Chapter 8 - Solving Problems Together

1. Chapter 8 - Solving Problems Together Ten Suggestions

2. #1 – Build & Maintain Positive Relationships • It's important for students to trust their teacher, to know he/she respects them and to feel safe in speaking their minds with him/her. • Nowhere is such a relationship more vital than in the case of a student who has done something wrong and feels angry or defensive. • Students must feel accepted by adults.

3. #2 – Skill Set • Teachers may need to help their students learn to listen carefully, calm themselves, generate suggestions, imagine someone else's point of view, and so on. • Children should have the chance to work on these skills from the time they are very young. Like us, they need guidance and practice to get better.

4. #3 - Diagnosis • The teacher’s role in dealing with an unpleasant situation begins with the need to diagnose what has happened and why. • Teachers sometimes need to play detective and try to figure out what is going on, or how to interpret what the child is telling them. • Punishments and rewards are unproductive in part because they ignore the underlying reasons for a given behavior.

5. #4 – Question Practices • Must be willing to look beyond the concrete situation in front of us. • Is the student really the problem? • Does my teaching engage them?

6. #5 – Maximize Student Involvement • Expand the role students have in making decisions about the classroom environment. • “Talk less, ask more.” • Involve students in figuring out what to do when something goes wrong, and give them responsibility for implementing a solution.

7. #6 – Construct an Authentic Solution • Asking students to come up with solutions will not get us very far if they feel obliged to cough up explanations, suggestions, or apologies on demand. • The questions teachers ask them must be open-ended, with students encouraged to explore possibilities and reflect on their own motives.

8. #7 – Assist Students In Making Restitutions • A reasonable follow-up to a destructive action may be to try to restore, replace, repair, clean up, or apologize, as the situation may dictate.

9. #8 – Re-Evaluate Plans • Determine if a plan worked, whether the problem got solved, whether additional or entirely new strategies may now be needed.

10. #9 - Flexibility • “Doing to” (punitive) responses can be scripted, but "working with" responses often have to be improvised. • Example: Difficulty getting a student to talk openly about what is bothering him/her and it will make more sense to drop him/her a note and invite a written response.

11. #10 – Minimize Punitive Impacts • Example: If a problem behavior is persistent and the teacher asks the student to leave the classroom, the teacher's tone should be warm and regretful, and he/she should express confidence that the two of them can eventually solve the problem together. • Control is a last-resort strategy to be used reluctantly and rarely.

12. From a High School Teacher: • “If I just kick kids out of class, I "don't tolerate" their actions, but neither do I educate them or their classmates. And it works about as well as stamping out a few ants. I prepare them for repressive solutions where misbehavior is temporarily contained by an outside authority, not really addressed. Sometimes I am forced to that position, but I try not to be.”