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Behavior Management Skills Professional Development

Our training is usually done on site at schools and is very practical, with emphasis on proactive behavior management and on the acquisition of practical behavior management skills.

The courses are available to individual teachers, teacher groups or the whole staff but must be organized by the school, the school cluster, or the district or regional office.

Training Types

Section 'A' Workshops (below), lend themselves to an effective one day seminar workshop format but can be condensed into 2 or 4 hour presentations with reduced intended outcomes.

Section 'B' Workshops are best dealt with over two days but if necessary can be presented in condensed form in one day. 

The two full day workshops in each 2-day program should, if possible occur at least a semester apart.

5-Step:  A self-sustaining cost effective whole school behavior management program.

Also see 'General Training Options' below.

Please Email us for details of costs: Program costs 

 

Section A Workshops

1A:  Teachers' strategies & skills:  Turning behavior around

This full day workshop is designed to teach teachers a broad range of practical interpersonal skills for use in the classroom - to use as the occasion arises and to build resiliency.  All forms of classroom behavior can be successfully dealt with especially  confronting and challenging behavior.

Topics covered:  How to choose an appropriate response, convey needs and gain cooperation, avoid stereotyped reactions; being creative & taking 'safe' risks, tuning-in, being flexible and adaptable to situations; using modeling to build relationships. How to turn situations around and avoid being 'sucked-in'.  How controlling yourself and your responses produces "good discipline".

Intended outcomes: Effectively taking control in any situation, managing minor disruptions and major disturbances, preventing escalation and repetition of misbehavior, enabling responsibility and ensuring accountability for classroom and school behavior.   

A2:  Positive behavior management:  Dealing with apathy and negativity

The workshop teaches practical planning for positive classroom management.  The course content also addresses the 'anti-learning' ethos pervading many schools and classrooms.  

Topics covered: Planning methodology.  Changing attitudes - changing behavior. dealing with negativity, how to get them on your side, enabling students to change their perceived roles, encouraging a sense of worth in both student and teacher, building resiliency.  Managing groups.

Intended outcomes: A positive classroom, improved participation, greater productivity, higher levels of achievement, more positive attitudes towards learning, teaching and school, happier teachers.

 

A3:  Building responsible young adults:  Actions and consequences

The workshop teaches the skills and techniques with which to foster taking responsibility for actions.  Teachers learn to build an awareness of the relationships between rights &  responsibilities, and actions & consequences, and to develop new social competencies and resiliency in their students.

Topics covered:  Discipline and punishment - what am I teaching?, the concept of choice in behavior, following through and teachers' options,  teaching for responsibility; the importance of reparation.

Intended outcomes: Teachers distinguish between discipline and punishment and internal vs. external control.  Students acquire insight into their behavior, enabling self discipline and self control. Teachers learn to use the 'space' between a classroom behavior and their response to that behavior. 

A4:  Classroom control:  discipline, teaching styles & techniques

A workshop focusing on how teaching styles cause and influence situations in the classroom.  Individual teaching styles are compared. 

Topics covered: The advantages and disadvantages of different styles, the importance of being 'skilled' in addition to personal style.  Using new interpersonal responses to replace unhelpful ones. Learning and practising these skills.  Resiliency.

Intended outcomes:  Through insight gained, teachers are able to assess and make appropriate changes to their individual teaching style.  This results in lowered classroom tension, less teacher stress, and more effective teaching and learning.

 

A5:  Working in the here & now:  applying and working with practical behavior management skills

Three 2 hour back-to-back practical sessions focusing on today's classroom behavior management needs.  Each session works interactively with participants using case studies relevant to situations faced by participating teachers.  Participants' own concerns are also addressed.

Topics covered:  How to put on the "Coat of Many Pockets."  Becoming aware of covert issues disrupting the classroom.  Tuning-in to students.  How to know when to act and what skills to use.

Intended outcomes:  The acquisition of practical skilled responses to a wide range of common classroom misbehaviors.  In addition, participants will learn targeted strategies for dealing with ongoing misbehavior.

 

 General Training Options

All courses can be modified to match the needs of the school, or teacher group.

Schools can also stipulate the whole content of their seminar / workshop.

Each seminar or workshop is planned around the school's specific needs, requirements and objectives.

 

Every school and each teacher face a unique set of issues and problems.  All workshops and seminars are prefaced by consultation with the school and staff, and the workshop topic content is planned around day to day needs, issues and difficulties.

 

Comprehensive training option:

— A 4 module comprehensive training program is available.  This is spread over four semesters and involves two 2 to 4 hour workshops per semester.

 

Our discipline ethos

Children must individuate to function successfully as adults.  They must be allowed to develop within boundaries which enhance that process.  This implies that teachers must live with the ambiguity of permitting some appropriate acting-out and having to impose limits.  The limits appropriate to school are different from those in the home, but only different in extent, not in character.  The consequences of transgressing clear limits lies with the transgressor and not with the limit-setter, the "system", or the social milieu.

Email us

For all course enquiries

 

 Section 'B' Workshops

B1:  Beginning and Returning Teachers: essential behavior management skills

This two day seminar/workshop is designed to equip teachers with essential insights into childhood and adolescent behavior.  The understanding gained forms the basis for techniques and strategies with which to manage student conduct.  Practical classroom skills are introduced and practised.

Topics covered:  Discipline planning, behavior management planning, teacher responses and behavior messages, how to develop a management strategy and practical skills for managing student behavior.  Resiliency.  Skills for managing challenging students and all acting-out behavior.

Intended outcomes:    Teachers acquire a process of management that is simple in outline, easy to apply and extremely practical.  They gain an understanding of behavior that enables effective classroom management. Teachers learn the impact of their response and are then able to change student behavior.

 

2B:  The middle years:  moving into adolescence and young adulthood (Upper primary and high school years)

A two day seminar workshop focusing on the issues of adolescent behavior in the school and classroom.

Dealing with and managing the challenging and often difficult behaviors. How to respond in a manner which guides the young adolescent into responsible young adulthood

Age appropriate acting-out and other behaviors are dealt with by looking closely at the developmental needs of this age group.  Skills to manage these behaviors are practiced and role-played.

B3:  Early years behavior management:  behavior issues (Pre school - elementary / primary years)

A two day seminar workshop focusing on the behavior issues faced by teachers in the early childhood teaching years.

The workshop content looks closely at the developmental needs of young children.  It lays the foundations for social and emotional competency and resiliency.  Skills enabling teachers to manage the behaviors of this age group are practised and role-played.

Email us

For all course enquiries

 

"5-Step"

Five Steps to Effective School Behavior Management - School wide Discipline*

5 Step is a self-sustaining cost effective whole school behavior management program.  It develops a team approach to behavior management and instils a school culture intolerant of unacceptable behavior.  (See ref. * below).

Methodology

Practical everyday cognitive interactive skills form the basis of the initial training.  The skills are learned, practised, easily internalised and then integrated into a proactive management process.

There are no right or wrong ways to manage behavior, but some ways are more effective than others.  The essence of the skills taught is that they enable teachers to have firm control of their classrooms while enabling their students a maximum amount of autonomy within clearly delineated boundaries.  This creates a controlled learning environment in which both teacher and student have safety in the knowledge that their roles and expectations are mutually understood, and that this reflects the whole school’s values.

The program empowers teachers to be better managers of behavior, to develop a cohesive school behavior management team and to build long lasting positive changes into their management of student behavior.  The principles of prevention and positive action underlie this approach.

To achieve the program’s goals, teachers are guided to constantly use and practise the new skills they will learn.  This facilitates the internalisation of the values inherent in the program.  The methodology is designed to provide teachers with both practise and support.  The support ensures that teachers commit themselves to being actively involved in the creation and management of their own and the school’s new behavior management approach.

The program provides teachers with consultant support both personally in the classroom and electronically by email thereafter, - enhancing successful implementation and achievement of required outcomes.   By the time the consultant has completed the 5 steps the team is able to provide the support role and guide the program thereafter.

It is recommended that the 5 steps be spread over a year but this can be adapted to needs.

 

Outcomes

We use an interactive management process, the central purpose of  which is engagement; to produce teachers skilled in managing all classroom interactions which results in substantial change in student behavior and attitude to learning.

The interactive management process guides teachers in the skilful management of classroom interactions.  Teachers learn to be aware of the impact of their responses on student behavior – the need for skilled responses, the importance of managing themselves and of understanding their students and their needs.

The Process stands on 5 pillars that:

                   i.      Prevent:  This is the global purpose of the Process, the prevention of behavior problems occurring, recurring or escalating.

                  ii.      Correct:  Assertive redirection of student misbehaviors.  The teacher actively manages the student’s behavior.

                iii.      Support: The student manages his or her own behavior, with the teacher’s support and encouragement.

                iv.      Follow through:  How to manage all elements when the student has gone too far and how to teach them not to repeat and how to change their own behavior.

                 v.      Affirm:  Building a sense of self-worth out of small successes to improve motivation, cooperation and engagement.

Program Delivery

The program is spread over 4 consecutive semesters.

There are two full day workshops - one each in the first two semesters, three two hour sessions with support teams - one each in the first 3 semesters, and each semester: three full days of classroom observations and mentoring and a written report.

 

The 5-Step Program

Step 1

Observation, analysis, assessment and planning
 

A non threatening process of working beside teachers in the classroom, observing student behavior, becoming familiar with the problems, the issues, classroom process and the students.  This is followed by individual discussions with teachers who will then work together to plan practical management strategies to incorporate into their overall management plan to implement over the coming semester.

This can take anything from 2 or 3 days to a week, depending on the number of teachers involved e.g. whole school or school teams, or year levels.

This is then put into a report to the school summarising the work covered to date, with guiding sections given to individual teachers or team and which outlines the discussion and planning discussed for the coming semester.

Teachers then work with these guidelines, calling upon support by email when needed.

Step 2

Acquiring new behavior management skills and establishing the school's behavior management team
 

A seminar workshop with whole staff or a section of the school involved in the program e.g. middle years, junior primary/pre-school, years 2-5 years 7-10 or whole school.

Teachers are introduced to a process of management which focuses them on working proactively and positively.  They have planning guidelines, an increased understanding of why students misbehave, a strategy for control, and begin to practice and build their repertoire of skills to best manage student behavior.   As a staff, they begin to develop common goals and a common language.  

All they have acquired in this seminar workshop is to be taken into the classroom and school, practiced and reported on during the ensuing classroom visits and teacher discussions.  These are then reviewed in the follow up seminar workshop.

Step 3

Ongoing assessment, analysis and support
 

Return visit - working beside teachers in the classroom to support, guide and assist in their management and assessment of behavior and to build and plan for the coming semester. 

Step 4

Seminar workshop
 

Reflecting on achievements, dealing with ongoing challenges, building on previous work done and developing further skills and strategies in response to specific issues.

The workshop focus is on following up and managing those more difficult behaviors and supporting teachers in their particular areas of need.

Step 5

Preparation to pass over support to team
 

Back in the classroom with teachers; supporting, assisting, enabling and empowering.   Assessing achievements to date and planning together for future classes.   Establishing the team process to take over teacher support.  Leaving teachers enabled and empowered as members of a school team and feeling confident in their student and classroom management.

* School-wide discipline

"Commitment, on the part of all staff, to establishing and maintaining appropriate student behavior is an essential precondition of learning. Well-disciplined schools tend to be those in which there is a school wide emphasis on the importance of learning and intolerance of conditions which inhibit learning."

Kathleen Cotton, 1990, School wide and Classroom Discipline, School Improved Research Series, (SIRS) - IClose-Up #9.

5-Step enquiries