Positive Classrooms
with Dr. Bob
Dr. Bob reading an Italian version of The Cat in the Hat. The Italian title translates as "the cat and the crazy hat."
Contents
What is a Positive Classroom?
Teacher-direction desists: Ladder of Intervention
Student-directed conflict
resolution
Ladder of Corrective
Teacher Intervention
The Matrix: Get
started today!
What is a
Positive Classroom?
A positive classroom is a safe place to be. Safe for all students, a place where
students (and teachers) are successful, a place where problems are dealt with
quickly and with little fuss. Students
enjoy being in positive classrooms; they work hard, but get a sense of
accomplishment from what they do. A
positive classroom can be a high school science class, or a kindergarten room.
How can we create positive classrooms? There are two elements. First, that positive classrooms consist of
teacher interventions in four dimensions:
spiritual, physical, instructional and managerial dimensions. (These are each explained below.)
Second, the element of time--when things happen--is
crucial in terms of the type of intervention in a positive
classroom. There are 3 types of
intervention: preventing, supporting,
and reacting. Preventing bad
things from happening and supporting the good things that do are central
to positive classrooms. Correcting--the
third type of intervention--is the worst place to be. Unless it is necessary (and sometimes it is even for the most
experienced of teachers), Correcting is trying to fix something after
it's broken. In a positive classroom, preventing
and supporting are far better places to be than correcting and
fixing.
I am really excited about the newest 3rd edition of my book
Positive Classroom Management, available from Corwin Press
Skip ahead to look at The Matrix:,
which shows the two elements together.
Spiritual Dimension: Showing Students You Care, and That They Will Be Successful
The Spiritual Dimension?
It's about caring and efficacy. Caring?
It's almost too obvious to point out that students do well when they
believe the teacher cares about them.
It's really that simple, yes.
They also feel safer with such teachers, believing the teacher will
intervene on their behalf if needed.
Caring doesn't have to be mushy, or holding swell parties for the students. It's mostly a sense that the teacher knows
you as a person, that he or she likes you as a person, and that
you can rely on the teacher (trust) especially when things may not be going
well.
Efficacy? That's a
belief (on the part of the teacher and/or the student) that they will be
successful. It comes from what they've
learned about themselves. People who
are good at riding a bicycle will have a sense of efficacy about bike riding,
even if they have not ridden a bike for years.
Before getting on, they have a belief that they will be able to ride the
bike. Obvious? Sure, but it also applies in a BIG way to
learning. Students who have been unsuccessful
at math will have low efficacy--a weak belief that they will be
successful. In fact, they may believe
that no matter what they do they will be unsuccessful, based on what
they've learned about themselves and math in the past. Similarly, teachers who simply work with
other teachers--who watch other teachers who are good at what they do--will
find their teacher efficacy is stronger. Researcher Al Bandura found that even watching videos of
teachers being successful will help boost a teacher's sense of efficacy. Conversely, if you work in a school where
the teachers gather in the teacher's room and grouse about how miserable the
school is, how unsupportive the principal may be, and how unsuccessful they
feel as teachers, you will find some of that will rub off on you (STAY OUT OF
THOSE PLACES!)
Physical Dimension: Setting Up a Safe and Productive Learning Environment
The Physical Dimension is the environment--the
surroundings, and how we teachers set up that environment will make a huge
difference in terms of student achievement and behavior. It makes sense that we don't want students
crashing into each other. We don't want
our 5th graders forced to sit all day on small kindergarten-sized chairs. We don't want students tripping on bookbags
left in the aisles. Plus, there is the ambience: How pleasant a place is our classroom? Is it bright enough? Does it have an unpleasant odor? How good do those surroundings feel to us?
In my new edition of Positive Classroom Management, I have
prepared checklists you can use to be certain your classroom's physical
dimension is helping you maximize student success.
Instructional Dimension: Teaching So Students Stay Focused and Learn
The Instructional Dimension is all about great teaching. How you teach will have a decided effect on
how well students learn, and how smoothly the behavioral situation is as well. In my book Great Teaching, I go into detail
about 8 key teacher skills, and strategies that teachers can use right away to
improve their students' success in and out of the classroom.
Plus, in my new edition of Positive Classroom Management, I
have prepared checklists you can use to be certain your classroom's instructional
dimension is helping you maximize student success.
Managerial
Dimension: Managing a Smooth-Running
Classroom
In the newest edition of Positive Classroom Management, I
have prepared checklists you can use to be certain your classroom's managerial dimension
is helping you maximize student success.
Positive
teachers familiarize themselves with ways to help students take ownership of
solving problems in the classroom. Of
course, these are the run-of-the-mill problems of distractions, annoying
behavior, talking, and so on that students must learn to deal with effectively,
and on their own.
In the Managerial Dimension, teachers
seek to prevent misbehavior, and to support student behavior (see The Matrix: below) However,
when you find yourself in the position of having to do something in reaction to
student misbehavior, you should use desist strategies. Desists are ways to get students to STOP
doing what they are doing, but in the Positive Classroom that means stopping
them with the least disruption to the rest of the class, and the lowest
possible level of force. As a guide to
using low force and being the least public about your
intervention, use my ladder of intervention.
To use it, seek the lowest rung of the ladder that is reasonable. Starting high up is an error, because you
can never go down the ladder, you can only go up and increase
the level of force and public-ity. For
instance, for some minor student misbehavior like tapping a pencil or quietly
turning around, it's usually best to intervene at the very lowest level of the
ladder. What is that lowest level?
Answer:
Doing nothing.
As you
go up the ladder, your interventions increase in force and in how public they
are, and they graduate from being silent, to being verbal, to being physical.
Ladder of Corrective Teacher
Intervention
Private-to-Public: Private Public
Level of Force: non-verbal verbal physical
LOW MEDIUM HIGH
Do
nothing;
ignore
The
Positive Classroom Matrix
Contact Dr. Bob at the Department of
Education, Johnson State College: mailto:bob.digiulio@jsc.vsc.edu
Or at
home: mailto:conseri@pshift.com
See below to order a copy of Positive
Classroom Management, 3rd edition.
Go to:
http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book228781
See below to
order a copy of Great Teaching: What
Matters Most in Helping Students Succeed
Go to:
http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?contribId=529515&prodId=Book226438
Also, Educate,
Medicate, or Litigate? What
Teachers, Parents, and Administrators Must Do About Student Behavior
Nominated for
the 2002 American Education Research Assn Outstanding Book Award
Go to:
http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?contribId=529515&prodId=Book19267
Also, A
Compass for the Classroom:
How Teachers
(and Students) Can Find Their Way & Keep From Getting Lost (co-authored
with Noah ben Shea)
Go to:
http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?contribId=529515&prodId=Book226989
About Dr. Bob
Dr.
Bob (Robert C. Di Giulio) is a
professor and education researcher at Johnson State College in Vermont. He
earned his PhD in human development from the University of Connecticut and his
DEd in socio-education from the University of South Africa. He earned his BA
and MS from St. John’s University and Brooklyn College respectively. A Brooklyn,
New York native, Dr. Bob began his teaching career in the New York City public
school system, where he taught for a number of years. His 35-year career as an
educator includes teaching at the elementary, middle, junior high, and college
levels, with experience ranging from crowded urban schools to a one-room
schoolhouse. He has also served as an elementary school principal, educational
consultant, speaker, and writer. As an
educational consultant, Dr. Bob codeveloped TeenTest, a vocational counseling
program for adolescents. He also coauthored educational computer software
called Language Activities Courseware and authored its teacher’s guide.
His Teacher magazine article “The ‘Guaranteed’ Behavior Improvement
Plan” was recognized as having one of the highest total readership scores of
any of the magazine’s articles.
Dr.
Bob has authored numerous books, including When You Are a Single Parent,
Effective Parenting, Beyond Widowhood, and Losing
Someone Close. His journal After Loss was selected by
Reader’s Digest as their featured condensed book in May 1994. He is a
contributing author to The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in
the United States and Marriage and Family in a Changing Society and
the coauthor of Straight Talk About Death and Dying. Most recently he
has written Great Teaching: What Matters Most in Helping Students Succeed
and coauthored A Compass for the Classroom with noted author Noah ben
Shea.
His professional interests lie in teacher education, international education, teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), and researching nonviolent classroom interventions. Recently Dr. Bob was named a Fulbright Scholar, and he served as Fulbright Professor at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, where he developed a new interdisciplinary course called A Culture of Violence: U.S. and International Perspectives. In 2003 he served as a delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Conference on Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding. Dr. Bob resides with his family in northern Vermont.
Last revised: September 16, 2006
All material on this webpage is copyright 2006, 2007 by Robert C. Di Giulio, Ph.D.