Professional Development for Teachers Day 2: Choice Theory

I am proud to be part of a school community where I have grown to consider myself a professional who can actively seek to make a difference.

A teacher is first and foremost a manager. Managing is first creating the conditions for students to be interested in learning or performing, and then providing the structures, strategies, and activities that will encourage quality learning and quality performance. Indeed effective teachers must be effective managers.

Reality Therapy is rooted in Choice Theory, which postulates that most human behavior is chosen and focused on satisfying universal human needs of survival, love, belonging, power, freedom, and fun. 

It is aimed at helping people to use their freedom to more effectively satisfy these needs.

Stephen Covey said that "between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and happiness."

Therefore, choice theory contends that every part of our behavior-thoughts, feelings, physiology and 'doings' is a choice. Glasser argues that we have total agency in the entirety of our 'total behavior', leading to a more responsible empowered, co-dependency, blame free, life. Glasser's theory is that nobody can 'make' us do or feel anything, as all we do is give or receive information, and it is our choice how we respond to it. 

Glasser came to the conclusion that all behavior is driven from the inside, regardless of external influences. We are all in control of our own choices, and every behavior is a choice. Glasser said that no one else can make anyone do or feel anything. He contends that every behavior is a choice. We are all responsible for our own choices. 

Indeed conflict arises when a person tries to make another person do what is in their Quality World. This is what Glasser calls 'external control', as opposed to 'internal control'. 

Glasser's 'seven deadly habits' of external control are nagging, bribing, complaining, punishing, threatening and criticizing. 

Choice Theory understands that humans have five basic needs-freedom, power, fun, love and belonging and security. For example, I was born with a high love and belonging need and a high power need. 

The Ten axioms of Choice Theory by William Glasser that might help break it down a little easier (summarized by Mia Doring, a writer, facilitator, violence against women activist and psychotherapist): 

1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.
2. All we can give another person is information.
3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.
5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to satisfying them in the future.
6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.
7. All we do is behave.
8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology.
9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feelings and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.
10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognisable. (depressing, angering, aggressing, etc)

Glasser developed reality therapy in the 1960s. According to Wubbolding & Brickel (2017), choice theory is based on the idea that conscious behaviors are chosen in an effort to satisfy one of five internal basic human needs. As Wubbolding (2012) has written, "If choice theory is the track, reality therapy is the train that delivers the product" (p.5). 

External motivation is the most prevalent type of motivation used not only in the classroom, but also in the world at large. I do believe that external motivators actually prevent learning form taking place. What then of the "carrot"? Well, contrary to conventional wisdom, rewards are no more effective in motivating students than threats and punishment. 

When a student hears "if you do this, then you will get that," the message to the learner is "There must be something wrong with this if you have to give me that to get me to do it." According to Alfie Kohn, "when we offer a reward, we are killing off the interest in the very thing we are bribing them to do." 

Back in the traditional "Don't-smile-until-Thanksgiving" days of classroom management, the relationship between students and teachers was simple. The belief was that it was not important if students liked or trusted their teachers as long as they respected or even feared them. 

In 1992, William Glasser published one of his best-known books, The Quality School: Managing students Without Coercion. After a brief explanation of the model of intrinsic, or internal motivation that is based on Choice Theory, the rest of this book offers concrete, proven strategies we can use to appeal to students' internal motivation. 

As I sat at my living room table this morning, pounding my head with my fist trying to figure out what to do with this class, I had a sudden insight. I thought about the behaviors I had been observing in this class; refusing to work in pairs or group, getting up out of their seats for inappropriate reasons, looking out of the window, skipping class, doing no homework and little class work...

After yesterday's workshop, all these disruptive behaviors I was thinking about pointed in one direction: the freedom need, both freedom to and freedom from.

Remember, the basic needs that drive all of our behavior; there are five in all, one physiological need and four psychological. The need to survive, to love and belong, to gain power, to be free, and to have fun.

Indeed we need classrooms that are designed to meet the freedom need and teach course content. I believe that each individual student is responsible for his or her own learning. I provide the required assignments for each five-week increment. I provide models, specific criteria, and any resources necessary for every assignment. I tell them that I am available for one-on-one instruction as they worked through the assignments. They can do the assignments in class or take them home. But, in order to get credit for the course, these assignments must be completed.

Educators have to try their best to meet students need for security, belonging, freedom, power and fun. We need to work with students through 'lead teaching' rather than 'boss teaching'. We need to use noncoercive techniques to help students make responsible choices. 

We honor a student's need for Freedom and Autonomy when we design choice into assignments and projects, including choices in what materials are read and researched. 

We honor a student's need for Love and Belonging when we provide opportunities for talking about what is read with other students. 

We honor a student's need for Joy and Fun when we select reading materials that are enjoyable to read and when we provide an environment for reading that is welcoming and relaxing. 

Indeed teaching is probably the hardest job in the world. I agree with Glasser when he wrote that knowledge of Choice Theory allows educators to develop better relationships among students, by teaching them social skills. When choosing bad behavior Choice Theory prefers discipline and NOT PUNISHMENT. Students who believe that their teachers care about them perform better on tests. 

By getting to know more about the elements of the Choice Theory during our Professional Development Day, I hope that many teachers who were present in the room changed their previous beliefs based on the so-called old psychology of external control "My behavior is a response to the circumstances" in the conviction based on the new psychology of Choice Theory "My behavior is my choice in certain circumstances" (Hurt, 2009). 

The Choice Theory attitude: "It is my duty to supply you with all necessary information, and what will you do with them is your choice for which you suffer the consequences." 

We are responsible for our own behavior. But teachers who dictate procedures, order students to work, and berate them when they do not are increasingly ineffective with today's students. Teachers who function in this manner are called "boss teachers." 

Teachers who provide a stimulating learning environment, encourage students and help them as much as possible are most effective with today's learners. Teachers who function in this way are called "lead teachers." 

Our school curriculum must be organized to meet students' basic need for survival, belonging, power, fun, and freedom. 

We need to progressively help students learn to use SIR, a process of self-evaluation, improvement, and repetition, until quality is achieved.

• What did I learn?
• Did I do more or less than expected by the teacher?
• What are my strongest and weakest points as a student?
• What did I do to improve the weak points?
• What was most satisfying about the class? Most frustrating? Your responsibility for each?
• Has the course irritated you? Stimulated you? Has it made you uncomfortable about yourself, about learning? 
• What did you expect to learn? What did you actually learn? 

I think that the lead management versus boss management approach to behavior management, the emphasis on quality work, the Reality Therapy questioning methodology for conflict resolution, the seven connecting habit versus the seven disconnecting habits- all of these are worth a deeper look. 

💥 The seven connecting habits are listening, respecting, encouraging, supporting, accepting, trusting and always negotiating disagreements and the seven disconnecting habits are being critical, threatening, complaining, blaming, nagging, punishing and bribery.

Peer Temptation and Social Pressure

 As teenagers mature, they begin to physically and emotionally explore their sexuality. 

It is important for teachers to study strategies that improve the safety of all students. 

There is an ongoing debate as to the curriculum guidelines for sex education and/or family life education in the United States of America. These types of program recognize the central role parents play in their children's education. Most programs require a parent signature for their children to participate. 

More federal dollars are appropriated to abstinence-only programs. Decisions as to what should be included in the curriculum is localized and most often decided by a combination of parent advocacy groups, school boards, and the local school district (McNergney & McNergney, 2004). 

Teenagers associate sex with the freedom and sophistication of being an adult (Johnson, Musical Hall, Gollnick, & Dupuis, 2005). They get mixed messages from their peers, parents, religious representatives, and the media. One minute sex is glamorous and the next, it is sinful. Girls link sex with acceptance and being loved, while the boys link it ti status and power (Johnson et al.). 

Good News! Statistics indicate that fewer teens are choosing to have sex early and those that do are being more responsible.

Poverty is also a factor in teenage pregnancy. Approximately 83% of teen mothers are from the poverty level socio-economically (Johnson et al.).

However, teens seem to be more responsible about their sexual lives. School programs and health clinics that offer counseling and services can be given credit for this shift. 

According to Webb, "sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attraction toward another human being" (Webb et al, 2007, p. 265). 

Teenagers are faced with many important decisions regarding their sexuality as they mature into young adults. Sex education and family life education can help teens be informed and make better personal decisions for their future.

Several parents and educators believe that teaching abstinence to teenage students is the best approach to teaching sexual education. Is teaching abstinence the best method of sex education for teenagers? Why or why not? Share your answer from a moral and academic point of view 😃

Have a nice Day

Stop the Drop and Enroll

How can we designed a plan to minimize school drop-out rates and increase the student success rate for at-risk youth?

Most states and school districts define the term dropout as "a student that leaves school for any reason before graduation or completion of a program of study without transferring to another school or institution" (Webb, Metha, & Jordon, 2007, p. 253). 

For these students, the ramifications of their decision to leave school are momentous. For example, throughout their lifetime, students who decide to drop out of high school will earn an estimated $370,000 less than their friends that graduate (Webb et al.). 

The statistics indicate that as many as 17% of dropouts find themselves in poverty (Webb et al.), 60% of prison inmates are dropouts, and 79% of teen parents become dropouts, (Morrison, 2003). 

In order to combat this dismal future, it is essential for educators to identify those students that are most at risk for making the decision to drop out of school.

We need to design preventative and intervention strategies that may stop students from dropping out from school.

Because the dropout issue is so serious, punitive and/ or disincentive policies have also been implemented in some states. The most controversial of these policies are the no pass, no drive laws that do exactly what they state. Those students that drop out of school or are chronically truant are subject to having their drivers' licenses revoked.

Ultimately, it is caring teachers and parents that can have the most impact on students. 

Throughout the last twenty years, while the percentage varies slightly, about 5% of students drop out of high school each year (Johnson et al., 2005). Hispanics are twice as likely as African Americans to drop out of school and 4 times more likely than Caucasians (Webb et al., 2007). 

The goal for all these strategies is to keep at-risk students in school so they can have a chance at a positive and happy future. 

Professional Boundaries

Teachers must be aware of the Code of Conduct for Teachers and the Code of Ethics of the Education Profession. I have been teaching for 25 years and I still meet some teachers you are not aware of these codes.

Indeed teachers have a significant impact on students' lives, so they must not cross the line of professional boundaries and ignore the law pertaining to teacher contact with students. 

Teachers must be familiar with the Code of Ethics for Educators because the Code of Ethics for Educators gives important guidelines to teachers.

Teachers must not cross the line of professional boundaries and influence the lives of their students in a negative and unacceptable way.

Teachers must adopt a professional approach with all their students and they must respect specific professional boundaries for their own safety and the safety of their students.

The End of the Quintile

 Well it is Sunday. Opened my eyes and wondered what day it is. Then I remembered! 

How I ended the first quintile in school with a good laugh! And since I like to share my moments of laughter, this is what happened...😅😅 My answer to an email had the three of us rolling in the aisles. 

This is what can happen to teachers when they read an email at 7 a.m. in their classroom at the end of the school quintile and they decide to answer it very early in the morning. 

I am the kind of person who wakes up everyday at 5 a.m. YES, in the morning! Indeed it is very early! And Franz Kafka was right when he wrote in his book that "this getting up early makes a man quite idiotic"😅

My email would be the perfect joke for a stand up comedian! He or she will have the audience rolling in the aisles.

I arrived in my classroom at 7 a.m. and I opened my email box. I received an invitation for lunch and the different times were written in military time. I read 1400 for 1400 CFA. YES! It happened to me. 

Since 1400 was not written 14:00, I thought that our friends were asking us to chip in, which is totally okay for me! I know things can get expensive. We can have a party and ask our guests to bring additional food or cash.

I replied to the email confirming that I will bring 1400 CFA with me on the day of the party. 

My friend replied, "NO MONEY" "It's Time"... This is when I only realized that our friend was not asking for money, but he was asking us to come at 1400, meaning 2 p.m. 

Indeed why do we use an a.m. p.m. 12 hour time rather than the 24 hour military time? 

This what happens when you speak 5 languages.

I speak five languages and one of them is Arabic. I have only used the 12-hour clock in Arabic. Most countries use a 24-hour clock (which is known in the U.S. as military time) instead of the 12-hour clock. Since he has written 1400 without using the colon ":", I have read it 1400 CFA 😂

I write 14:00 using a colon. Therefore, I was confused when I had read 1400 without the colon. 

Indeed humor is culture specific, meaning that most jokes tend to be funny only among people who share experiences in that culture. But I hope that most us will consider this funny experience as a cosmopolitan one. 

Have a great Sunday 💓

What day is it, again?

Suddenly we found ourselves at home having to deal with a situation of isolation day after day within the same space. 

Every day is the same. I wake up each morning in the exact same place, and every moment that follows is as painfully predictable as the last :) 

Indeed, this 2020 pandemic has created its own clock. There are no hours or days in Coronatime. 

I am lucky to have Google Home :) so I find myself ambling about the apartment, asking Google the time of the day, the day of the week, the weather...

I do not mean to complain. I am lucky to be able to stay inside all day, working from home. I am fortunate to still have an income. But I can't help to feel particularly restless.

It has been very hard to wrap my head around the larger question of timelessness. I feel like time has come to a standstill. 

Me at the moment do not know once I can see my family members once more, or once I can go on a vacation. But I am very happy to know exactly when I will return to work! 

There is a Corona Time. Although a vaccine or correct remedy for COVID-19 remains to be not in sight, I have now to attempt to shake the sensation of being trapped within the current. 

The coronavirus pandemic is messing with our concept of time. What day is it, again? It has become a common refrain during the coronavirus pandemic, a reflection of both how all of the days seem to blur together and how lately, we find ourselves forgetting even the simplest of details.

Every day is interminable, yet the hours fly by: the peculiar paradox of pandemic times. On any given day during the pandemic, I have literally made a hundred decisions and that is why the day feels like a month. 

This pandemic has changed the way I see myself, that's for sure. I have noticed that there is no longer a something-to-do-next. The distinction between this time and that time begins to blur. During this lockdown, my perception of time takes on a different dimension. I feel locked into a sort of perpetual present which never changes and with no diversity in quality.

Indeed during my confinement time feels so weird. When we are at work and engaging in some kind of routine or productive activity, we are experiencing what psychologists call flow. Flow is this relaxed, outward-directed attention, and it can be pleasant and calming. During our confinement, we are not doing what we normally do. We have been broken out of our routine and broken out of flow.

In times of fear and uncertainty and witnessing the devastation caused by the coronavirus crisis, daily routines feel like a luxury and we are eager to have them back.

COVID-19 showed our place on the planet and kept us grounded and humble. It did not differentiate between the rich and the poor. It created a borderless world. 

And the most important thing it increased empathy and compassion and elevated humanity globally: humility, humanity, and hope.

We must treat animals and their habitats with kindness. There is a clear connection between wildlife, humans, and coronavirus. 

To summarize, life is short so make it sweet. Emphasize humanity, humility, and hope. It is time to pause, reflect, and be mindful. 

Teach Don't Preach: Secular Education

A secular school is neutral on the question of religion: it does not teach that God either do or do not exist. Secular schools take no position on the question. 

French schools are secular. The 1905 French Law separating the Church and the State is now over a hundred years old. The laicité (or secularism) principle it defines, is unique in the world and is an integral part of France's contemporary political DNA. 

Article 2 both dictates that " the Republic neither recognizes nor employs nor subsidizes cults", and guarantees the freedom of each cult, as long as they do not violate public order. 

A secular school teaches children in an objective, critical, and pluralistic way about the different beliefs that different people have about God, and leaves it up to parents and religious institutions to teach specific religious beliefs outside of school hours. 

It is good for society for children to be educated together. Secular schools bring children together. They teach them the normal subjects that have a basis in scientific fact, like mathematics and languages and history and critical thinking. 

Secular schools help students understand other beliefs and respect other people. Secular schools respect human rights. Schools should not indoctrinate children with religious or non-religious beliefs that conflict with those of their parents. 

Secular schools teach ethics and social and emotional literacy skills, such as empathy. 

A new Charter of Secularism is to be posted in state schools to remind pupils, parents, and teachers that although in France everyone is free to practice any religion or none, within the country's state-run schools, there are limits to religious expression.

The charter outlines in 15 points the main principles of the 1905 law in France which enshrined the formal separation of state and religion. 

Secular education is a human right, based on international human right treaties to which European countries are party. Society should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Schools should be strictly neutral in matters of religion, favoring none and discriminating against none. 

Education is about communicating, thinking, reasoning, learning technical skills. History must be correct, not convenient. We cannot twist science and history to conform the tenets of some religious leaders or some politicians.

The Constitution in France states, "France is an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic, guaranteeing that all citizens regardless of their origin, race or religion are treated as equals before the law and respecting all religious beliefs." 

Secularism is not an opinion among others, but rather the freedom to have an opinion. 

Optimist or Pessimist

It has been said that an optimist sees a doughnut and a pessimist sees the hole :)

This saying humorously captures the difference between the sunny attitude of the optimist and the bleak outlook of the pessimist. 

Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire is a brilliant satire on what he saw as the naively optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. Candide is an open-minded young man whose Tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief, inspired by Leibniz, that'all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds'. 

Indeed Everything is not for the best, and Voltaire knew it! 

Voltaire's use of garden imagery evokes the dichotomy between reality and philosophical abstractions that we identify with. Voltaire advocates a meliorism, the belief that the world can be made better by human effort, that is guided by our humanism. 

Meliorism is militant with its naive and childlike faith motto: "Let us make a better world." Meliorism is the belief that the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered. Professor Brogan writes: "Meliorism is the doctrine that intrinsic betterness is the fundamental value category."

A person is free in the sense that he or she must daily choose anew between policies that lead to success and those that lead to disaster, social disintegration, and barbarism. 

But with apologies to Shakespeare, "If neither an optimist nor a pessimist be, who or what should we be?" Is there a word for a better way to think about the future?

The word is meliorism. Unlike optimism or pessimism, Meliorism does NOT allow us to wriggle out of our responsibilities. It will take the meliorists who have gotten tired of the silly debate over optimism and pessimism to roll up their sleeves and actually make our world a better place.

A meliorist is someone who believes the world can and should be better, and that people have the capacity to improve it. Every student training to be an active citizen is a meliorist. 

Do not be trappped in the false choice between optimism and pessimism because you can actually be a meliorist. Operating halfway between optimism and realism, meliorism is the belief that the world, no matter what shape it may be in, can always be improved by the concerted effort of mankind. 

Life was lived peaceably once and may be lived peaceably again!

I believe that all things, no matter how bad, can always be improved, given enough determination from people willing to improve them.

It starts with each of us committing to simply be kind and considerate to those around us every day. 

Meliorism, or philosophical hopefulness, combines pluralism and humanism. We are capable of creating better worlds and selves. Pluralism says that better futures are possible and humanism that possibilities are enough decided by human energies, and meliorism that better futures are made real by our effort.

I believe that education is a tool to reform society and create change of the better. 

But Voltaire wrote in Candide, "Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin." "That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden."

I believe that the world can be made a better place by people's actions. 

Devote your energies toward improving the world we live in, rather than searching for answers that can never be found. And that includes the question of whether the ending of Candide is ultimately fatalist or philosophically meliorist. 

Only meliorism can underlie the philosophy of action that allows for the possibility of reform and progress through human effort. Dewey writes that progress is not inevitable. It is up to men as individuals to bring it about. 

Both individuals and groups have a responsibility to be active participants in their local community.