behavior management

I recently had the opportunity to read Don't Swear with Your Mouth Full by Cary S. Chugh, Ph. D and child psychologist.  His book introduces behavior-limited discipline, which he explains below.  Before you even read his book, you should be able to walk away with the basic idea that children should not be given "punishments" which allow to continue anti-social behavior, though cool-off time may be needed.  But instead, they need to practice pro-social behaviors.  This discipline, like Chugh's book, is very accessible to both parents and teachers. He discusses "difficult" children as making up about 10% of children.  More importantly, he explains that these children often aren't "difficult" due to their parents poor parenting, but rather the child's temperament and desire for control.

 Many of you in the Seattle area may be familiar with the Daily Five, written by the Kent sister teaching duo.  Since my school and much of my district is moving to Writers' Workshop, the Readers' Workshop model is also gaining in popularity.  Several of us are now implementing the Daily Five as our reading workshop.  I love the Daily Five because it involves really teaching kids the routines, and I have some challenges with bringing all my kids on board.   

So I've been teaching now for a little over five weeks, and I'm just now starting to feel like I'm getting into the groove.  I'm more at ease every day, and I feel more relaxed and confident about what I'm doing.  I'm still struggling a bit with behavior management, but I think a lot of that has to do with my contingency planning.  For example, today I planned a lesson in computer lab, and when the students were done, they were suppose to go to our district's math curriculum website and engage themselves.  The website was down and I couldn't believe it, so troubleshooting that ate up a bit of my time and the students acted up a bit.  Next time, I'll have an alternate option available.  That reminds me of something cool that happened today.

One thing is for sure, the busier I am the faster time seems to pass, and I can’t believe three weeks have gone by since I started teaching.  After three weeks of teaching, I am left reflecting on a few things: how to balance the tasks associated with teaching, integrating technology and curriculum across the elementary grade levels, and behavior management strategies for a diverse student population. By far the constant theme has been the question of how to balance all the demands of the teaching profession.