Chapter 15

I really like the quote,"Education is based on a relationship, not a procedure." Doesn't this sum up everything we have learned in our student teaching experience? As long as you have developed a relationship with the students you can pretty much get their cooperation for anything! I have found that relationship building with students in my classroom has been extremely helpful, more so than developing a great classroom disciplinary plan. I also have found through experimentation that applying the the Love and Logic suggestions using choices and empathy with consequences has helped even more.

I also found it interesting that the school made the parents sign up for Love and Logic parenting classes. They allowed them to sign up for the fall or spring session. I wish I could send half of my student's parents to a parenting workshop,this would help eliminate many of the problems that we deal with daily. I have found that parent cooperation at home can be challenging, and something like this could be beneficial for the student and the teacher.

Chapter 14

I like how they explain the system approach school. All the school system approach schools spend endless hours designing and implementing new behavioral systems and punishments, but then there are always the few teachers that do not follow the rules,resulting in the system failure. During a staff meeting at my placement, I had a chance to experience this problem. We were trying to develop a writing curriculum that lined up horizontally and vertically to ensure that there is a universal writing curriculum that will help the students build upon their writing knowledge over the years. However, while we were working together to design this there was constantly some teachers complaining about it. We finally came up with a plan that everyone agreed upon, but I know that not everyone of those teachers are going to follow the plan as they are expected. This is the same problem that the system approach deals with their behavioral expectations and consequences.

The Love and Logic way allows the teachers to choose what works best for them, and it doesn't hurt the system as long as they are emphazing the core values that the staff developed.

I also felt better when they explained that it does take time to learn how to teach using Love and Logic techniques and you should learn from your mistakes and move on. I am always trying to implement their suggestions into the classroom, but I often make mistakes and forget empathy etc. Hopefully after much practice this will all come naturally!

Chapter 13

Teachers have all sorts of legal responsibilities today. My supervising teacher documents everything, and places them in her student files so that way she has record of it. She also uses email to communicate with parents, and this is nice because she simply prints off the emails and has documentation of conversations with parents.

Teachers have to fill out numerous paper work just to take their class of a field trip. They have to get permission and liability slips filled out by parents and arrange transportation and much more. I know when I coached basketball I had to get the parents to fill out a liability release form so their children could play. These are all important steps that could save us from legal battles occuring. Then of course there was always a couple of players who didn't have a ride to the games out of town (elementary tourneys) and they would ask me for a ride. I was always nervous to take the kids with me so what I would do is tell them I didn't have room in my car and would arrange for them to ride with another parent. I hated to do this, but what would have happened if I would have got in a crash on my way to a tournament?

Today teachers have to make sure they are careful in what they do because even thought they may be trying to help it can turn out to be detrimental to the teacher!

Chapter 12

I thought the opening statement of the chapter was interesting because teachers are introduced to numerous teaching techniques, but the real job is to find one that works for your students. I can think of at least two different writing techniques (power writing and 6 + 1 traits of writing), but what works the best? Most importantly I think it is important to give the student choice. Just like Fay said, "I would give kids lots of opportunities to use their individual abilities, interests, and learning styles in their academic learning." If we give the kids more control over their learning then they will be more excited to learn. If we limit their choices then we are taking away their ability to use creativity and might see more reluctant learners.

I also found it interesting when they were talking about consequences of students actions. Students need to learn that there is a relationship between when they do and what happens to them as a result. However, when teachers use reward or punishments for student performance students tend to take the easy route so they can achieve a high score and get their reward (which might be an A). They mentioned in the book that this affects students risk taking because they want to achieve the rewards, whatever they might be. I know in my classroom students use grades as rewards and punishments. The students who do well use them as rewards, but there are always a couple of students who are devastated when they receive an B on an assignment. Then there are the students who use grades as a punishment. I have two students in my class who sometimes don't do an assignment because they figure they are going to get an F anyway. They figure why put the effort into the assignment that I am going to fail anyway.

In response to the grades as rewards and punishments the book talked about the point system that helps eliminate the problem of rewards and punishments. I thought this was interesting and it would be neat to try it in the classroom to see if there is a difference. However, it would be impossible to do that while I am student teaching because I can't change the current grading system.

I think the most important thing that teachers can do is to instill upon the students the sense of accomplishment. Students need to believe that they can do it by themselves and a positive classroom atmosphere is the first step to attaining this goal.