It’s important to pay attention to how discipline will be used in a child’s school.
On the first day, a parent might be shocked upon entering their child’s kindergarten classroom to be handed a student conduct code or rule book by a smiling teacher.
This book will have all the dos and don’ts involving behavior. It makes for vivid reading. It will include rules about suspensions, expulsions, and appeal procedures.
School districts usually use this same handbook for K-12. So, parents get this booklet every year with minor changes.
Or, if you live in Pasco County, Florida, the land of third grade retention, Betsy DeVos’s blessing, graded schools, and fly-by-night charters, you might be puzzled and angry to learn rules in one elementary school include stopping anarchy in kindergarten. Here is the updated article.
The rules go like this:
A is for Anarchy
That’s the lowest level, where there’s fear of a lack of order that’s aimless and chaotic. In other words, kindergartners take over the classroom and hell breaks loose. Kind of like the Booking.com ad. I mentioned in another post, only the teachers have already had their summer vacations.
B is for Bullying
There are other concerns. B rules want to nip bullying in the bud. But they end by stating that to stop a child from bullying, the child “must be bossed to behave.”
So apparently adults are supposed to bully the bullying student so they will stop bullying. Try that tongue twister.
C is for Conformity
Children are to cooperate, be considerate, and conform to peer pressure! This is labeled EXternal motivation.
The last thing most parents want to hear is that their child should follow the crowd.
D is for Democracy
Democracy includes self-discipline, initiative and responsibility. In other words, children should not step out of line. Does this also mean that students won’t be allowed to question right from wrong?
Democracy is supposedly “inseparable from responsibility” in this rule. It is INternal motivation. It isn’t clear what kind of responsibility they mean.
The problem with this elementary school in Pasco County is that they implemented this program created by an education writer named Marvin Marshall. The program is called the “Raise Responsibility” system.
They should have first democratically run this by teachers and parents within the school and the school district.
Check Out Disciplinary Procedures in All Schools
But rules and how school discipline is handled should be questioned in every school and every school district. Parents need to understand their rights when it comes to school rules and their children. This is especially important if the school has a resource officer.
In Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students I have a chapter about the criminalization of students.
School Resource Officers (SROs) are sometimes called Peace Officers. They can be a meaningful addition to the school. But their role at the school should be carefully defined. They along with school administrators, might be able to carry out the following:
- get arrest warrants without informing students of their rights,
- require student statements, written or verbal, which can be used against them in court,
- insist that a student be interrogated without a parent present,
- seek criminal charges even if the victim, or the victim’s parents, don’t want to prosecute,
- require parents to get a subpoena to hear the witness’s statements.
The above activity can go beyond what happens to someone accused outside of school!
The following is a list of how school rules should be devised and handled. Some of this is based on the results of the American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force. Zero Tolerance has been controversial for years.
The APA suggest the following school modifications concerning discipline. I’ve added others.
- Include teachers, parents and students in devising school rules.
- Rely on teachers and administrators within the school building.
- Always include parents if possible in disciplinary decisions.
- Create student governing boards.
- Address social justice issues fairly.
- Be flexible when it comes to understanding what’s behind the infraction.
- Understand child development and behaviors appropriate for the age group at the school.
- Teachers and professional staff should be the first point of contact regarding school disciplinary incidents.
- Parents should be notified immediately and included in the solution.
- Zero tolerance should be used for only the most serious and severely disruptive behaviors.
- One-size-fits all discipline should end.
- Gear discipline to the seriousness of the infraction.
- School police and security officers should have training in the developmental level they oversee.
- Provide assistance to students who display emotional and behavioral problems in the classroom.
- Help at-risk youth reconnect to school with support.
- Use threat assessment procedures to identify children who repeatedly act out.
- Develop effective learning alternatives for students who display threatening behavior.
- Provide school counselors, psychologists, special education teachers and other staff for student support.
- Keep offenders in the educational system, but also keep other students and teachers safe.
So, while Pasco County stands out as doing something strange, a mess-up some parents are calling overblown, I am reminding all parents to double check those disciplinary code books and ask questions before students get in trouble.
Parents and teachers should review rules, and if unsatisfied, call for some involvement in rule making and determining how discipline is carried out in their school and school districts.
Hi! I’m the spokesperson for Pasco County Schools. I wanted you to know that Deer Park Elementary School teachers were instrumental in choosing Marvin Marshall’s system for improving behavior. Unfortunately, parents were not aware, and we recognize that communication with parents is vital to success of a new, potentially controversial program like this.
Thanks, Linda. It makes me curious as to how teachers chose this program since the author seems obscure. It is also interesting teachers were given so much freedom considering today’s education climate..
Such poignancy in the statement that it seems interesting when teachers are given so much freedom. HOW VERY SAD to see that the creative freedom which I experienced for the first fifteen years of my teaching career is now unusual.
Interesting statement. Thank you, Ciedie.
His method is one of several that are discussed in classes on classroom management in most colleges of education.
Yes, as a how not to. Kids have enough labels they deal with in their social groups, creating labels – whether the children “understand” what that label means, in this case – anarchy, they likely wouldn’t say “you are an anarchist”, they’d taunt with “you are an anarchy” or “they are anarchys!”, or grouping them by letter (again, “you are a D!”) merely creates subgroupings with negative associations. For small children, this can easily be emotionally weaponized. There’s a reason we don’t post class grades on the board for brains, why would we do it for behavior?
You are merely setting up failure far sooner. Much like Nancy’s astute evaluation of this absurd system, it’s a precursor to criminalized pipelines. You create an “acceptable” and an other, which, in this case, an “other” includes kids doing very natural kids behavior for kindergartners. (Questioning/feeling out authority, uncertainty on expectations for schooling or it’s environment, learning to study). For many children, this is their first exposure to school. Pre-K is somewhat of a privilege, and studies increasingly show it’s useless in the long term (and possibly even detrimental, depending on the age of the enrolled, but that is very early in study).
At least, that’s what my coursework spoke of. In passing of course, describing it essentially as another “fad” which might come up in our careers. Much like the parents of the ever-present “Indigo Child”, or any other number of passing fancies that make no sense. It wasn’t dictated through our text, but my professor specifically mentioned several mainstream and several lesser known methods of CM, when discussing a “hybrid theory”, so to speak, as teachers are often set up to fail when they try to implement a singular method in any given age range.
Basically adjusting for age, course requirements, even class size as no CM system or procedure will ever encompass all of teaching. Unfortunately, many teachers try to stick hard and fast to a system they’ve heard about/read about in any given place (or it’s forced upon them by the district) and many feel failure instead of fulfillment. I truly believe this is part of why the field is losing so many, so early (ONE of the reasons, of many). Many were never taught how to take the best of CM ideals, fit them to their situation, and not feel failure for dropping one part of it, or picking up another. “It worked for X teacher of the year, why not me?!?”
This is well said. I think the last paragraph describes what has been a problem for years. We also have watched this happen with Common Core. Teachers sign on to implementing programs and want to make them work. We miss out on their creative ideas. They get lost in the process.
Thank you.
Why were these teachers so instrumental in selecting this method by a known fraud, who has falsified his credentials (as well as his personal story, such as claiming in one breath he returned to a classroom after 14 years in one interview, raising it to 19 and again to 24 years – the last being ), who claims phony “testimonials” from people who don’t exist, such as one signed:
“Clair R. Garrick, Superintendent
Elgin School District, Elgin, OR
July 27, 2016”
The Elgin District Super is Dianne Greifm and has been for several years, such as a news story about a grant to the district dated February 2016: “LG, Elgin school districts receive major grants”
Or this one: Dominick Potena, Superintendent
Margate City School District
Margate City, New Jersey
July 27, 2016
(Yes, all the “testimonials” are all submitted on the same day, I’m guessing he forgot to change them in his faked copy/past),, in which John DiNicola is the super, and again, has been for several years?
I can’t find a single event of any of these alleged “lectures” except a terrible YouTube of bad green screen with an echo added to a voice and a hilarious “fireside” chat video.. None of the organizations he’s claimed to have “lectured” to have any record of his attendance.
Or what about his claimed “Standard Administration Credential” which only a few people in California hold? It doesn’t exist. And the one closest to it, Administrative Services Credential, is held by a great many people since it’s apparently required for creating curriculum, discipline, etc, in school administrators positions?
He claims to have taught elementary after getting his BA in Language Arts, then went for his MBA…. perhaps it was different back then, but a BA in Language Arts doesn’t get squat for teaching in my state with no actual teaching courses. Then he goes on to sales for a whole, and claims to have held (no joke) at least 17 different positions from 1975 until 1998-2000 when he “returned to a classroom”.. Did he ever stay anywhere? If he was so great, why was he never retained?
One last bit of info I directly verified, (he’s got soooooo many lies on that site, I got tired of checking into them, literally nothing I came up with was the truth), He claims to have given a lecture at the Teachers Matter conference in New Zealand, in a Google search, he’s not listed as a speaker at any events and the only way his name is connected is that he blogged a few times on the website… apparently, that’s what he considers “lecturing” in a different continent… so if any of you are reading this from Europe, please let me know so I can say I’ve given a lecture there!
How has no one bothered to check into this guy after all these years?
There are a rare few alleged teachers, who claim to have started it (mostly a decade or more ago) who never spoke/blogged of it again and most go on with their lives, commenting later about other methods in their classroom that are directly opposed to his horrible system of being forced to do things by peer pressure?
Then again, just as he claims all his books are award winning (one was, by a little known awarding group, of a rather controversial modern philosopher, who once claimed that people who group together and think together revert to childhood and are incapable of adulthood), and just as he claims his books are best sellers, his wife also writes books.
Evelyn Marshall (pen: Jean Marsh) makes the claim her book The Provider is “award winning”. It was a finalist in 2012, not the winner of a 2 year old “award group”, where authors submit their own stuff and they just hand it out, after the authors pay a lovely fee to get into a category…
Maybe they just have the same PR guy? 🙂
What kind of teachers select a system that goes against all advice (especially for young children) in which the author of the system has to lie and cheat to sell the system to you? How did not a single teacher bother to actually “do their homework” before attempting to make a radical change to a behavior system, which is essentially against the advice of nearly every pediatric psychiatrist and psychologist?
And why would you choose a system of a man who supports such drivel that stress doesn’t exist, and that’s it’s purely a reactionary issue as opposed to the decades of scientific data that shows our brains have specific activity if a stressor is introduced (even in non-cognizant mammals) and chemical panels of mammals that show our bodies even have chemical reactions to stress, even without understanding “what” that stress is?
Or a man who doesn’t even believe that mental illness essentially exists?
How was I able to find all this out in about 2 hours with Google, and not one teacher bothers to do this before inflicting (what is likely to be harmful) system on small children?
And before you answer, ask yourself this: Would you do your job without pay? Raises? Benefits? Promotions?
If you answered a single no to any one of those questions, then you should not have supported a system which insists the only time people do what they are required is based on being “happy” about it…
In other words, group shaming them via peer pressure to perform. He can use all the thesaurus words he wants, but that’s what this system is. Well, unless you believe you can reasonably speak to each student, each day in private for each transgression and inform their parents of such conversations.
BTW, tossing out that Gulf Elementary used this system a few years ago, while it got worse as a whole in rankings both through the DoE and through the public? Not exactly a winning argument either.
Also check Board Rules compared to school site “rules and policies”. I don’t know how many IEP meetings I’ve been in where some admin would state; “It’s school policy to …blah,blah”. I’d always ask for a written copy of the “policy” for my records. Usually they didn’t exist. Even had a supposed parent (new hire) support admin refuse to let parents into a meeting a few minutes early to network as we had for many, many years in the past claiming it was a new policy. We demanded to see this in writing – it did not exist, we went in to network. Parents need to know the laws and their rights.
Challenge a bizarre rule. It’s not a rule or policy unless the School Board puts it on an agenda for public discussion (meaning you, as a parent may attend and voice objection) and votes for it. Schools can’t just make up policy out of thin air.
Thank you, Sonja. I think parents sometimes miss the meetings where important decisions are made. Then they are taken by surprise when their child runs into trouble. And yes, challenge any rule that is bizarre. Great points. Thank you.
It is truly disappointing to see educated people comment on a system used around the world without first investigating it.
By the way when I changed MarvinMarshall.com to a media page and started withoutstress.com, of course all the testimonials were transferred to the new site and would appear as being posted on the same day.
DisciplineWithoutStress.org is a charity you should look at.
Dr. Marshall,
Thank you for commenting and sharing the website. Teachers we are told chose your program in Pasco County. And you have fans on social media.
I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all. Good discipline practices are tough to analyze for teachers and parents.
But I think the problems with your program here stem from two issues.
1. Parents in the school district were not in the loop to decide whether to use the program. My post tried to encourage parents to look at all disciplinary procedures in school.
2. Concerns were raised with the Levels of Development—especially with the use of the word “anarchy” and the reference to compliance. These references seem out of place for elementary school, or any level within a school setting.
You do make some important points about discipline outside of that.
In the Phi Delta Kappan articles by you and Kerry Weisner, you both provide interesting points and you mention many individuals whose theories impact schools.
Here is the link to your website for others to see. http://disciplinewithoutstress.org/
Did Pasco County really involve the teachers in the decision? Modern educators are used to the administrative ruse. It goes like this: you put up a Survey Monkey with softball questions, half the teachers answer them, then you declare teacher input. This design on teacher input is worthless. It is not input. To get real teacher input takes long hours, usually bitter argument, and consensus building, not a task for modern administration at any level. This is why common core was totally top down. This is why all administrative claims about getting teacher input on CC are bogus.
This is an eye-opener! But I think you nailed it, Roy. Certainly about Common Core. Thank you!