Classroom Solutions

My plan for my first year of teaching is to laminate the list of interventions in this chapter. :) This is a great tool for teachers because it's so easy to get frustated and deal with misbehaviors in the wrong way. A great quote from this chapter is "No technique can be effective if it is not delivered with genuine passion." I believe that if the student can feel your passion, they will stick with you and change their behavior. I particularly like the order the strategies were in, working their way to more serious interventions. I've noticed that enforceable statements have worked the best for me. I would've liked to have tried the "giving an appointment" strategy in student teaching. I think that would make the student really take ownership to the behavior. Overall, I thought this was a great book and I would definitely recommend reading it before student teaching.

Chapter Fifteen

My favorite part of this whole book is that there are so many examples. And this chapter was an example in itself showing how a school implemented the love and logic belief system. One piece of advice that stood out to me was "Use thinking words instead of fighting words." If you can make this an automatic reaction, I think it would make a huge difference. Some kids come to school just waiting to argue and fight with the teacher or other students. If those students don't get the same "fighting back" response, they will most likely change their behavior. And you're not just ignoring the problem, you're giving them the power to change their behavior instead of being forced.

The "time-out room" surprised me. My first thought was who was going to be in the room supervising all day every day? I understand that students need a cool down period, but if a student is angry they probably won't be heading straight for the time-out room. I'm sure they'll be slowly making pit stops along the way. Also, I don't think they specified how long the students were supposed to stay in the time-out room. In the previous chapter, the authors discussed the negative sides of detention and I don't see this as very different from detention.

Chapter Fourteen

I really enjoyed this chapter because even though I knew that the systems approach was less effective, I thought they did a great job of explaining why. This chapter also went back and touched on the key concepts of the love and logic method. "The Tale of Two Teachers" gave a great example of love and logic. When the studnets in my class forgot their homework, they had to stay in at recess to finish it. This meant that the teacher had to make another copy and I think the students took it as more time to procrastinate. If they were playing and having fun at home, they knew they could always do it the next day at school. It was so frustrating because I would have at least 5 students forget or just not do their homework each week. I wish I would have used this method instead of going through the trouble of always making more copies. I think it would make the students more responsible if they knew they would just get a zero. But it is so important to use empathy during this stage because I could see a couple of my students not turning in homework just because they got a zero last time and they think the teacher dislikes them.