One change I made this year in my classroom is letting go of all the "Reminder Tickets" that I've used as a management tool. No more red or yellow tickets for not following directions or not listening, no more pink tickets for missing PE clothes. No more "Time out" tickets. 1/8
I have kept the positive tickets for group work, skill development, fitness effort, and caring behaviors and that's where my feedback focus lies. It's still early in the year and I am still questioning if and how I will keep this system at all. 2/8
What's important for me, however, is noticing how taking away those crutches of behavior mod (reminder tickets) supports me in shifting my focus onto the things that kids are doing well. 3/8
Putting the emphasis on what's working also changes the way I confront unsafe & deliberately disruptive behavior. For sure, my initial impulse is to remove that student from action, to punish by exclusion. 4/8
But I'm readily finding alternatives and fewer and fewer causes for confrontation. One alternative is to have those students step out, observe and share their observations w/me or the class, then rejoin activity. 5/8
Another possibility has been to let some behaviors be as long as they are not causing harm and to allow the student to join the desired action of their own accord. Seeing this more and more often. 6/8
On a whole group level it has also proven instructional to refer to how our co-generated rules actually *allow* us play games and get along in class. The conversations are now about examples of "Be careful" and "Make good decisions." 7/8
Filing this thread under #BrightSpots to continue the work I wrote about here: cultofpedagogy.com/noticing-good-… and in conversations on #Troublemakers by @CarlaShalaby.
