D Word, The

NEA Today, Sep 2005 by Flannery, Mary Ellen

16 BRING THE BOSS ON BOARD. Sit down with your principal before school starts and share your classroom rules, suggests Alabama's Cornelison. Let her know you have strategies to handle problems, but that you also might send students to the principal's office. Ask your principal, "How are you going to feel about this?" And make sure that he or she understands what makes you crazy. Maybe it's swearing. Maybe it's sass. If your administration knows your hot-button issues, it's more likely that theyll support your enforcement.

17 MAKE YOUR REFERRALS STICK. Nothing is more frustrating then sending an uncontrollable kid to the office-and then have the troublemaker bounce right back five minutes later. But you often can get the results you want if you just ask for them, says Steven Johnston, a high school discipline dean in Quincy, Massachusetts.

That means written instructions-"Jimmy's disrupting my class," and "Please keep him out of my room until _____."

Some may worry their notes will never get delivered. But in Johnston's experience, students know they'll be in a lot more trouble if they throw notes away. And it's best not to have another student deliver the message because that sets up a potential conflict between the two students.

Of course, if your school disciplinarian has no safe, supervised place to put disruptive students, even clear communications won't solve the problem.

THE LIFE STORIES OF SOME OF YOUR STUDENTS COULD BE WRITTEN BY HOLLYWOOD'S NYPD BLUE PRODUCERS. AND YOU WONDER HOW THESE KIDS FEEL ABOUT IT? THEY'RE MAD AS HECK! AND THEY TELL YOU SO ALL THE TIME WHEN THEY DISRUPT YOUR CLASS AND SMACK THEIR CLASSMATES. SO WHAT DO YOU DO WITH AN ANGRY CHILD?

18 INTERVENE EARLY. Even in preschool, it's all too obvious who might have trouble graduating-and it's often not a matter of skills, but behavior. So, while you hesitate to "label" small children, you should try to help students get services as quickly as possible, says Head Start's Wendy Mitchell.

It is possible for 3-year-olds to get Individualized Education Programs (IEPs)-and it's a good idea when necessary, she says. "More and more, we're seeing problems with our youngest children-we want to take care of them early on so they can adjust," she adds.

19 USE A COOL-DOWN ROOM. In East Hartford, Connecticut, where increasing urban poverty is contributing to increasingly bad behavior in the classroom, Association leaders are responsible for the implementation of new "support rooms" in every school. When a child's behavior gets out of control-and you know that point when you reach it-a teacher can send him or her to an isolated room on campus.

There, a trained support professional (not a certified teacher) calms the student down and also provides some academic tutoring, typically for a few hours. When they decide the child is ready, he or she can return to the classroom.

"It really is a support for the student-and a support for the classroom. When you have somebody who is preventing you from teaching, you really need to do something," said Association President Cheryl Prevost.