QUESTION:
What happens at recess, when as a teacher doing yard duty, most of your school does not know the DwStress levels? Do you explain it to them?

RESPONSE:

Good question!

Firstly, in any teaching situation, it’s simply good practice to employ the three PRINCIPLES of Discipline without Stress: Positivity, Choice and Reflection.

When out on the playground duty, you can make it a habit to:

  • Word things in a positive way–even if the situation itself is one that would be perceived as negative. (“Gee, I know you didn’t mean for this to happen. What went wrong?”)
  • Elicit choices from–or give at least three choices to–a student who is misbehaving.
  • Ask questions to encourage the student to think if what they are doing is actually going to pay off for them in the long run.

It is quite possible to use the steps of the Raise Responsibility System, even if you are working with a youngster who has never been taught the DwStress Hierarchy. Obviously, it’s better to have taught the Hierarchy first but when working with students who are not your own, you can make do!

Phase One: Teaching the Hierarchy
In this particular situation, this step would not be part of the process.

Phase Two: Checking for Understanding
Even when students don’t know about the four behavior levels, you can still ask them to evaluate whether their behavior is at a “high” or “low” level. For example:

  • “Is pushing someone off the slide, a high level–or low level thing to do? ” I find all kids instinctively know what you mean by high and low level!

For a large majority of the children, this type of discussion is all that’s needed to guide them back on track. For some, you might need to calmly ask a few more questions. And for a very few students, you may need to asking increasingly more pointed questions–all the while keeping your own cool!

  • “You said pushing someone down on the playground is a low level thing to do. Can you tell me more about that?”
  • “How do you think these other kids near you feel when they see someone being pushed around like that? What do you think they are thinking?”
  • “Look at ____’s face. How does he feel about being pushed?”
  • Is it easy for you and me, the duty teacher, to get along if you are doing a low level thing out here on the playground? What is the teacher’s job if someone is pushing on the playground?
  • What are our school expectations for people out on the playground? How do we expect people to handle themselves?
  • If you keep hurting your friends, what will likely happen to your friendships?
  • What would it be like on the playground if everyone did what you were doing?

Phase Three: Guided Choices
Of course, there’s no pat formula for this phase so depending on the child and the type or severity of misbehavior, here are some possibilities:

  • Try to help the child choose an alternate activity, or another area to play, or another group to play with.
  • Try to help them come up with a procedure of some sort that would solve the difficulty. Perhaps they need help to find a procedure for sharing, taking turns etc.
  • If something dangerous was happening, you would just have to act to ensure safety for everyone. It wouldn’t be a time for talking at all. Ideally, in such a case, reflection and thinking would follow when things were calmer.

In a case where you need to elicit a consequence, it could be done in a DwStress style by ELICITING the information and consequence from the child.

Here’s the outline of a possible conversation:

  • “What should happen now?”
  • “You told me that ___ probably felt scared when you pushed him down.”
  • “Is there anything you might do now to improve the situation with ____?

Even if your school as a whole does not use elicited consequences, but instead has set rules and consequences, you could still employ a DwStress approach in administering them:

  • “In our school, if people can’t manage themselves out on the playground, what did Mrs. _____ (the principal) say should happen?”
  • “In our school, if someone is hurting other people, what generally happens? Yes, that’s right, they sit on the bench by themselves. Where should you go now?”

If the situation didn’t require a consequence, however you felt that it was likely that the misbehavior might be repeated, you could ELICIT A CONSEQUENCE from the child ahead of time.

  • “I think you’ve got yourself together now, but what if you start feeling mad again and you decide to push again? What should happen then?”

As a DwStress teacher in a school that doesn’t use the approach, you can effectively deal with misbehavior and you can do it in a less punitive manner than someone who simply imposes school consequences. With your understanding of DwStress, you can prompt the child to reflect and come up with their own appropriate consequences for their actions. By doing so, I believe you will be helping them to think carefully about the fact that all of our actions do carry consequences. To me, this is more effective in the long run than having them simply (and narrowly) focus on the consequences the school might impose.

The end outcome might be exactly the same as when a non-DwStress teacher dealt with them, but the process would be different. The student might end up sitting at the office or visiting the principal, just as they would when a non-DwStress teacher dealt with the situation, but hopefully on the way in to the office, the student would be reflecting on having made some poor choices which would be a more pertinent issue than being focused on “the old meanie” who sent them in.

 

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Posted In: E. The RRSystem, Procedures School-wide
posted On: July 22, 2008: 6:38 pm: By Kerry Weisner
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