Doing Discipline Differently: How to Respond to Student Misbehavior and The Whys Percolating At or Below the Surface

Schools are seeing an increased number of students of all ages and stages "misbehaving" and "acting badly." This interferes with learning, classroom management and psychosocial development on virtually a daily basis.  It adds significantly to educator stress. This workshop is designed first to help school counselors and other educators understand the whys:  Why are students acting out or self-isolating?  To this end, we will focus on this phrase:  "Behavior is the language of trauma."   Second, we will focus on how to address the negative student behaviors now being seen in many classrooms, which can be recharacterized as cries for help.  In the process, we are challenging the existing assumptions in many settings that punishment (isolation, suspension and expulsion) are effective and offer up, in their stead, different approaches that focus on understanding, compassion and restorative practices. The workshop will offer concrete strategies that can more effectively enable educators to manage the "bad actors" students in their classrooms while recognizing the role of personal responsibility that rests within each of us. Workshop participants will also engage in a hypothetical scenario (an amalgam of real classroom experiences) and then probe how that situation is now handled and could be handled moving forward.   This workshop, while grounded in theory, has an "in-the-trenches" focus with real takeaways for educators.

#2  To help educators create systemic ways of approaching student misbehavior that messages care and compassion and restorative practices rather than punishment including expulsion, suspension or isolation

#3 To provide educators concrete real "take-aways" they can use immediately

Presenter: Karen Gross