Discipline with Dignity says:
Although schools with better funding seem to be more attractive to parents because they tend to have better test scores, the authors of Discipline with Dignity point out a profound statement: These schools still have just as many boring teachers. The authors than task us with this question:
"Could it be that these [thriving] schools have a cultural expectation of success?Whole Brain Teaching does:
WBT is about setting high expectations and moving students from a place of complacency to a place where they are so engaged that they want to do better. Through friendly competition, a safe learning environment, and "funtricity", students understand that when they come to a WBT class they will be expected to do well and when they rise to that expectation, the bar will be raised even higher.
Focus on Improvement
Discipline with Dignity says:
Academic and behavior achievement should focus on improvement. Competition between students should be replaced with competition within each student. Students should be challenged "to be better today than he was yesterday."
Whole Brain Teaching does:WBT's Super Improvers League emphasizes just that, individual improvement. WBT Founder, Chris Biffle discusses the importance of recognizing improvement rather than achievement. Students that struggle in class may never see recognition and begin to lose motivation to do well at all. By flipping recognition towards being "better than your best", all students have the opportunity to achieve recognition and stay motivated to continually improve.
If you would like to find out more about Super Improvers, please look in my archived posts. It's a great way to improve effort, achievement, and engagement within your classroom!
The next post in this blog series will deal with modeling and chunking information. Hope to see you back soon!
