Classroom Discipline In American Schools

Breaks the silence regarding modes of classroom control, bringing contemporary political, moral, and democratic perspectives to bear on the issues.

This book provides a pragmatic, easy-to-follow blueprint for Positive Behavior Support Systems (PBSS) implementation that integrates academics, instruction, and achievement with discipline, behavior management, and student self-management.

The basic purpose of this text is to provide teachers with a practical guide for understanding and improving classroom management. Case studies included in the publication represent problems and issues common to urban, suburban, and rural school districts and personnel. Chapter 1, which focuses on broad perspectives on discipline, provides a historical overview and definitions, followed by discussions of regionalism and discipline, violence in the schools, and attitudes toward educators' use of corporal punishment. Chapter 2 views discipline from the perspectives of theory, research, and practice. Discussion concerns tips for getting off to a good start in classroom management; organizational and instructional procedures; the process of understanding student needs and behaviors; development of self-discipline; and culturally different students. Case studies from early childhood and elementary education settings and from middle school, junior high school, and senior high school settings are presented in chapters 3 and 4. Forty-seven references are cited, and an appendix lists 17 general resources as well as selected resource materials on self-development, discipline, and classroom management. (RH)

This edited volume fills a critical void by providing the most current and authoritative information on what is known about disciplinary disparities. School exclusion—out-of-school suspension and expulsion in particular—remains a substantial component of discipline in our nation’s schools, and those consequences continue to fall disproportionally on certain groups of learners. The negative consequences of frequent and inequitable use of school exclusion are substantial, including higher rates of academic failure, dropout, and contact with the juvenile justice system. As educators, policymakers, community leaders, and other youth-serving organizations begin the difficult work of creating more equitable school disciplinary systems, the need for effective disparity-reducing alternatives could not be more important. Drawing on the multi-year ground-breaking work of the Discipline Disparities Collaborative, the chapters in this book provide cutting edge knowledge supporting a new national imperative to eliminate race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation-based disciplinary disparities.

Spare the Rodtraces the history of discipline in schools and its ever increasing integration with prison and policing, ultimately arguing for an approach to discipline that aligns with the moral community that schools could and should be. In Spare the Rod, historian Campbell F. Scribner and philosopher Bryan R. Warnick investigate the history and philosophy of America’s punishment and discipline practices in schools. To delve into this controversial subject, they first ask questions of meaning. How have concepts of discipline and punishment in schools changed over time? What purposes are they supposed to serve? And what can they tell us about our assumptions about education? They then explore the justifications. Are public school educators ever justified in punishing or disciplining students? Are discipline and punishment necessary for students’ moral education, or do they fundamentally have no place in education at all? If some form of punishment is justified in schools, what ethical guidelines should be followed? The authors argue that as schools have grown increasingly bureaucratic over the last century, formalizing disciplinary systems and shifting from physical punishments to forms of spatial or structural punishment such as in-school suspension, school discipline has not only come to resemble the operation of prisons or policing, but has grown increasingly integrated with those institutions. These changes and structures are responsible for the school-to-prison pipeline. They show that these shifts disregard the unique status of schools as spaces of moral growth and community oversight, and are incompatible with the developmental environment of education. What we need, they argue, is an approach to discipline and punishment that fits with the sort of moral community that schools could and should be.

ORDER 10 OR MORE OF ANY ITEM AND RECEIVE A 20% DISCOUNT! Preventing Classroom Discipline Problems is a handbook, with its own self-improvement exercises, for all the skills needed to implement successful classroom management and eliminate discipline problems. It features a unique training video and CD both cued to the book for: education workshops, administrators, teachers, and education students. The video can be shown at faculty meetings, education workshops, classes, etc., and the CD can be used for independent training at each student or teachers' private computer. With access to Online, Confidential Help, and a professional seminar, from the author, a national consultant on Classroom Management, at: http://www.ClassroomManagementOnline.com/ The video/CD demonstrates both the ineffective and effective teacher with real classroom discipline problems. These scenes are spontaneously acted out by real teachers and student-teachers. Instead of following a written script, they act out how their real disruptive students would actually behave, and what they, the teachers, would actually say in these classroom situations. If "the teacher" in the scene does something that is ineffective, what you will see is how their real students would actually respond. If, on the other hand, the teacher is effective, then you'll see how their real students would actually change their behavior. These materials (book, video, CD) do not just help with handling discipline problems, but also help educators diagnose the causes of discipline problems, and thereby help with the prevention of disruptive behavior (rather than just controlling discipline problems) for more effective classroom management. All the suggestions can be implemented without asking educators to change their personal teaching styles, and without the need for a school to revamp its entire program (as some discipline programs require). The book and video/CD can be used by individual teachers and administrators who wish to cut down on referrals to the of