Ch. 8 - Supportive Approaches to Classroom Management

I enjoyed reading about the approaches in this chapter.  I also agree with the principles in this chapter much more strongly than the behaviorist approaches mentioned in the earlier chapters.

Big Idea #1:  Supportive approaches provide a climate of respect and focus on the rights of students.  To me, this should be a staple of every classroom management model.  It surprised me that respect and the rights of students were hardly mentioned in the first models we reviewed, because it seems so vital and self-explanatory.  Students need to be treated with dignity like all other human persons.  For example, denying a student the right to use the bathroom when they need it simply does not compute for me.  I would not tolerate someone telling me I couldn't use the bathroom, so why should a student tolerate it?

Big Idea #2:  Supportive approaches focus on the causes of misbehavior and long-term behavior results.  Once again, the need to focus on the causes of misbehavior seems completely evident to me, and I was surprised that the first models we looked at didn't cover this obvious need.  Behaviorist approaches deal with a symptom, rather than addressing the cause.  We do the child no favors if we simply survive them for a year before passing them on to another teacher without actually trying to help that student.

Big Idea #3:  The critiques of supportive approaches at the end of the chapter are stupid.  The chapter critiques supportive approaches by citing that the teacher may be unable to identify root causes of misbehavior, and that inherently autocratic teachers may be insecure adopting these supportive management models.  I have two responses to these critiques.  If a teacher "might not be able to respond properly and to provide logical consequences for all misbehaviors," they still have a moral obligation to try and help that student.  That teacher should take classes and practice identifying misbehaviors and needs to spend time talking and getting to know their students.  To the "inherently autocratic teacher," maybe you shouldn't teach.  Students don't need that kind of environment.  School is not a prison, and it shouldn't be treated as such.  There are right and wrong ways to deal with kids, and an autocratic approach is wrong.

Another critique is that taught ethics are often different from actual ethics, the idea that what someone says is the right thing to do and what one actually does are different.  The book cites "time constraints, unforeseen situational factors, and spur-of-the-moment emotions."  This idea can be applied to any discipline.  How can I perform the quadratic equation every time I need it?  The purpose of studying these things is to practice, so that we know how to perform when the moment arises.  We must practice and discuss ethics SO THAT WE KNOW how to execute an ethical decision in the real world when the time arises.