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TEACHING STUDENTS SELF-MANAGEMENT: MORE THAN JUST PRACTICAL

March 20, 2000

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- It is a rare teacher that enters the profession with dreams of becoming a disciplinarian and classroom police officer. Far more frequently, teachers initially head to the classroom to open the worlds of language, mathematics, the arts, history or other subjects to young, eager minds. For those whose role has shifted toward the disciplinarian at the expense of the enlightener within, Katherine Mitchem and Julieann Benyo offer a new approach to classroom management. The plan will create more teaching time for teachers and give students a tool that works in other environments as well, Mitchem and Benyo argue.

Mitchem, a professor at West Virginia University, and Benyo, a teacher in Maryland's Garrett County school system, presented their plan, "Classwide Peer-Assisted Management," at the American Council on Rural Special Education's national conference last week. Mitchem and Benyo have also laid out the plan, which has been implemented in both urban and rural schools, in a research paper that is expected to be published soon.

Feedback for Adolescents

The self-management plan, designed for middle-school students, is a more sophisticated version of the "thumbs up, thumbs down" feedback method many teachers use with very young children who act out. Both approaches give teachers a quiet way to let students know when they are not acting appropriately -- a method that does not disrupt the teaching that is going on at the same time.

The two educators developed the plan together specifically to solve problems Benyo had been having in some of her inclusive classrooms, and the results were dramatic, Mitchem said. The amount of time during a class period that the entire class was "on task" -- doing what Benyo expected of them -- rose from at most 10 percent before the self-management program was implemented to an average of 75 percent afterward, she said. In addition, students eventually took leadership roles in running the program, freeing Benyo from even the basic task of overseeing the plan.

The success of Mitchem and Benyo's self-management program hinges on students buying into it. They start, therefore, by explaining to the students the ABCs of behavior, which are familiar to many educators: In every incident, there is an antecedent, or trigger, for a particular behavior. From that behavior comes a consequence. The concept is not difficult to explain to middle school students, who are typically craving more independence both at school and at home, Benyo said. By explaining that they cannot control the antecedent but can control the behavior, and therefore the consequence, she said, teachers essentially show the students they do have power, in the form of choices about how they behave.

In addition to explaining the ABC steps and giving examples of each, Benyo advocates role-playing and repeatedly reviewing the sequence until it sinks in with all members of the class. In examples and role-playing, she adds, teachers should use incidents that occur in their own classrooms, or particular pet peeves the teachers want to emphasize with their students, so the examples are relevant to the students' experiences.

Clear Rules of Behavior

The next step is to make clear to the class what the teacher considers appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Leave nothing open to interpretation, Benyo said, noting even the simple concepts of how to get the teacher's attention or how to follow directions often warrant clarification. This is particularly true in school, she noted, because teachers may have different expectations than parents or other adults the students come in contact with. For example, Benyo said in her classes she explains to students she expects them to follow four steps to get her attention: First, look at the teacher; second, raise a hand; third, wait for acknowledgment; and fourth, after acknowledgment, ask the question "in a pleasant tone of voice," she said. Though those steps may seem obvious to adults, she said, they are less so to students -- particularly students with low attention spans or behavior problems.

Once the students clearly understand appropriate and inappropriate behavior, Mitchem and Benyo's plan puts enforcement of the correct behaviors in the hands of the students. "Even with the existence of many effective strategies to address inappropriate behavior and to facilitate the inclusion of students with disabilities, adoption and sustained use of these by practicing teachers is a major concern," the two wrote in a report distributed at the conference. A class-wide, peer-assisted approach makes encouraging good behavior easier for teachers, they said.

Appealing to Competitive Nature

The peer-enforcement portion of the plan is essentially a game that pits pairs of students against each other and one half of the class against the other, all competing to see who can stay "on task" for the greatest amount of time. Pairs of students evaluate each other at regular intervals during the class period -- the intervals can be as long as 15 minutes or as short as five minutes if a class is particularly unruly, Benyo noted. Each individual student makes a mark on a piece of paper if he or she was "on task" during the prior interval, then makes another mark on the paper if his or her partner was on task. Pairs earn points every time they are both on task in the same interval. At the end of the period, the points are tallied on a score sheet for the entire class, which is divided into two teams.

Benyo and Mitchem suggest offering the class a reward -- such as five minutes of social time at the end of the period, or a class period outside in warm weather -- if they reach a specified point goal. However, Benyo noted, the students often take competitive pride in their performance and decline any further reward than knowing they "beat" the other team.

The rewards of self-management reach far beyond competitive pride, however, the two educators argue. In general, it shifts the responsibility for behavior management from the teacher to the student, "where it should be," Benyo said, because students need to be able to police themselves in the larger world outside the classroom.8