Fred Schuett

Director of Secondary Education

Karen Munoz, Principal

Ortiz Elementary School

Billy Stone

Director of Accelerated Programs

 Returning to the original definition of discipline, we find that it is referred to as a “body of knowledge” given to or received by a disciple or student. Back in the day, we would have said that a person learns the “discipline of economics,” or the “discipline of education.” Learning a discipline meant that students became proficient in an area of learning through a systematic method of instruction, followed by plenty of repetition and practice. Unfortunately, today’s schools have moved right along with society. With the fast-paced and ever-changing educational system, the concept of discipline has been reduced. What once was a systematic training for students to be instructed as to how to make good choices or how to be proactive has changed to a gotcha, punitive style of catching and assigning consequences.

We can develop a proper discipline or training program that will focus more on developing or training students as to how to make good behavior decisions. There is nothing stopping us from this endeavor but our own limited vision. Let us take off the blinders and start from scratch. Throw out all you know about discipline, and let’s start anew. This discipline or training program need not be held to one classroom or grade level. We can construct a program that continues to train our students as they get older and have to deal with more of the world around them. This is accomplished by developing a school-wide discipline program. With a school-wide discipline program in place, each teacher and each grade is a continuation of the students’ systematic training. Not only does the continued training benefit our students in decision making, but a consistency in expectations and environment will also be significant in the students’ emotional stability.

We as parents need those good choices deposited into each child’s relationship account.  There need to be enough good choice funds to cover a poor choice check.  A parent does not want to bounce a poor choice check.  Have you ever bounced a check?

NSF is not a good thing to experience.   It is not a good feeling.  It makes us hesitate every time we write a check.  We start to fear whether or not we have enough funds to cover that check, and there is always a penalty attached to a bounced check, which ends up costing you more.  In the Relationship Bank of Choices, every good choice deposit is worth $1.00.  Every poor choice check costs $8.00.  This is an 8 to 1 ratio.  This means that for each poor choice check you write, you must have deposited 8 good choices.  At times, children will bounce or react negatively because they did not have enough good choices deposited into their account when we had to write a poor choice check.

When we enter into the stress zone… 

1. We will no longer make effective decisions.

             This is where we will make big mistakes.  Any decision we make while in the stress zone will not be the best decision.  We will say things we never thought we would ever say.  We will do things we never thought we would ever do.  We will hear ourselves saying things like, “Why did you…,” “How many times…,” “What am I going to do with you?” 

2. Our emotional perspective changes.

            Our emotional perspective moves us from being pro-active, what can I do to help – to punitive, where can I hide the body?  Consequences become extreme.  We want our pound of flesh.  We believe they need to get what they deserve. 

3. We later feel guilty.

            When we revisit earlier events, we realize that we could have handled things much better.  We may also become conscious of the fact that we actually made things worse.  This will affect the next encounter with our students.  Our guilt will convince us to “cut them some slack.”  The problem is we just allowed inappropriate behavior to occur.   If you do not feel any guilt when you realize you made it worse, then you may have a bigger problem.

Thank you