Posts tagged “mentoring”
May 13, 2018 1 Comment

Look Into the Discipline Mirror

It wasn’t lost on me that my last blog post, Aiming for Discipline Instead of Punishment, used the word discipline rather freely.  This was not a big deal to many of you. For you the title made sense and alerted readers to the content of the post. To others of you with a Choice Theory background, though, the word discipline may have stood out to you. If it did, just know that it stood out to me, too.*

A brochure Glasser created in the mid-70s that described his 10 Steps to Discipline.

The reason it stood out to us Choice theorists is that, beginning around 1990, William Glasser came to reject the idea of discipline as it was being applied in schools. In fact, he came to the point where he flat out stated that he no longer believed in school discipline programs, including his own.*  Yet here I am tossing the word around like that never happened.

William Glasser, 1977

Drawing on portions of the Glasser biography – William Glasser: Champion of Choice (2014) – it is clear that he saw discipline programs as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Noting the key elements of Reality Therapy and Choice Theory, and also of the compelling ideas of W. Edwards Deming,* the biography describes how –

In the spirit of Reality Therapy, schools needed to place a high premium on supportive connections; according to Choice Theory schools needed to recognize that an individual is motivated to meet his or her needs in the best possible way at any given moment; and according to Deming, schools needed to relinquish the habit of coercing and forcing students to do school work and behave themselves. So important were these elements, especially the last element, Glasser would write The Quality School wherein he described the importance of managing students without coercion. He would later credit Deming with leading him to write The Quality School. The point is that as a result of these insights he began to disassociate himself from school discipline programs. “I was trying to get people to think in terms of preventing discipline problems,” he later explained, “and if I focused on discipline problems, I, in a sense, would be admitting that they’re going to happen, that they’re inevitable.” pgs. 296, 297

Dr. William Glasser (1990)

For Glasser, the focus had to be on the system, not on the student. Creative and committed efforts must be put into prevention of misbehavior that doesn’t rely on punishment. In one of his memos to his institute members he wrote that –

I believe that teachers are getting the wrong message: focus on the student’s misbehavior, not on the system. No matter how you do it, when you focus specifically on what a child is doing wrong, instead of putting all your effort into improving your relationship with that child, it is unlikely that the child will ever put you into his or her Quality World. pg. 311

And a short time later he wrote that –

I believe that discipline programs are stimulus-response based and focus on changing students rather than changing the system from stimulus-response to Choice Theory. I believe it is impossible for any school that focuses on discipline to become a Quality School. pg. 314

So now you may see why the word discipline should get our attention.

It is interesting to think about the origin and use of the word discipline. To do so is to look into a special mirror – a mirror that reveals your deepest management beliefs. For instance, you may see the word discipline and quickly think of definitions that hearken back centuries – definitions like penitential chastisement or punishment or treatment that corrects or punishes. Discipline from this definition family has everything to do with manipulating behavior through threats, discomfort, and even pain.

Hearkening back even further, though, is the word disciple, the root from which discipline comes. From this root, discipline is about instruction given, about teaching, and about knowledge. It is about mentoring and training. It is about a relationship and patient tutoring. Discipline, when seen through the lens of this definition family, becomes an act that is personal and supportive.

Discipline = Teaching and Mentoring Built on a Positive Relationship

It may be that your life so far, saturated in stimulus-response ways of being, has you seeing discipline as strategic manipulation, a necessary coercion in a world that operates according to external control. But as the two definition families remind us, there is another way. There is a discipline that focuses on relationship, teaching, and mentoring. Which do you want?

* I included this explanation at the end of the Aiming for Discipline post, which I want to say again here – Some of you may be like me and prefer the word management rather than discipline when talking about student behavior. However, the discipline word is the one I see presently being used in the educational literature. It may be that Choice Theory authors can in the future point out the importance of using the word management when referring to classroom behavior.

* Click here to link to a quick overview of what used to be Glasser’s Ten Step Discipline Model.

* Click here to access Deming’s 14 Management Points.

 
March 28, 2014 2 Comments

The Best Version of Themselves

Glasser received an honorary doctorate at the same time I received my Ed.D.

Glasser received an honorary doctorate at the same time I received my Ed.D.

I began the last blog with “The Glasser biography is printed and is now available!” It turns out it would have been more accurate if I had left it at “The Glasser biography is printed.” I have the book. It looks great! But I still can’t tell you how you can get a copy. Nothing yet on the publisher’s website or on the wglasserbooks.com website. The Better Plan followers will be among the first to know about how to get the book. Stay tuned.

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photo 1

I have continued to think about some of the things Glasser suggested in one of his unpublished articles that I posted as part of the March 19 blog. For instance, in reference to how parents should guide their children he wrote that –

“What we should be sensitive to from early on is what they want. Then as much as we can, rather than to give them things we should make an effort to take the additional time to teach them how to satisfy their needs themselves.”

The idea of taking the time to teach kids how to satisfy their own needs has made a real impression on me. This process is about honoring your child as a fellow human being with unique dreams and goals of his/her own. It is about respecting their ideas and helping them achieve them. It is a process full of love and compassion.

It was helpful to me that Glasser went on to explain that as parents we can –

“Assure them from the time that they can comprehend it that we believe in the way we live our lives, but that our way is not necessarily the best way, the only way or the way for them. And as our way changes, as it will, show them that we can be tolerant of ourselves as we change. From this they will learn that they too have a way but that it is not the only way and that they should be tolerant of themselves as they change.”

Is such an honest and candid relationship possible between parent and child?

I especially thought about the effect such a relationship would have on a child’s spiritual journey. What would it be like for parents to express how much they believe in the way they live their lives, but somehow to admit that their way may not be the only way for the child? What if parents modeled an authentic and real connection with Jesus, and invited their children to be a part of that connection, yet somehow did so non-coercively? Too many children are growing up to be screwed-up adults, unclear regarding their purpose in life and spiritually unhappy. To a great extent I think this has a lot to do with children experiencing the opposite of what Glasser described. Instead of focusing on creating and maintaining their own spiritual lives and then inviting, inspiring, and persuading their children to join them, parents are leading halfway religious lives and then trying to force their children to do the same. Criticizing, nagging, threatening and punishing are frequently present in this approach.

Glasser believed that if we can foster a relationship with our children that honors and respects them as fellow human beings –

“ .  .  . especially to refrain from criticizing them, we have a chance, even a good chance (there are no sure things in this delicate process) to enjoy the reward which is a child who loves us, respects us, and enjoys spending time with us.”

And I would add that more adults would turn out well-adjusted and mentally healthy.

photo 2

As I considered Glasser’s thoughts on parenting I was reminded about something I read in Ted and Nancy Sizer’s book, The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract (1999). Describing the role schools can play in students’ lives, they wrote that “We must insist on a high school design which will help all the high school’s people to reach for the best version of themselves.” p. xiii

I like the idea that we can help children and students to reach for the best version of themselves. I like the phrase “best version of themselves” a lot.

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Classroom Application:

In the absence of intervention, students will come to see their teacher as the judge and chief evaluator. Students turn in assignments and hope that their teacher will accept it, or maybe even like it. Somehow the school system has created a divide between what students do and their own connection to that skill or product.

Teachers can begin to restore this connection between pupil and product by changing their own role in the classroom. Whenever appropriate, a teacher can help students evaluate aspects of their assignments by saying or asking things like –

Tell me what you like about what you have created.

What part of this assignment was the most satisfying for you?

What grade would you give yourself on this assignment and why?

What strategies did you use that helped you complete this assignment?

Teachers can still make evaluative statements; we just need to do less of it. We need to share the evaluation process with students. This sharing can be done informally, like the sample questions above, or it can be done formally where student self-evaluation becomes part of the project rubric.

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“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”    Stanley Kubrick

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