The Paper I Actually Turned In

Here is what I ended up actually turning in. Probably still not going to get a good great though :-/

When it comes to my philosophy of child guidance, a lot of what I have developed in terms of a personal philosophy has not been from information obtained in this class. I talk about this in the second part of my paper. However, if I have to choose information from this class that I feel contributes to my philosophy I would have to start with Redl and Wattenberg. On page 56 of our Classroom Dicipline book they briefly outline Redl and Wattenberg's theories and suggestions. I believe in an approach that encourages and uses positive influence when developing classroom expectations. Redl and Wattenberg believe in techniques that include supporting student self-control, situational assistance, and appraising reality. I especially support the suggestion of appraising reality as it closely follows the principles of the cognitive behavioral theory and I am a supporter of this theory. I also agree with Redl and Wattenberg's suggestion of allowing students to be involved in setting classroom expectations and rules as well as consequences for breaking those rules. I have found through my experience working in the field, particularly with children who have been diagnosed with severe behavioral disorders, that allowing children to have input into how their behaviors are handled (both positive and negative behaviors) is paramount to the success of any discipline program.
The fact that Redl and Wattenberg's theory was not implemented in classrooms is sad and the reason our book gives seems like a nice way of saying, “Teachers did not want to put forth the effort required to implement this program.” The only part of the reason given for why it wouldn't work in a classroom that I could possibly give merit to would be the average teacher's lack of training and education in this area that would be required to implement such a program. However, with that said I have seen this theory implemented successfully on a behavioral rehabilitation unit with twelve boys ranging from eight to eleven years old. Its success requires the willingness of the adult to relinquish some of the “power” and be willing to listen to the children in order to develop an environment that everyone is happy with. This factor is something I could see being a struggle because of our education system's misplaced emphasis on passing standardized tests.
Education is not presented holistically anymore and it doesn't encourage the positive prosocial behaviors that it used to, I personally feel this is a big reason we are seeing more problems like student on student homicide, student burn out, and in general a lot more antisocial activity by students. Especially in the early grades the focus should be on social interaction and interpersonal skill building. Prosocial modeling and emphasis is crucial at this age, but because it is not something we test for on standardized tests it is too often over looked in a classroom setting. Creating a positive group dynamic and emphasizing prosocial behaviors through encouragement and child involvement needs to be a consistent aspect of the classroom and I agree with what Redl and Wattenberg have to say about this. A great example of this working is in a book called, “The Cherryhill School” that was a required book in my CI 204 class. Since I have taken that class (some 7 years ago) I have not been able to find this book but would recommend it to anyone that is able to find it. It is a book about a school called the Cherryhill School that was developed as a charter school where children and adults had equal input and responsibility in all administrative decision making at the school. It was a school literally run by children. It really showed how practical the Redl and Wattenberg theory could be but requires the adult to relinquish some of the “power” we often feel is so important to cling to.
In addition to Redl and Wattenberg, it is almost impossible to talk about behavioral modification without talking about the workings of B.F. Skinner. I do not believe in reward based behavior modification programs in the classroom, or any group of children, but B.F. Skinner taught us important things about how behavior is formed/learned. The way I apply B.F. Skinner's work to my philosophy is by using his theory to help me recognize possible reinforcers in a child's environment that may be contributing to negative behavior and then trying to do something to help eliminate the stimulus or I help the child become aware of this reinforcer and use a more cognitive approach to behavior modification. Likewise I use Skinner's theory to help recognize reinforcers of positive behavior and help a child become aware of what they do that they can feel good about.
One example from lab is a specific child who often acts out. It is obvious for many reasons that this child needs more one on one attention, that he craves it, but that he doesn't have the first clue on on to appropriately ask for it. Instead of setting up a reward program with him where we ignore the underlying problem by giving him something like candy for doing well there needs to be a discussion with the child that shows him you care, you want to spend time with him, but you do not approve of what he is doing. Trying to change his behavior by giving him candy every time he does well may work for a while, but because we are not teaching him to recognize what is causing him to act out there will come a point when he won't be able to “be good” just because he is getting candy. However, if you learn to realize that there is a natural reinforcer in this situation you will be able to change it to have a more favorable outcome. In this example, every time the child misbehaves he has learned that he gets the one on one attention he craves. He has associated acting out with the positive feeling of having an adult all to himself.
The first step to fixing this behavior is to make the child aware of it. For instance, instead of saying, “If your good you get candy!” try telling him, “Hey, Alex I was really hoping you and I could spend some time with just you coloring today but when you are mean to your peers then I have to spend that time not having fun and talking about why it's wrong to hit your peers. Wouldn't you rather do something fun with me that have to spend our time like this?” My experience has shown me that the child will almost always say yes to this question. It is important to follow this discussion by setting up consistent one on one time with this child that is not dependent on behavior, because he will test you to see if you are really going to spend time with him and the first time you don't he will tell you it's because you don't care. In an eight year old's mind this is the only possible reason you would not be spending time with him. Lets say he gets fifteen minutes of positive one on one time with an adult every day regardless of his behavior. A great way to implement this is allowing him to have his snack with an adult where he gets to talk about his day. Eventually the child will begin to see himself as worthy of an adult's time and realize that he doesn't have to misbehave to get attention from adults. He will become aware of his behavior and change it with the help and guidance of you, the adult.
I understand that the counter argument to this suggestion is to say that when you are in a classroom you can't do this and that may be somewhat true, but the ability to implement this in a classroom has more to do with the teacher's ability to let go of the power struggle and be flexible and less to do with all the wonderful reasons why it's impossible.
There is one teacher that I work with who has managed to implement this approach in her classroom wonderfully. The children are taught to seek positive attention from adults and peers by an “I'm proud” system. When a child is doing something that they feel proud of they are allowed make a signal and she stops the class and the child gets a quick 30 seconds to tell his class or his teacher about his accomplishment. She also has the principle participate in this and allows her students to go down to the office to show the principle things they are proud of. What I like about this is she focuses on the child's expectations of himself and not her expectations of the child as the measure of success. Her system doesn't tell the student that, “You should only be proud if you accomplish the tasks I have set out for you.”, it teaches the student to set goals for himself and then be proud for reaching those goals.
For example, one child in the class really struggles in math. To tell him, “You must get 100% for me to write good job on your paper” is like saying you should only be proud if you're perfect. The child isn't going to try at all if the goal set is out of his reach to begin with. He's going to get angry, he's going to be frustrated, and we are setting him up for negative classroom behavior. Instead she asks each student to guess how they think they will do on an exam and then write that at the top of their test. When the child achieves the goal then they are allowed to go show the principle, other teachers, or tell their peers. For example, a child may be aware that they have had a really hard time learning how to count money and they know they have a money test coming up. Instead of telling them anyone who gets an A on this paper gets a prize, she allows them to set a realistic expectation for themselves. So the student struggling may say, “I think I can get 4 questions right.” It doesn't matter how many questions are on the test, if the child gets four right then they have set and achieved a goal and she is teaching them to feel proud of that. This is a great way to teach intrinsic motivation rather than relying on extrinsic motivators such as candy and stickers. This is making a child aware of how their surroundings affect how they act in situations and teaching them positive ways to self regulate behaviors.
This teacher also uses group dynamics in order to promote positive behaviors. By making examples of positive accomplishments and behaviors and not spending public time on negative ones she is creative a positive peer environment. It has been my experience that a lot of negative behaviors stem from a child's need for attention we have learned about this as Attention Seeking Behavior. In class we saw this in Kagan, Kyle, and Scott's theories and were provided with suggestions on how to deal with attention seeking behavior. The teacher in my example puts good behavior at the center of the classroom environment by publicly acknowledging achievements and casually and nonchalantly dismissing negative behaviors. Rather than specifically punishing bad behavior she simply says, “You know, right now I think you're struggling to make some good decisions. If you think you need some help we would like to help you, but if you just want to take some time and check yourself then that is fine too and you can let us know if you decide you want some help.”
Children act out for so many reasons that punishing them for a behavior may cause the child to learn to deny their feelings. Maybe the child is seeking attention because they heard their parents fighting before school and it is really bothering them but they don't know how to tell you, you just see the resulting behavior, perhaps a child refusing to open his math book. When you punish the negative behavior without understanding its cause, the child assumes you also know about him being upset about his parents (because as we know children are egocentric) and what he hears is, “My teacher doesn't even care about me, she doesn't care that I'm having a bad day.” The most attractive thing about the classroom in my example is that the the teacher allows the student the opportunity to talk about what is bothering him. She encourages the students to help each other and treat others as they would want to be treated. She also doesn't make negative emotions wrong, she simply encourages positive ways to handle them. If the child doesn't want to tell their teacher in front of the whole class what is bothering them they can write it down or color or draw a picture and give it to their teacher (or not if they just want to keep it private). In other words she encourages the child to deal with the underlying issue in a positive way rather than focusing on the negative behavior. In treatment we called this a child centered approach rather than a behavior centered approach. Both positive and negative behaviors in this classroom are given attention by putting the child first and the behavior second.
In all honesty I could write about theories of child guidance all day and this is an area that I have spent a lot of time studying (both in and out of the classroom) as well as have had the ability to work in professionally for many years. I have many theories on child development as it relates to behavior and even started my thesis on moral development as it relates to parenting styles while in Graduate School before coming back for my second undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. As far as specifically citing a lot of information or examples from this class I find this challenging because most of what we have talked about is not what I base my philosophy on. I often walk away from this class feeling that it is more of a history of child development and behavior class than one designed to teach practical application of theory. I feel that it is important to know how this field developed, how theories have changed, and have a good foundation in order to move forward with when working with children but I also feel that a lot of the theories presented in this class deal with idealistic situations that are not realistic expectations for a classroom. A lot of the theories we look at come from Psychologists performing controlled behavior experiments in lab settings. While these studies are no doubt insightful, the findings are not always indicative of practical behavior modification techniques. Some work that I am familiar with and have found more useful when developing my philosophy of child guidance include longitudinal studies (some self report and some done through consistent meetings with the researcher over many years) by people such as J. Goodnow, Berkowitz, Siegler, and Diana Baumrind. The person I consider the most influential in the development of my personal philosophy of child guidance is Diana Baumrind, specifically her paper on “The Discipline Controversy Revisited: Family Relations”. I could, and have, written twenty page papers on her work but to summarize she focuses on how interactions between adults and children play a role in the development of prosocial behaviors, mainly her writings apply to parent child relationships but her advice and findings are easily applicable to a classroom situation. The second most influential person in my philosophy is J. Goodnow, specifically her paper on “Acceptable Disagreements Across Generations: New Directions for Child Development.” This paper is the best article I have ever come across that truly captures not only why authoritative parenting works but how to successfully develop an authoritative relationship with a child. It focuses on mutual respect as the key to developing morally responsible children. I refer often to these people as well as specifically these articles when working to fine tune my approach to child behavior and guidance.
In writing this paper I tried my best to incorporate things from this class with my personal philosophy of guidance but have to be honest in saying that what I have learned from this class rests only at the very base of my philosophy. It is not the information I rely on when working with children but rather it is part of the important foundation necessary for the rest of my philosophy to sit on. My philosophy comes from years of experience and education focusing on the field of child development and specifically the successful development of moral reasoning and prosocial behaviors. When working with children it is my goal to help them learn life long lessons, not just get them to behave when in my presence. There is a lot to cover in what is supposed to be a short paper and this being an area I am passionate about makes it even harder for me to summarize all the contributing factors to my philosophy. In general, I believe that children need consistency, structure, and respect in order to have a good foundation for prosocial development. However, I also believe that it goes far more in depth than this and to over simplify a child's needs when it comes to developing a theory on child guidance does a disservice to the child. It is not something that can be learned in one class, in one job or work experience, or even with one degree, graduate degree, or research project. It requires a dedication to a topic one must truly be invested in. This is on factor I believe contributes to the dismissal of so many theories, for example that of Redl and Wattenberg, by teachers. There is no quick fix for child behavior. There are things that can produce quick and favorable results, but they do not prevent future behavior problems because the big picture is not being addressed. This being said, I think too often teachers are given quick fix tools and understanding and using any real psychology is discouraged in the classroom. Being a teacher isn't a job, it's a decision to become a major contributor to the development of a human being. It should not be taken lightly, it should be something you are willing to fully invest in, and it should be known that it is a hard road to walk down. Over simplifying the reality of these responsibilities sets one up for failure in the classroom. It is a complicated and unpredictable adventure to work with children. There is no script and being good at working with children comes from the ability to be creative and use your knowledge as well as learning from one's experiences. It is developed over a lifetime and is ever changing. What's important is to have a framework from which you work based on a good foundation, staying up to date with research, and having a passion that allows you to tirelessly commit yourself to improving the lives of the children you work with. There is no quick fix, but everyone makes a difference in a child's life. Your job is to choose what kind of impact you want to have, commit yourself to that goal, and stick with it even when your exhausted and it seems impossible.