Teaching Thoughtfulness and The Refocus Opportunity

It is the responsibility of the class members to maintain their own discipline. Students know that they choose their own level of development.

If students behave and do the given assignments they are on Level 3 or Level 4 and should not present a problem. Level 2 students are the ones who defy authority. My students know they choose their levels of development and that they must accept the responsibility for their choice.

Students learn they are powerful when they are nice and work hard. The next day will always be a new start.

Thoughtfulness and The Refocus Opportunity, or asking the student to think about their behavior is the basis of the discipline model. I do not tell students what to do to improve their behavior. I ask them what level their behavior is at and ask them to think about what they need to do to move to a higher level of behavior. I try to speak to them about issues in the third person.

Students are encouraged to work out problems by following the SEAL steps developed by Rosalind Wiseman. Layered on top of this I attempt to build a community where students have the opportunity to generate and share mathematical ideas, either publicly or in small groups; the extent to which authorship is recognized and supported; and the extent to which student ideas are built upon as the classroom constructs its collective mathematical understandings. This is a dimension of the TRU math model (see page 17) called Dimension 4: Agency, Authority and Identity.

At times I have gone through a year and 4 months without having to write a referral for behavior issues. The first time a student gets in trouble I will move them to another table to have them witness students that are leaders because they are nice and work hard. If a student is not organized and does not remember their password or have essential items I will give them their password or a pencil after school. If a student does not know what we are working on I will tell them after school. I will repeat (I prefer to answer how ever many questions the students have upfront - could be 20 questions to make certain every student understands before moving on) what the assignment is and how to do it as many times as needed until all students no longer have questions. After all student's questions are answered I will repeat how to do the assignment after school is out.