Brain-Compatible Discipline with Dignity
Brain-Compatible Discipline with Dignity By Dr. Gerard Evanski
We know Discipline with Dignity works. We know that in the past decade, an amazing amount of brain research has been done. What does Discipline with Dignity have to do with the brain research? How will the latest in brain imaging technology help me become a better teacher? The answer is one word--"Why!".
Discipline with Dignity is a comprehensive classroom management discipline philosophy that encapsulates a set of beliefs and actions that many master teachers have intuitively always done, because they knew it worked. The wonderful gift that the brain research is giving educators is the "why". For the first time in history, thanks to knew brain imaging technology such as PET scans and MRI, educators have ways to look into the organ that we are all teaching to—the brain, and see how it functions. These brain images have given us the information to know WHY Discipline with Dignity works.
Brain-imaging technology has allowed researchers to see the brain under positive conditions of high challenge, low threat, and under threatening conditions. The brain scans clearly show that the areas of the brain responsible for long-term memory and critical thinking are not accessible during periods of threat. One of the most powerful tenets of recent brain research is the unequivocal finding that a classroom must be a place free from fear and threat.
The paradox that exists for many educators is the need to keep firm discipline and order in the classroom, while at the same time, keeping the environment free from fear and threat. Discipline with Dignity has a multitude of techniques for solving this paradox!
To understand how "Discipline with Dignity" can achieve this goal, it is useful to refer to a model of the brain known as the Triune brain model, first developed by Dr. Paul MacLean (1949).
Dr. MacLean theorized that the human brain represents three distinct parts, which he labeled the reptilian brain, the mid-brain, and the neocortex. According to MacLean, these three brains developed at different evolutionary stages in human history.
The most primitive, the Reptilian Brain, is the seat of instincts, territoriality and reflexes. The Mid-brain is the home of emotions and long-term memory. The neocortex is the latest evolutionary improvement. This area of the brain is approximately ¼ inch thick covering the outer layer of the brain. This is quite literally the "thinking cap", and is the area where problem solving, creativity and all higher-order thinking skills take place. As educators, this is the area we need students to be able to access.
The human brain has an amazing capacity for learning new information and making novel connections with stored information. The human brain contains over 10 billion specialized nerve cells (neurons) each capable of making up to 50,000 connections as meaning is detected (Sylwester, 1995). Researchers have found that when threat and fear are relatively absent, the brain appears to be able to engage in the more complex processes found in the neocortex. However, when faced with threat, little of this staggering learning potential can be utilized.
Researchers such as LeDoux (1996) Spielberger (1972), Hart (1975), Lozanov (1979) and Nadel (1984) have concluded that under conditions where fear and threat are present, the brain does move away from the neocortex and into the Mid-brain or Reptilian Brain. To borrow a term from researcher Leslie Hart, the brain "downshifts" from the neocortex to the lower brain areas. In other words, a student is not going to come up with a rational plan for solving his problems if he is still breathing heavily from having a fight. He is using a different part of his brain, and thinking emotionally, or with his fight or flight response. Only when he feels safe will he be able to access the rational parts of his brain, and be able to make a plan to avoid this problem in the future.
Dr. Richard Curwin and Dr. Allen Mendler have been sharing for over a decade the philosophy and techniques they have developed that answer this very paradox. Practitioners of Discipline with Dignity are able to maintain control in the classroom and teach students to behave responsibility, while creating and maintaining an atmosphere most conducive to the human brain’s natural tendencies to learn.
How then, can educators deal effectively with discipline problems, while continuing to keep the students able to access the power of their neocortex, so learning can take place? Curwin and Mendler suggest that the most effective discipline technique is to prevent discipline problems before they occur.
Theory based on the work of Abraham Maslow, William Glasser, Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler has convincingly shown that to survive and thrive in the world, human beings have basic needs that must be met, If these needs are not met in positive ways, students will behave in ways that meet these basic needs, even if those behaviors are not socially acceptable. Discipline with Dignity practitioners meet student’s needs and prevent discipline problems by designing the classroom environment and instruction to prevent discipline problems before they occur. Basic psychological needs include needs of safety, belonging and significance, power and autonomy, and competence and mastery.
Safety
To have a brain-compatible classroom free from fear or threat, students must feel physically and mentally safe. For Discipline with Dignity practitioners, this includes feeling physically safe, as well as mentally and emotionally safe.
Physical safety is an absolutely non-negotiable tenet of a Discipline with Dignity classroom. The overarching value in the classroom underlying every principle, rule and action is that "we are a safe classroom". Any form of threatening physical contact that makes students feel unsafe cannot be tolerated. If physically threatened, the human brain is programmed to "downshift" into our less sophisticated, instinctual portions of the brain, where "fight or flight" instincts dominate.
An important component of mental and emotional safety is that the classroom must have predictability. Teachers must develop and teach clear procedures and rules, with clearly defined limits and predictable consequences. Students feel more psychologically safe, and feel less stress if they know what the boundaries of acceptable and non-acceptable behavior are, and if they have predictable consequences for unacceptable behavior.
The human brain is incredible at making patterns. It takes in the chaos of the environment, and creates patterns in order to make sense of the world. Having predictability in classroom procedures, rules and consequences satisfies that need in the brain by allowing it to form a pattern of how interaction should take place in that classroom.
Belonging/Significance
To have students feel a sense of belonging and significance, Discipline with Dignity suggests that educators must create a feeling of warmth in their classroom. Warmth is created and sustained by many small behaviors that occur constantly. For example, simple techniques such as greeting students at the door or in the hallway, calling students by name, or giving compliments can have a tremendous positive impact on students. Educators should keep an eye out for students who appear to be having a difficult day, and express their concern and offer support.
Another technique to have students feel a sense of belonging is to gather information about the students. During the first days of school, teachers can survey the students to learn specifics about them, their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes, special hobbies, successes etc. That information can be invaluable to help plan assignments and build relationships, using such techniques as the 2 by 10 process, explained below, which is especially useful with difficult students.
As Richard Curwin stated, "The most difficult part of all discipline is welcoming the student we wish wasn’t there". The 2 by 10 process involves identifying students who represent the greatest challenge in class, and interacting with them two minutes a day for two weeks. Short, non-threatening, positive interactions based on the students interests can build a trusting relationship over time, lower the students stress and fear, with the long-term benefit of increased learning.
Another important technique for creating a sense of belonging, while at the same time reducing stress and increasing learning is laughter. A growing body of research says that when you and your students are having fun, you receive the dual benefit of building positive relationships with your students, while at the same time increasing their overall academic achievement (Cousins, Fry, Stone).
Power/Autonomy
An important finding of brain research has been that low-achieving students most often experience a feeling of helplessness. This helplessness is characterized by the feeling that they have no control over their lives. Researchers such as Breier (1988) have shown that when learners have control over their environment, it improves their attitude and learning.
To meet their need for power and autonomy, students must understand that the control of their lives is not outside themselves. Rather, control for their thoughts, and therefore their actions, rests entirely within themselves. To get students to move their locus of control from an external to an internal focus, Curwin and Mendler suggest creating a democratic atmosphere in the classroom.
Citizenship in a democratic society requires that students make good choices. To create a democratic society in the classroom, educators provide students with a voice in the classroom, and choice. To accomplish this, educators may have students assist in developing classroom rules. Student involvement in developing rules increases the commitment they feel to conform to those rules, and also makes them feel a sense of control over their environment. All rules need to support learning and conform to school policy, and the teacher has veto power over rules that don’t fit the criteria.
Another effective technique is to problem solve as a class. Rather than the teacher unilaterally deciding what should be done about a problem, the teacher can empower the students. Students define the problem, discuss the positive and negative aspects of a specific problem, generate solutions and select the best one.
Competence and Mastery
Students need to feel that they are capable at school. If students perceive themselves to be incompetent either academically or socially, behavior problems may result, and learning will not occur. Opportunities for success must abound in a brain-compatible atmosphere. This can be done by building on a sense of accomplishment and success, focusing on the positive, and teaching skills for recognizing and resolving conflict.
The first technique is to build a sense of accomplishment and success in each student. Students who feel their competence is being threatened, especially in front of peers, often react aggressively, and move out of their neomammilian brain. Focusing on the strengths of each student is an excellent way to honor each student’s individuality in the classroom. Educators should become familiar with the needs of different learners in the context of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, and different learning styles.
In addition, as illustrated earlier, stress can have the effect of inhibiting the brain’s ability to think. To reduce stress and increase the opportunity for success, teachers could give cues to students who "freeze" under pressure. For example, in a private conversation, the teacher and student could agree that the teacher will give a visual clue, such as standing by the student’s desk, before the student will be asked to answer a question.
Educators should also focus on the positive in each student, especially when it is difficult to find. This is not to be interpreted as not giving students corrective feedback, or ignoring mistakes. It is a different way of looking at the same coin. Rather than putting the number wrong at the top of a paper, the teacher could congratulate the student on the questions done correctly, and offer them a choice if they would like to redo the questions they answered incorrectly.
Teaching skills for recognizing and resolving conflict can be a very powerful preventative technique. Many students who exhibit chronic behavior come from homes filled with rage and dysfunction. Very often, the only avenue they may have of learning to resolve conflicts in a manner other than what they witness at home, is in the classroom. Teachers who take time to model alternatives to aggression, such as using "I" messages to communicate feelings without putting blame, or teaching students conflict resolution skills, help those students for a lifetime, and save countless hours of their own time dealing with conflicts one-on-one.
Teachers can also provide positive channels for students such as a classroom suggestion box or journal writing with the teacher to express their concerns, frustration or even anger, to recognize potential conflict before it escalates.
Conclusion
Brain research indicates that having an environment free from fear and threat is an essential component of an optimal learning environment. Using the Discipline with Dignity techniques, each student’s basic psychological needs can be met, thereby preventing many discipline problems before they start.
Contributed by Dr. Gerard Evanski, Assistant Principal at Erie Elementary School, Clinton Township, Michigan.
We know Discipline with Dignity works. We know that in the past decade, an amazing amount of brain research has been done. What does Discipline with Dignity have to do with the brain research? How will the latest in brain imaging technology help me become a better teacher? The answer is one word--"Why!".
Discipline with Dignity is a comprehensive classroom management discipline philosophy that encapsulates a set of beliefs and actions that many master teachers have intuitively always done, because they knew it worked. The wonderful gift that the brain research is giving educators is the "why". For the first time in history, thanks to knew brain imaging technology such as PET scans and MRI, educators have ways to look into the organ that we are all teaching to—the brain, and see how it functions. These brain images have given us the information to know WHY Discipline with Dignity works.
Brain-imaging technology has allowed researchers to see the brain under positive conditions of high challenge, low threat, and under threatening conditions. The brain scans clearly show that the areas of the brain responsible for long-term memory and critical thinking are not accessible during periods of threat. One of the most powerful tenets of recent brain research is the unequivocal finding that a classroom must be a place free from fear and threat.
The paradox that exists for many educators is the need to keep firm discipline and order in the classroom, while at the same time, keeping the environment free from fear and threat. Discipline with Dignity has a multitude of techniques for solving this paradox!
To understand how "Discipline with Dignity" can achieve this goal, it is useful to refer to a model of the brain known as the Triune brain model, first developed by Dr. Paul MacLean (1949).
Dr. MacLean theorized that the human brain represents three distinct parts, which he labeled the reptilian brain, the mid-brain, and the neocortex. According to MacLean, these three brains developed at different evolutionary stages in human history.
The most primitive, the Reptilian Brain, is the seat of instincts, territoriality and reflexes. The Mid-brain is the home of emotions and long-term memory. The neocortex is the latest evolutionary improvement. This area of the brain is approximately ¼ inch thick covering the outer layer of the brain. This is quite literally the "thinking cap", and is the area where problem solving, creativity and all higher-order thinking skills take place. As educators, this is the area we need students to be able to access.
The human brain has an amazing capacity for learning new information and making novel connections with stored information. The human brain contains over 10 billion specialized nerve cells (neurons) each capable of making up to 50,000 connections as meaning is detected (Sylwester, 1995). Researchers have found that when threat and fear are relatively absent, the brain appears to be able to engage in the more complex processes found in the neocortex. However, when faced with threat, little of this staggering learning potential can be utilized.
Researchers such as LeDoux (1996) Spielberger (1972), Hart (1975), Lozanov (1979) and Nadel (1984) have concluded that under conditions where fear and threat are present, the brain does move away from the neocortex and into the Mid-brain or Reptilian Brain. To borrow a term from researcher Leslie Hart, the brain "downshifts" from the neocortex to the lower brain areas. In other words, a student is not going to come up with a rational plan for solving his problems if he is still breathing heavily from having a fight. He is using a different part of his brain, and thinking emotionally, or with his fight or flight response. Only when he feels safe will he be able to access the rational parts of his brain, and be able to make a plan to avoid this problem in the future.
Dr. Richard Curwin and Dr. Allen Mendler have been sharing for over a decade the philosophy and techniques they have developed that answer this very paradox. Practitioners of Discipline with Dignity are able to maintain control in the classroom and teach students to behave responsibility, while creating and maintaining an atmosphere most conducive to the human brain’s natural tendencies to learn.
How then, can educators deal effectively with discipline problems, while continuing to keep the students able to access the power of their neocortex, so learning can take place? Curwin and Mendler suggest that the most effective discipline technique is to prevent discipline problems before they occur.
Theory based on the work of Abraham Maslow, William Glasser, Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler has convincingly shown that to survive and thrive in the world, human beings have basic needs that must be met, If these needs are not met in positive ways, students will behave in ways that meet these basic needs, even if those behaviors are not socially acceptable. Discipline with Dignity practitioners meet student’s needs and prevent discipline problems by designing the classroom environment and instruction to prevent discipline problems before they occur. Basic psychological needs include needs of safety, belonging and significance, power and autonomy, and competence and mastery.
Safety
To have a brain-compatible classroom free from fear or threat, students must feel physically and mentally safe. For Discipline with Dignity practitioners, this includes feeling physically safe, as well as mentally and emotionally safe.
Physical safety is an absolutely non-negotiable tenet of a Discipline with Dignity classroom. The overarching value in the classroom underlying every principle, rule and action is that "we are a safe classroom". Any form of threatening physical contact that makes students feel unsafe cannot be tolerated. If physically threatened, the human brain is programmed to "downshift" into our less sophisticated, instinctual portions of the brain, where "fight or flight" instincts dominate.
An important component of mental and emotional safety is that the classroom must have predictability. Teachers must develop and teach clear procedures and rules, with clearly defined limits and predictable consequences. Students feel more psychologically safe, and feel less stress if they know what the boundaries of acceptable and non-acceptable behavior are, and if they have predictable consequences for unacceptable behavior.
The human brain is incredible at making patterns. It takes in the chaos of the environment, and creates patterns in order to make sense of the world. Having predictability in classroom procedures, rules and consequences satisfies that need in the brain by allowing it to form a pattern of how interaction should take place in that classroom.
Belonging/Significance
To have students feel a sense of belonging and significance, Discipline with Dignity suggests that educators must create a feeling of warmth in their classroom. Warmth is created and sustained by many small behaviors that occur constantly. For example, simple techniques such as greeting students at the door or in the hallway, calling students by name, or giving compliments can have a tremendous positive impact on students. Educators should keep an eye out for students who appear to be having a difficult day, and express their concern and offer support.
Another technique to have students feel a sense of belonging is to gather information about the students. During the first days of school, teachers can survey the students to learn specifics about them, their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes, special hobbies, successes etc. That information can be invaluable to help plan assignments and build relationships, using such techniques as the 2 by 10 process, explained below, which is especially useful with difficult students.
As Richard Curwin stated, "The most difficult part of all discipline is welcoming the student we wish wasn’t there". The 2 by 10 process involves identifying students who represent the greatest challenge in class, and interacting with them two minutes a day for two weeks. Short, non-threatening, positive interactions based on the students interests can build a trusting relationship over time, lower the students stress and fear, with the long-term benefit of increased learning.
Another important technique for creating a sense of belonging, while at the same time reducing stress and increasing learning is laughter. A growing body of research says that when you and your students are having fun, you receive the dual benefit of building positive relationships with your students, while at the same time increasing their overall academic achievement (Cousins, Fry, Stone).
Power/Autonomy
An important finding of brain research has been that low-achieving students most often experience a feeling of helplessness. This helplessness is characterized by the feeling that they have no control over their lives. Researchers such as Breier (1988) have shown that when learners have control over their environment, it improves their attitude and learning.
To meet their need for power and autonomy, students must understand that the control of their lives is not outside themselves. Rather, control for their thoughts, and therefore their actions, rests entirely within themselves. To get students to move their locus of control from an external to an internal focus, Curwin and Mendler suggest creating a democratic atmosphere in the classroom.
Citizenship in a democratic society requires that students make good choices. To create a democratic society in the classroom, educators provide students with a voice in the classroom, and choice. To accomplish this, educators may have students assist in developing classroom rules. Student involvement in developing rules increases the commitment they feel to conform to those rules, and also makes them feel a sense of control over their environment. All rules need to support learning and conform to school policy, and the teacher has veto power over rules that don’t fit the criteria.
Another effective technique is to problem solve as a class. Rather than the teacher unilaterally deciding what should be done about a problem, the teacher can empower the students. Students define the problem, discuss the positive and negative aspects of a specific problem, generate solutions and select the best one.
Competence and Mastery
Students need to feel that they are capable at school. If students perceive themselves to be incompetent either academically or socially, behavior problems may result, and learning will not occur. Opportunities for success must abound in a brain-compatible atmosphere. This can be done by building on a sense of accomplishment and success, focusing on the positive, and teaching skills for recognizing and resolving conflict.
The first technique is to build a sense of accomplishment and success in each student. Students who feel their competence is being threatened, especially in front of peers, often react aggressively, and move out of their neomammilian brain. Focusing on the strengths of each student is an excellent way to honor each student’s individuality in the classroom. Educators should become familiar with the needs of different learners in the context of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, and different learning styles.
In addition, as illustrated earlier, stress can have the effect of inhibiting the brain’s ability to think. To reduce stress and increase the opportunity for success, teachers could give cues to students who "freeze" under pressure. For example, in a private conversation, the teacher and student could agree that the teacher will give a visual clue, such as standing by the student’s desk, before the student will be asked to answer a question.
Educators should also focus on the positive in each student, especially when it is difficult to find. This is not to be interpreted as not giving students corrective feedback, or ignoring mistakes. It is a different way of looking at the same coin. Rather than putting the number wrong at the top of a paper, the teacher could congratulate the student on the questions done correctly, and offer them a choice if they would like to redo the questions they answered incorrectly.
Teaching skills for recognizing and resolving conflict can be a very powerful preventative technique. Many students who exhibit chronic behavior come from homes filled with rage and dysfunction. Very often, the only avenue they may have of learning to resolve conflicts in a manner other than what they witness at home, is in the classroom. Teachers who take time to model alternatives to aggression, such as using "I" messages to communicate feelings without putting blame, or teaching students conflict resolution skills, help those students for a lifetime, and save countless hours of their own time dealing with conflicts one-on-one.
Teachers can also provide positive channels for students such as a classroom suggestion box or journal writing with the teacher to express their concerns, frustration or even anger, to recognize potential conflict before it escalates.
Conclusion
Brain research indicates that having an environment free from fear and threat is an essential component of an optimal learning environment. Using the Discipline with Dignity techniques, each student’s basic psychological needs can be met, thereby preventing many discipline problems before they start.
Contributed by Dr. Gerard Evanski, Assistant Principal at Erie Elementary School, Clinton Township, Michigan.
posted by irondequoit @ 9:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home