The Discipline With Dignity Model Analysis

“The behavior of difficult-to-manage students can be improved through providing interesting lessons on topics of personal relevance that permit active involvement and lead to competencies students consider important” (Charles & Senter, 2005, p. 131). This statement summarizes perfectly the idea that when students are engaged and learning about topics that are meaningful to them, their world opens up and they begin to see a purpose in what they are doing. According to Trevor Muir, a teacher and author of The Epic Classroom, conflict can motivate students and develop a sense of curiosity (T. Muir, personal communication, February 20, 2018). When students are presented with a real world conflict, they become motivated to find a solution. Project-based
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Many of their principles align with my teaching philosophy as well as my classroom management preferences. For example, on the very first day of school, my students and I will work together to develop a behavior contract that will contain the rules/norms of our classroom. We will brainstorm ideas together on an anchor chart, and then I will consolidate these responses into cohesive phrases. Once the “published” copy of the behavior contract has been presented to the students, and no changes need to be made, each student will sign the contract, indicating that they plan to abide by these rules every day, and if they make a poor choice, they accept the consequences that are to follow. The consequences for the broken rules/norms will also be discussed as a class. We will use the exact process mentioned above in order to create an anchor chart of consequences that will ensue if students chose not to follow the
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As aforementioned, I would collaborate with my students about the type of consequences that they would have if they made poor choices that broke one of the rules. The type of consequence that I would use the least in my classroom would be the conventional consequences. In my opinion, removing students from the learning environment, unless absolutely necessary, is a disservice to students. This is not to say that some of the consequences may remove students from their working environment, because they might, but students will always be in the classroom. To better explain my point, consider the following example: Joe is working with his group during math centers, and he begins to throw the manipulatives at his classmates. Even though this behavior is unsafe, I would remove Joe from his current working environment, bring him into the hallway to discuss his behavior and come up with a solution. Instead of allowing Joe to return to his group, his consequence would be that he has to complete the worksheet by himself. He will still have access to the materials that he needs to be successful, but he will lose the privilege to work with his