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.