Over the past decade, many schools have adopted zero-tolerance policies to curtail negative student behavior. Such policies persist although "there is as yet little evidence that the strategies typically associated with zero tolerance contribute to improved student behavior or overall school safety." Suspension and expulsion result in…

Over the past 25 years, Gallup polls have consistently reported that disruptive behavior and discipline problems are some of the top concerns of school staff and community members. In fact, problems with classroom management are among the most common reasons that teachers leave their jobs. In response, many schools are turning to more formal…

The majority of children do come to school to learn, but it only takes a few persistent troublemakers to rob an entire class of that opportunity. Disruptions in the form of lateness, talking out of turn, and disrespecting the teacher and other students take a serious toll on the educational process. Polls have shown that parents, teachers, and the…

Something wicked is being chased out of the classrooms and hallways at a high school in Massachusetts, something prevalent in schools across the globe: bullying. For generations, victims have carried invisible scars or nursed open wounds. Concerns related to bullying have been confirmed by extensive research over the past decade, including…

This article features Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a systems-based method for improving student behavior. PBIS was developed at the University of Oregon and has been shown to work at all grade levels and be effective in districts with greater concentrations of poverty and higher percentages of "at-risk" students. It has…

Mediation is a process for resolving disputes and conflicts in which a neutral third party acts as a moderator. Assisted negotiation help students work out their differences constructively and nonviolently. In this article, the author, who is a middle and elementary school teacher and principal for 15 years, believes in mediation as the safest way…

Some classroom-management techniques actually undermine establishment of an orderly classroom and impair an otherwise competent teacher's ability to win changing behavior. Instead of changing behavior, all teachers achieve with these heavy-handed techniques is minimal compliance, beneath which lies deep resentment, a breeding ground for…

Expulsion is commonly schools' last resort to maintain discipline and keep schools safe. But increasingly, educators are turning to "restorative justice"--an alternative method from the field of criminology--with promising results. According to Randall Comfort, assistant upper-school director, Mounds Park Academy, St. Paul, Minnesota, using this…

In this article, the author iterates how over the years he had sensed that student misbehavior was on the rise: rudeness, lateness, loudness, distractedness, and the myriad small sins that irritate teachers. It was not as if these young louts were protesting a war or engaging in civil disobedience; they were just plain rude. But, although the…

In this article, the author, who is a school principal, discusses her strategies of implementing schoolwide discipline process. Seeking a solution, she attended a two-day workshop on schoolwide discipline. In the two-day workshop, she and her staff learned to institute a more effective approach throughout the entire school, an approach that is…

In this article, the author discusses the effects of zero-tolerance policies in schools and depicts how the policies no longer make schools safe, even though many educators see them as the backbone of school discipline. A 2000 study by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) confirms that stringent zero-tolerance policies, though…

Grading is one of a teacher's greatest challenges and most important professional responsibilities. However, few teachers have any formal training in grading methods, and most teachers have limited knowledge about the effectiveness of various grading practices. As a consequence, when teachers develop their grading policies, they typically reflect…

This article talks about how a middle school handled discipline, the consequences for students not living up to the school's behavioral expectations. Lack of a visible school response is interpreted by students as a moral void, a silence in which good and bad behavior have equal worth. To make the school's response to misbehavior visible to all…

The author talks about graduation ceremonies getting out of hand, wherein graduates misbehave and act without proper decorum. Here, she presents the graduation ceremony at Plainfield High School as an example, when students bounced inflated condoms among their ranks. News of the resulting chaos was plastered in headlines in Chicago-area…