Chapter 8 - Solving Problems Together Ten Suggestions

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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?

#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.

#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.

#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.

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

#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.

#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.

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.”