My personal future behavior plan includes a variety of different plans combined. Mainly, I take plans from Leader in Me, Behavior Intervention Support Team (BIST), and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS). I believe that each of these programs have quality attributes that can help contribute towards a well-rounded behavior plan.
The Leader in Me program focuses heavily on giving leadership opportunities to students. I feel strongly about this because I believe when students can take responsibility for their behavior and for actions that take place in the school they will behave more maturely and as adults. We see this prevalent when we allow students to help us make rules. Students like to have the ability to contribute to rules and to what is occurring within the classroom. In my future classroom, I would like to allow my students to have leadership roles both within and outside of the classroom. This is especially relevant for when I become a principal. I would like for my entire school to have opportunities for students to have leadership roles, such as student council, student-led newspaper, etc., because students are better at holding each other accountable and to a higher standard.
During one of my pre-service teacher classes, we learned the powerful effect that self-reflection can have on students both behaviorally and academically. BIST has “think sheets” that I would like to also use in my behavior plan. These self-reflection sheets would not be used every single time a student displays a nonexpectation in my classroom. Instead, they would be reserved for more personal matters, such as when a student calls another student a hurtful name or some other negative interaction occurs between two students. I believe that these situations are the perfect time to use self-reflection sheets because it is important for students to think about how they are affecting another person and look back on what made them decide to do it in the first place in order to prevent it from happening again.
Another technique I have learned extensively in my pre-service classes is the use of positive reinforcement to both encourage wanted behaviors and discourage unwanted behaviors. PBIS is a major advocate for positive reinforcement both within individual classrooms and the entire school. I would like to use positive reinforcement in my classroom to encourage students to follow expectations and to redirect students who are not following these expectations. For example, if I see a student talking while I am teaching a new concept, I will point out to the whole class a student or group of students who are following expectations and say how I really appreciate how “so-and-so” is being respectful of me and giving me their attention. This will positively reinforce the students who are meeting expectations and redirect students who are not so that they can also begin meeting expectations.
This behavior plan is only the start of what I would like to do in my classroom. As I continue to learn more about classroom management, I am sure that my ideas will grow and develop. I also anticipate them changing once I am in my actual classroom someday and throughout my entire career. Constantly keeping up to date and participating in professional development on current trends in classroom management will help to keep my behavior plan the most effective so that my students will have a safe and productive environment to learn in.
Miss Wieberg 