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Lesson Five: You’ve Got to Have a Plan
Chapter 1
Discipline Plans
“Have a plan for everything.”
—Coach Bear Bryant
Quoting a football coach to begin this chapter is very appropriate. If you want to succeed in the game, you have to have a plan. The same is true of parenting. If you want to succeed in the game of discipline, you have to have a plan.
In this section, we will look at how to create a game plan for effective discipline at home. With this plan, parents and children can agree what behaviors are and are not acceptable.
Douglas Naylor, director of Dr. Glasser’s Educator Training Center, often uses football analogies when talking to teachers about discipline. He makes a good point: Dealing with children and discipline should be more like coaching and guiding and less like coercing and demanding. Coaching and guiding assume a plan that you will use to lead the team to success.
If you do not plan, if you just react as situations present themselves, you are going to continually have problems. If you are reactive instead of proactive, you are going to find yourself losing your temper and making problems worse instead of solving them.
Without a plan, you are relying on the limbic system, the emotional part of your brain, to direct your behavior. In other words, you are letting your emotions get the best of you.
On the other hand, if you have a plan, if you have thought about what you need to do when there are problems, then you use the cerebral cortex (the thinking part of your brain) to tell you what to do. This is much more likely to get positive results than getting emotional and yelling and screaming or whining and nagging.
I could have started this chapter with an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is trite but true. As any teacher will tell you, it is much preferable to spend your time preventing discipline problems than it is to waste valuable instructional time quelling classroom disruptions.
This is why most teachers have a classroom discipline plan. They have thought about their needs and the types of student behaviors that will help them get their needs met and help let them do their job. They have also thought about their students' needs and have realized that for learning to take place, they must gain their students’ cooperation.
There are, however, effective and ineffective ways to utilize classroom discipline plans. An ineffective discipline plan is directed toward trying to control children's behavior. An effective discipline plan is directed toward teaching children to control their own behavior. Let’s look at examples of each of these discipline plans.
An Ineffective Classroom Discipline Plan
This is the type of discipline plan that most authoritarian teachers use. These teachers mistakenly believe that children’s behavior is controlled by external forces, by rewards and punishment. Their classroom discipline plans typically begin with a list of rules that state specific unacceptable behaviors. Then there is a list of punishments (negative consequences) that the teacher will impose every time a student breaks one of the rules. Finally, there is a list of rewards that students can earn by following the rules.
Many teachers use this approach to discipline because it often produces immediate compliance. Students like to get rewards and do not like to receive punishments. Therefore, they follow the rules for a while. This does not teach students about responsibility; it merely gains compliance.
Sooner or later, this ineffective discipline approach will run into problems because it is a controlling approach that frustrates children’s needs for autonomy, self-control, power, and freedom. As this frustration grows, discipline problems will erupt, and the discipline plan will cease to work.
One of the main problems with this ineffective approach is the emphasis on specific, unwanted behaviors. Just imagine writing down all of the unwanted behaviors at home. I tried doing this once and stopped when I got to fifty rules. Attempting to create a list of specific don’t-do-this rules that covers all situations is hopeless.
An Effective Classroom Discipline Plan
An effective discipline plan is much simpler. First of all, rules are not a list of unwanted behaviors (e.g., no hitting, no name-calling, no talking without raising your hand, no eating in the classroom, no running in the classroom, no touching other people’s property, etc.). Rather, an effective discipline plan’s rules state general responsible behaviors (e.g., respect others and their property, be helpful, be friendly, etc.). The emphasis is positive, toward obtaining desired behaviors. Many teachers call these rules life rules because they are applicable in the classroom and in the outside world.
An effective discipline plan does not have punishments. Effective teachers use boundaries or limits instead of threats. These boundaries are always stated as a positive (e.g., if you get your work done, you can go to the game area; if you turn in your homework every day, ten points will be added to your class grade; etc.). With this approach to discipline, there is no need for punishment. This approach has both short- and long-term positive effects, and it is adaptable to use at home. Also, positive consequences that occur are presented as a natural result of appropriate behavior. For example, “If you do this, this good thing will happen” (not “If you do this, I will give you this”) tells children they can determine the positive consequences by the behaviors they choose.
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