CH 9 - Creating a Positive Learning Environment

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CH 9 - Creating a Positive Learning Environment
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Creating Positive Learning Environments

• Helps students feel safe and secure
• Enables students to take health risks
• Creates more opportunities for student learning
• Assists with positive personal development

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Harassment

• Verbal teasing, name-calling, threatening, and
  taunting
• Relationship assaults gossip, destroying
  relationships, and exclusion from social
  interactions
• Physical assaults hitting, kicking, shoving, and
  weapons use

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Harassment (Cont.)

• All aspects of harassment have existed among
  youth for generations

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Your Turn

• Think back to when you were in elementary,
  middle, or high school.
• Based on the previous definitions of harassment,
  do you remember harassing, being harassed, or
  watching someone be harassed?
• What do you recall?
• How did it make you feel?

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Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (1999)

• The YRBSS sampled thousands of students in grades
  9-12. Their report is located
  www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss4905a1.htm.

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Findings from YRBSS

• The second leading cause of death among youth
  today remains homicide (18.6).
• More youth today feel unsafe about coming to and
  staying at school than youth from decades ago.
• Approximately 5.2 of youth surveyed missed
  school at some point during the 1999 school year
  because they felt that their safety was
  threatened.

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Verbal Harassment Words Do Hurt

• Verbal harassment may have the following
  consequences
• May leave deep emotional scars on our young
  people.
• May lead to physical violence.
• May negatively affect the recipients self-esteem
  and self-image

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Reasons for Verbal and Physical Harassment

• Bias
• Prejudice
• Hatred
• Jealousy
• Fear
• Ignorance

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What is Positive Discipline?

• Discipline means the training necessary to
  produce or establish a specific pattern of
  behavior, especially training that produces moral
  or mental improvement.
• Positive discipline works to create an inclusive
  environment where students want to come to learn
  and participate.
• Positive discipline emphasizes teachers catching
  students doing things well or correctly.

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Negative Discipline

• Negative discipline is grounded in reactive
  behaviors on the part of the teacher.
• The emphasis is on catching students doing
  something wrong.

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Your Turn

• Recall your physical education experiences.
• How did your teachers discipline students?
• What were the benefits and limitations of these
  approaches?

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The Art of Positive Discipline

• Establish clear rules about classroom routines,
  student behavior, and learning protocols.
• Establish clear consequences for breaking rules.
• Never use exercise as punishment or tactics that
  instill fear or humiliation in students

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What are your rules?

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.

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What are your protocols/procedures

• Locker room?
• Students not dressing out?
• Roll call?
• Warm-ups?
• Getting equipment?
• Fire drill?
• Others. . .

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How will you convey that information

• To the students?
• To parents?
• To the administration?

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Establishing Positive Discipline in Your Classes

• Examine personal biases and assumptions about
  students.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy cycle
• Use inclusive language.

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Establishing Positive Discipline in Your Classes
(Cont.)

• Use equitable language
• Monitor appropriateness of student language.
• Interrupt ALL forms of harassment.
• Pay attention to the physical environment.

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Be Aware of Everything DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK
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Be Aware of Everything DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK
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Teaching strategies for positive discipline

• Help students get to know you and one another.
• Establish ground rules for the class.
• Post ground rules in the gymnasium or locker
  rooms.
• Determine consequences for poor behavior and post
  these as well.

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What are your consequences?

• They should be in a hierarchy
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.

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Teachers with Effective Discipline are proactive

• Dos
• Be assertive
• Act
• Be consistent
• Communicate clearly
• Set realistic goals
• Treat students with courtesy

• Donts
• Be aggressive
• React
• Be inconsistent
• Be vague
• Set unrealistic goals
• Nag, threaten

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Teachers with Effective Discipline (Cont.)

• Dos
• Convey interest enthusiasm
• Maintain composure

• Donts
• Be disinterested and bored
• Lose temper

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Teachers with Effective Discipline (Cont.)

• Are good planners-
• -Meet students at the door
• -Teach students their rules
• Are good managers-
• -can see all students at all times
• -have equipment readily accessible
• Have high traffic areas free of congestion

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Developing social skills

• Stating clear rules and consequences does not
  guarantee good behavior.
• The purpose of developing social skills is to
  teach students how to behave positively with one
  another and how to cooperate.
• Include social concepts such as trust, respect,
  honesty, trustworthiness, responsibility,
  cooperation, and integrity.