Rules in School: Teaching Discipline in the Responsive Classroom

Join the thousands of teachers in schools nationwide who have used this positive approach to discipline to establish calm, safe classrooms in which students can do their best learning. The approach to discipline presented in this book helps children develop self-control, understand how positive behavior looks and sounds, and come to value such behavior. With many examples from their own classrooms, three experienced teachers offer practical techniques to help you: establish clear expectations for behavior from day one; teach students how to articulate their learning goals for school; create classroom rules that connect to students' goals; use techniques such as interactive modeling to teach positive behavior; reinforce positive behavior with supportive teacher language; quickly stop misbehavior; restore positive behavior so that children retain their dignity and continue learning; reinforce positive behavior with supportive teacher language.

Kathryn Brady has been a teacher for thirty years, specializing in the education of students with social and emotional difficulties.

Mary Beth Forton has taught language arts in elementary and middle schools, specializing in working with students with learning difficulties. She is now director of communications and marketing for Center for Responsive Schools, where she has worked for twenty-five years. She is co-author of Classroom Spaces That Work.

Deborah Porter is a primary teacher at Heath Elementary School in Heath, Massachusetts. Her thirty-five years in education include teaching at Greenfield Center School and co-founding and teaching at the Heath Preschool. She has been a Responsive Classroom workshop leader for the past twenty years.