Discipline for Smart People    

What do you do when you have a negative experience?

Imagine the brain as a large ship. If a leak occurs in the floating vessel, the vessel immediately compartmentalizes the area of the leak to prevent the leak from sinking the entire ship. This is necessary because it may take some time before the ship returns to port to repair the damages.

This concept of compartmentalization can help when we encounter a negative situation, stimulation, or urge. When we have a negative experience—be it with a significant other, a child, a parent, a member of the family, or a fellow worker—COMPARTMENTALIZE IT. Set it aside. Isolate it. Deal with it later when you are in port and in a better place for reaction and repair. This requires some self-discipline. Picture a drawer in a room or somewhere else where you can temporarily put the thought. Creating a picture in your mind is a procedure that is necessary to redirect negativity.

By having a procedure to compartmentalize it and deal with it later, you are more likely to deal with it more successfully.

More ideas on this topic are available at http://www.marvinmarshall.com.

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Posted In: Increasing Effectiveness On: January 14, 2008: 8:39 am: By Marvin Marshall

Practitioners of the Raise Responsibility System (Roman Numeral III of the Discipline Without Stress Teaching Model) understand that the only part of the system students need to understand are the four levels of personal and social development. Lower levels A and B are unacceptable, whereas the higher levels C and D are both acceptable. Also, the significant difference between level C and level D is in the motivation. The motivation for level C is “EXternal,” whereas the motivation for level D is “INternal.”

Two examples I use in my seminars are (1) asking a teenager at home to make the bed before going to school and (2) asking a student in a classroom to pick up the trash.

In the home example, if the teenager knew the standard orexpectation of the home and would have made the bed without being asked, the behavior would be the same as when being asked. In each situation, the bed would have been made before going to school.

Similarly in the school example, if the student would have taken the initiative to pick up the trash—without first being asked—the trash would have been picked up. The behavior would have been the same.

The difference between these two acceptable levels is in the motivation—not necessarily in the behavior. This is important to remember because the levels are most effectively used when reference is made to the difference between levels C and D, rather than between these two acceptable levels and the lower two unacceptable levels.

More ideas on this topic are available at http://www.marvinmarshall.com.

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Posted In: Discipline without Stress On: January 11, 2008: 9:34 am: By Marvin Marshall

There is a common confusion that classroom behavior and motivation are closely related. However, responsible behavior does not necessarily prompt motivation to learn.

The data suggest that 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years because of poor student behavior. But control and compliance in behavior do not create a climate of academic achievement.

We prepare teachers to teach reading, writing, arithmetic and other useful skills and worthwhile information leading to knowledge—and, hopefully, wisdom. Unfortunately, teachers are not taught that which is most essential when first entering the classroom: How to motivate for responsible behavior AND motivate students to want to put forth effort in their learning.

As I often demonstrate in a simple exercise in my seminars to schools, “Obedience does not create desire.”

More ideas on this topic are available at http://www.marvinmarshall.com.

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Posted In: Promoting Learning On: January 10, 2008: 8:49 am: By Marvin Marshall

Information may prompt people to think, but illustrations prompt people to remember.

If you want people to remember, touch an emotional chord by painting a picture, relating an experience, or telling a story. There is a greater chance of the learning staying in long-term memory using these approaches than when only focusing on information.

If you have ever listened to a professional speaker or a good sermon, you will notice that the most often used pattern is to make a point and then tell a story. Sharing information without dressing it with some clothing just slips out of short-term memory. The brain thinks in pictures, not in words. Dress the information by painting a picture, and learning will be enhanced.

More ideas on this topic are available at http://www.marvinmarshall.com.

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Posted In: Promoting Learning On: January 9, 2008: 10:52 am: By Marvin Marshall

Studies suggest that smiling makes people appear more attractive, kinder and, by some accounts, easier to remember.

All smiles share something in common: an emotional foundation. Depending upon what the emotion is, the brain sends different instructions to the face. The areas in instigating a polite, or voluntary, smile (the kind exchanged with a bank teller, for example) are not the same ones involved in a more emotional smile (such as the kind that emerges on seeing a loved one or hearing a funny joke).

However, regardless of what prompts a smile, the results are the same. Both you and the recipient are prompted to have good feelings.

Dr. Dale Anderson, M.D. prescribes smiling and even laughing a few minute each day to improve your psychological and emotional state. He will have you prove to yourself that changing your outside features changes your inside features as well.

Here is a simple test. Think of something sad. Now, with that sad thought in mind look up to the ceiling. Smile, and experience how quickly that sad thought disappears. You immediately feel better, and you become more attractive.

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Posted In: Improving Relationships On: January 8, 2008: 9:01 am: By Marvin Marshall

We know that when stress overcomes us, choices seem limited—thereby decreasing effectiveness. Behavioral scientists have a name for this psychological reaction: learned helplessness.

This phenomenon has been studied in laboratory rodents whose nervous system bears striking similarities to that of humans. Here is how one experiment works. If you provide mice with an escape route, they typically learn very quickly how to avoid a mild electrical shock that occurs a few seconds after they hear a tone. But if the escape route is blocked whenever the tone is sounded, and new shocks occur, the mice will eventually stop trying to run away. Later, even after the escape route is cleared, the animals simply freeze at the sound of the tone—despite the fact that they once knew how to avoid the associated shock.

Obviously, humans have more intellectual resources than mice, but the underlying principal remains. Just being aware of the nervous system’s built-in bias toward learned helplessness in the face of unrelieved stress can help identify and develop healthy habits that will buffer at least some of the load.

It is important not to ignore how the brain changes when under continual stress. You owe it to yourself and others for whom you care not to let this happen. You can accomplish this by (1) realizing that regardless of the situation, stimulus, or urge, a person always has a choice as to the response and (2) developing the habit of redirecting negative self-talk. Developing the discipline to act reflectively (rather than reflexively) can prevent learned helplessness that inevitably reduces effectiveness.

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Posted In: Increasing Effectiveness On: January 7, 2008: 10:19 am: By Marvin Marshall

Here is an example of how choice can be used to redirect an impulse towards more responsible behavior—even with a very young child. It is part of a communication from a friend.

“I marvel at what my grandson understands and how he manages to communicate. The other night the parents went to dinner, and he started to cry real tears and scream.

“I picked him up and gave him a hug and proceeded to explain to him that mommy and daddy went to dinner and they would soon come back. Then I asked him if he wanted to keep on crying until they returned or play with his trains. The tears shut off like a switch! He loves Thomas the Train.

“I realized that I gave him the choice of taking responsibility for his behavior in that situation. Pretty cool, huh! He’s all of 28 months old!”

Here is a simple procedure for impulse management that anyone can use.

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Posted In: Promoting Responsibility On: January 4, 2008: 8:18 am: By Marvin Marshall

I received the following e-mail the evening after a recent presentation (reproduced with permission):

“I suspended a defiant student earlier in the week and was dreading having him return to my classroom on Friday. After hearing your inspiring talk, I was able to put my arm around him and walk with him while I asked him what we could do to fix the situation. His idea was to write a contract, which I’m not sure is the best solution.

“However, having him give thought to where to go now seemed to lift his self-esteem and help him be more cooperative in my class. I’m sure that it will take me a lot of trial and error to really ‘get it,’ but your method is what I see as the best path. Thanks so much; it was just what I needed.” –Susan Zahn

My handouts for the presentation can be downloaded from the links at a quick start and dealing with difficult students.

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Posted In: Improving Relationships On: January 3, 2008: 8:32 am: By Marvin Marshall

The following story is about Positive Behavior(al) Interventions and Support (PBIS)—or just Positive Behavior Support (PBS)—that has been referred to in previous posts .

We know that rewarding fosters competition to see who gets the most number of rewards. We also know that using rewards as incentives to young people fosters feelings of punishments to those in school who believe they should have received a reward, but didn’t.

The comment below, originally posted at the Yahoo support site, describes how external manipulators (giving rewards as reinforcers) do not do what adults would like them to do, namely, transfer the desired motivation.
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I have a cute story about rewards in the classroom. I teach first grade, and sometimes just getting the kids to remember their folders and to sharpen pencils is a chore. I usually start out the year reminding them, nagging them, and finally giving up. THEY don’t care if they have a folder or a pencil. I’m the only one who seems bothered. So I put a sticker chart in their folders and offer stickers and trips to the treasure box if they come prepared. I KNOW it’s not helping, and it bothers me every day as I waste time on this activity, but at least they have pencils when we start to work.

One day recently I was monitoring the kids’ work. I commented to one boy about his pencil. It was really short and dull. He said it was all he had, but in his pencil holder on his desk there were three long sharp pencils just sitting there. I asked him about those. He said, “But those are my sharp pencils! I don’t use those. Those are just for getting stickers!”

It took me all year to realize that this kid had used the same pencil EVERY DAY to get a sticker but never used a sharp pencil to write with! So much for external motivation transferring to internal motivation!

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Posted In: Promoting Responsibility On: January 2, 2008: 5:03 pm: By Marvin Marshall