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Lilyofthefield:

So you're telling me that the usual range of sanctions, by which I presume you mean detention, understanding chats, seriously disappointed chats, phone calls home and fixed-term exclusions,worked in your school.  Why do you think they worked there but not here?

Specifically.

Yes - that's exactly what I'm asking too.  And I quite happy to talk about some specific things which I think helped.  But please don't jump down my throat each time I suggest something and shout that it doesn't work for all teachers, or all students, or all situations.  I do know that.

I also know there are things that I've seen that I don't really know how to express.  So dialogue is very useful.

Okay.  Here's one thing to get started with.

Sitting chatting to some other mums last week we talked about how we handle situations where a child is disrupting a lesson. (assume this is a child and a class I don't know).

I said - I send one child out - taking care to ensure I pick the one who's most stressed (rather than necessarily the protagonist) as taking the child who is most stressed out of the situation helps settle it down effectively in the short term.

I leave the child for a while until I can get the class into a state where they are working independtly of me, then I go into the corridor quietly and with an attitude that shows I've got plenty of time.  Instead of confronting the child I will stand beside them with non-threatening body language and wait.  I'll use body langage to encourage them to talk.

Typically I'll get a complaint about what another child is doing and the child will say the other child is doing his head in or whatever. 

I'll accept that comment and ask the child what they think should happen next.  We'll work out agree appropriate consequences together and set expectations for the rest of the lesson.

Job done - but job done much more effectively than if I hadn't been taught to work in this way.

Not all children respond to the opportunity to talk and that's okay, I define what happens next for them, but somehow it seems to work better because it was their choice not to choose for themselves. 

Of course the dynamics change as you get to know the children as individuals.

The other mums agreed they did something similar or that this was sensible and we all wondered why people don't talk about this kind of thing?

Same as the caning log.  It was used as "evidence" that caning doesn't work.  Well, for some children, even a prison sentence doesn't work and continues not to work for the whole of their recidivist lives.  Some lives are wasted.  Lots of money is wasted on those wasted lives. 

But it's that next layer of kids that it does provide a disincentive for that make a feared sanction worth having.  No-one likes being in internal exclusion.  Even the kids who are always in there dislike it but they haven't enough foresight or control over their own responses to avoid it.  But how many more would misbehave if there wasn't the prospect of a day's isolation and it going on your permanent record?

To answer my own question, most kids have enough nous to know where to draw the line, and apart from a bit of attitude understand why they're there and why their teachers are like they are with them. They don't need sanctions any more severe than what we've already got.  But for the rest, for whom the present ones are having no effect at all, and for whom a punishment they actually will try to avoid, physical pain and public humiliation, won't be making a return in my lifetime, a whole new place is required.  Different rules, different curriculum.  They aren't learning from the normal ones.  They aren't modelling themselves on their fair, moderate and reasonable teachers.  All they're doing is screwing it up for everyone else and cultivating their own very special hatred of school and that fact that they never get it right.

weebecka:

Instead of confronting the child I will stand beside them with non-threatening body language and wait.

I'm trying not to spook the child into getting definsive about their behaviour.

I'm deliberately trying to separate the child from the behaviour and I'm deliberately trying to make them aware that I'm doing that.  

The behaviour which happened here is unaccaptable.  Not - 'you are unacceptable'.

We are going to fix the behaviour which happened.  Not - I am going to fix you.

You are going to be okay.  Sure they may mess up again but it's important to keep reassuring them that you have the skills to get them past this.  The behaviour doesn't freak you out.  It's normal, it happens, we learn from what's gone wrong, we move on.  

Sometimes they genuinely don't know what they've done wrong and why they're out so it's often important to get them to try and express this from their point of view.  They may blame you - just take it on the chin and point out why they are out.  Sometimes it's useful to say things like.

"I could see you were stressed and I wanted to get you out of the situation before things got worse.  Here we can talk about things and sort them out properly.  So you're actually out here so I can help you avoid getting into trouble, rather than because you're in trouble."

Of course a child who meets your expectations for the rest of the lessons fully deserves and should get a positive comment at the end of it. 

weebecka:

said - I send one child out - taking care to ensure I pick the one who's most stressed (rather than necessarily the protagonist) as taking the child who is most stressed out of the situation helps settle it down effectively in the short term.

I leave the child for a while until I can get the class into a state where they are working independtly of me, then I go into the corridor quietly and with an attitude that shows I've got plenty of time.  Instead of confronting the child I will stand beside them with non-threatening body language and wait.  I'll use body langage to encourage them to talk.

Typically I'll get a complaint about what another child is doing and the child will say the other child is doing his head in or whatever. 

I'll accept that comment and ask the child what they think should happen next.  We'll work out agree appropriate consequences together and set expectations for the rest of the lesson.

Yet more evidence that you have a different definition of 'challenging behaviour' to the rest of the world.

BigFrankEM:

weebecka:

I'm deliberately trying to separate the child from the behaviour ...

Why?

It is the child who is behaving this way.

I know ! You´re Darth Vadar.

Not fair. Darth Vader empathises far more than weebecka does.

He's also got real experience of challenging behaviours (like Luke Skywalker, honestly, your bl**dy children blow up your starship these days).