What we did was we did not rely on textbooks. We did not rely on theory. We went into schools, and we interviewed and observed teachers and administrators working with children. And the idea was to find the best disciplinarians—find out what they did, how they talked, what they did with their hands, what their tone of voice was when they were disciplining students—and to compile a list of skills. And we figured that if we got these skills and we took them and installed them, so to speak, in someone who’s having discipline problems in the classroom, perhaps they would turn out to be good disciplinarians as well. And that happened and we’re very excited about the results. So we have a long list of skills, and we noticed things—for example, the way teachers walked into a room, how they held their head, what they did with their hands, whether they were natural, and what the responses were of the children that they were teaching. We found out, for example, one of what we call, excuse the expression, one of www.educationalimpact.com 800.859.2793 PAGE 1 Creating Online Professional Development for Educators the stupid questions that disciplinarians ask who are having problems with discipline is, "What are you doing?" So if a student is carving his name in the desk, and a teacher walks in and she says, "What are you doing?" The response, of course, is gonna be, "I’m carving my name in the desk." So that would be, you know, ask a stupid question, you get a stupid response. The question that good disciplinarians would ask would be, "What should you be doing?" And the response would be, "Well, I should be doing my math." "Well, then do your math." So you get a different kind of response. And those were some of the things that we noticed. We also found out that you can’t change behavior at the behavioral level. You need to change—if you want to change behavior you must change it at the belief level. And we’ll be discussing that when we get into more of the program. If you change behavior at the behavioral level, for example, then detention should work, suspension should work. And I think that it's a problem, and what we tend to do is go back to something that we’re familiar with, the way that we were disciplined. And that doesn’t work today with today’s kids. Another thing that we found was that something that makes this program a little bit different from the rest of the discipline programs out there is that you can’t discipline kids unless you know the kind of child you’re dealing with, the kind of specific personality. And that’s where Denise comes in because she’s an expert in personality profiling. And we discovered there are certain basic personalities. We can be classified into certain categories. And then there are patterns within those major categories. And www.educationalimpact.com 800.859.2793 PAGE 2 Creating Online Professional Development for Educators when you know, for example, a student is a particular personality. For example, one of the personality styles is called a director. I’m a director. The first impulse for a director is to yell. So if I’m angry, I will yell. If I’m a director teacher, I will yell at a student. If that child is a director student, what do you think that child is going to do? He or she is going to yell back. So those are three things that we think make this program a little bit different. One, we have a communication model that deals with everyday tasks, keeping kids on task, diffusing anger. We have a personality profile that scientifically helps teachers identify the specific kind of personality you’re dealing with and how to deal with that at a behavioral level. And the third is that we have a belief change. A change in belief will change the behavior. And we think that this makes the CLICK program very unique. Clip 2: Gaining Rapport with Every Student TONY SCANNELLA: So before we begin, I’d like to present to you the model that actually is John Saphier's model in his book, The Skillful Teacher. He is a model of teaching. And as you can see from the diagram, there are lots of things involved in the act of teaching. It is a very complex and very difficult kind of job. If you will notice on the chart that everything from space time and routine down to rapport has to do with classroom management. If that is not in place, then you can’t teach. And the CLICK program concentrates in these areas: Momentum, time, discipline, clarity, and rapport. Rapport is the building block for the entire program of CLICK. We will show you not only why rapport and trust is very important, but how to get rapport and trust with anyone at www.educationalimpact.com 800.859.2793 PAGE 3 Creating Online Professional Development for Educators anytime in any place. And I think this is a skill that is quite useful. A lot of programs tell you must get rapport with students. Very few show you how to get rapport with students. And we will show you how. So to begin with, I’d like to set a frame for the CLICK program. These are attitudes and beliefs that I think are necessary to be a successful teacher and disciplinarian in the school. The first one is, people act out the way they view life. Now, if you take the word life and you sort of cross it out and you put the word job, people act out the way they view their jobs. You either love what you do or you don’t love what you do. As a teacher, as an educator, if you love what you do, if you love children, if you like coming to school, if you get enthusiastic every single day, then you should have fewer discipline problems. In most cases, that will be true. If you don’t like what you do, then you’re going to run into some roadblocks. Now, to give you an example of a little metaphor of what I’m talking about, Denise and I were, a number of years ago, doing an ASCD conference in New York City; and after the conference, we went out for dinner. And in New York City they have cafés where they sort of crowd you in. And we were sitting very close to someone sort of right in back of me, and I overheard the conversation word for word. And this gentleman was discussing something with a friend, and his conversation went along the lines of this. "All I do is get up in the morning, eat, get dressed and go to work." And he talked a little bit more. And he said, "You know, all I do is get up in the morning, eat, get dressed and go to work." So now I’m looking at Denise, and I'm wondering what this conversation is all www.educationalimpact.com 800.859.2793 PAGE 4 Creating Online Professional Development for Educators about. And he said it again. "You know, all I do is get up in the morning, eat, get dressed and go to work." So at this point I looked at Denise and I said, "What the heck is he talking about?" And he said it again. And I finally turned around and I said, "Excuse me. Tomorrow get up, eat, don’t get dressed and go to work, and maybe your life will be a little more interesting." So the point is if you walk into an environment, whether it’s in the business world or in education, if you don’t have that attitude that you want to be there, it’s going to be very difficult to teach and to teach effectively. Because I think the kids, the children in the classroom, notice that and it’s real important to be in that kind of a good mood, so to speak. The second frame that I’d like to put around the program is that motivation equals expected results. Whatever you expect kids to do, that’s what they’re going to do, no more no less. Now, if you don’t set expectations that are clear, if you don’t discuss them, then a lot of things happen. One, for example, is that kids will put limitations where there are none or they make up their own expectations. They make up their own rules. They did a famous experiment a long time ago in Psychology 101. What they did was they had a number of college sophomores coming into a room working with psychologists in this experiment. Psychologists either work with college sophomores or rats.