Reality sets in for all of us. As schools prepare for a new year of instruction, administrators are busy deciding what pointless professional development their teachers will need to face students in the fall. OK, that may be a little bit of editorializing by this particular author as I found professional development to often be pointless and not the least bit helpful to my needs. They are often packaged by companies that want to make a buck, and they tend to be canned in such a way that they are addressing only new teachers. Or they are intended to address research-based needs nationwide and do little to consider local or individual needs within a school. And even though they address research-based needs, they themselves are not research-based.
I try to break those patterns when I address teachers. I want training to be upbeat and positive. I always want it to be worth their time. I know what teachers are thinking as they approach the training: they would rather be preparing materials and lessons. They would rather be preparing their classrooms.
When I discovered Fred Jones' Positive Classroom Discipline and Positive Classroom Instruction while pursuing my Master's degree, suddenly things made more sense to me. I had read what Harry Wong said, adopting the Assertive Discipline approach to things, but things were left lacking when I approached my classroom with it. Positive Discipline and Instruction were more meaningful and useful for me. And there is comfort in the fact that Assertive Discipline is still not thrown out the window with Jones' approach: those things are still in the back pocket and ready to be used as a backup plan.
In addition, Assertive Discipline takes the teacher's mental health into account, keeping him/her calm. It also keeps students on their toes, wondering what is going through the teacher's head and s/he breathes deeply throughout the process of training a child. Teachers tend to invest their own health in stressful situations throughout the day, and they shouldn't have to. Perhaps we can do some good at Neosho Christian School with this day of training, one month from today.
On top of it all, I'm going to add some Resilience Training to the mix. It will blend well to help teachers (and principal) pass on some important methods to students who feel offended or bullied.