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October, 2004 Volume 1, Number 1 |
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In This Issue What’s New on Parent Info in five (5) languages. Disengaged Learners?
Get some ideas from an article in Teaching Exceptional Children. |
Earl’s
Corner
In as much as this is the
first issue of what will be a regular newsletter, Cheryl and I want to
acknowledge all of the hard work and innovative practices of the schools that
have adopted Make Your Day as their citizenship/discipline program. The program has evolved beyond the original
classroom through the efforts of all of the educators who have articulated
the philosophy. The basic philosophy
remains intact as all students maintain the right to learn in a safe
environment. Much of the terminology
has become more aligned with the philosophy over the years. Many schools have taken the model beyond
discipline and well into citizenship.
The ownership for the structure is being transferred more and more to
the students. We’ve delivered infants
and schools have raised them. Ideally,
this newsletter will become more of a dialogue than a monologue. We encourage all educators, parents and
students to contribute ideas, articles and discussions on any aspect of Make
Your Day that would enhance responsibility, performance, and the ultimate
goal of optimizing intrinsic motivation.
We look forward to your feedback as we continue to improve this
newsletter and the Make Your Day program.
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September, 2004 Volume
1, Number 1 (page 2) |
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Ideas
for Working with Those Students Who Need More Punished
By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and
Other Bribes Websites: Our school would like to use MYD Contact Us: 480 419-0605 |
The following is a model
developed by Gail Gregory who taught kindergarten for many years and with MYD
for 12 years. It took longer the first few years, but this is the refined
version. She used the following
format, varying the length of implementation depending on the make-up of the
class. She always had all the
components implemented within the first two weeks of school and, sometimes,
within the first week. (Concerns:
student-generated concerns aren't usually started until later in the
year. Students don’t do Concerns
independently until first grade. There
is a great deal of teaching and modeling to be done first.) First, she talked
about/taught expected classroom behaviors and interfering (bothering) behaviors
in general. She didn't really say
"Make Your Day," but used the language: expectations (sitting,
entering, groups, tables, recess), interfering (with learning, sitting,
activities), etc. Often the students
had heard about MYD from older siblings, so she would allude to what the
"big kids" did. After a few days, she
would lead guided discussions about time away. She found that most of her students
understood the concept of taking a time-out, so she would use that as a
springboard. Older brothers and
sisters choosing to take time away for interfering behaviors. What would interfere? How can we behave to make our class the best
place to learn? This discussion she
usually spread over two consecutive days. Once she established all
the concepts/language of MYD, then she introduced MYD by starting with
points. We have an exciting program
that we're going to use, just like your big brothers and sisters, called Make
Your Day. You get to earn points by... Steps are introduced,
referring back to previous discussion related to interfering behaviors. Steps
are OK. We all make mistakes. They role-play interfering
behaviors/choosing steps, so all the students who are comfortable can
practice choosing steps. The students
discover they can "live through it." Practice points remembering
that you start out by assigning points, then students take over that process
for themselves. It progresses quickly
and use visuals such as number-lines in the beginning. For each point period,
she opened with expectations and closed with expectations for the point
period. As students said their points,
she would describe how successful students had earned points as a reminder to
students who struggled. So, rather
than pointing out to students how they didn't earn points, she restated it in
the positive as a reminder. She did
not worry if students didn't make their day.
It was used as a learning opportunity, focusing on how to meet
expectations, OK to make mistake, that's how we learn, etc. She always kept a
positive tone to protect students' self esteem. She involved parents very early in the
process, so they could help their children accept that mistakes are OK. Students who made their day had their hand
stamped as they left for the day. (Often
sixth graders who were in her room would stop by on the way home to get their
hand stamped, too.) In the beginning of the
year, Gail used many of reminders. She
gave students time to understand and practice expectations. She moved from reminders to points not
earned and steps when the behaviors continued, teaching students that
frequency has an impact and just needs a different type of reminder to help
them get back on track. For students who are struggling with this, work with the parents and contract individually with each student. And…keep smiling! |