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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Discipline without stress

That moon cake from the Hong Kong Peninsula Hotel was awesome. I ate three of them in two days. Which is an example of non-discipline.

Ideal and impossible? Not according to Dr. Marvin Marshall. I bought this book some months ago and began reading it immediately. The first third wasn't so great. It was everything I knew already, nothing new to add.

The second third was a little better. A bit more practical advice, and an activity on defining standards that I want to do in my own classroom. Very logical, very clear cut, and very internally driven, which I like. The goal, when teaching behavior and social standards, are to get students to do things on their own, for their own benefit.

UTEC encourages us in a very overt way to feature social objectives in every lesson. I would say at least 70% of my pedagogy classes were about teaching social standards in an explicit way. But my CT likes to handle behaviors on a one-to-one basis, developing a sort of mentorship rather than direct teaching. From what I've seen, both are effective, and both are even more effective when both are used at once.

I haven't gotten to the last third of the book yet. There are still five days left of my solo, and I've only been able to read a few paragraphs before I conk out each night. But I'll get to it. And I'll let this blog know.

2 comments:

Jenny said...

Good luck on solos! Keep it up...you're going to feel so relieved afterwards :) I read this book and learned a few "tricks" that actually worked!

bun2bon said...

I am incredibly relieved! woot!