Teaching is one of the most important jobs in our society, yet teachers are often overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated. There is a common bond which unites all teachers, and this is the desire to help our students reach their maximum potentials as human beings. When we achieve this goal, when we see students grow as a result of our teaching, we know that all the training and hard work have been worth the effort. Unfortunately, the realization of this goal is sometimes thwarted by the attitudes and misbehavior of students.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for analyzing and assessing the many facets of student misbehavior in the schools. It consists of two parts. Part I contains a chronological narrative describing the evolution of my thinking about discipline; I think it provides a realistic and sober assessment of discipline in the schools. Part II consists of a fairly comprehensive outline of those ideas which I think have made a significant or relevant contribution to the discussion about discipline in our schools. It provides some specific and practical suggestions for improving teaching effectiveness. Hopefully, the reader can use some of the ideas to reflect upon as potential strategies to improve teaching.

The Beginning

I began my teaching career in California in 1961 as a high school mathematics teacher. It was a great time to be a teacher for, although some students were not highly motivated to learn, there was still a general respect for most teachers. I would estimate that fewer than ten percent of all teachers had serious discipline problems in those days. I believe this was because teachers had real authority over what happened at school, and this authority translated into calm and orderly classrooms. To illustrate how this authority worked, let me describe an incident which occurred on the first day of school in 1963.

The bell rang, and Fred entered my room and sat in the last row of seats near the door. After taking roll, I started explaining my expectations for the class. "Big deal!" muttered Fred, just loud enough to be heard across the classroom. I looked in his direction, made firm eye contact with him, and warned the entire class that I would not tolerate any further disrespect. Minutes later, in response to one of my comments, Fred muttered "Jee-sus Kee-ryste!" I immediately stopped instruction, scribbled a note to the principal on a piece of paper, and instructed Fred to take the note to the office. Which he did. After school, I found a note from the principal in my mailbox. I met with the principal and he asked me to readmit Fred into my class. "If Fred gets away with this," I explained, "it will be open season on me for the rest of the year." The principal stood behind me, and Fred was not readmitted to my class, and, as a result, I had a very good year with my students.

That's the way it was in the early 1960s; the teacher had authority, and because of this, there were few discipline problems. Today, many educators probably think that I was too harsh with Fred, that I should have given him another chance. I disagree.

In 1966 I left the classroom to attend graduate school. After three years of study, I received my doctorate degree and was hired by the College of Education at the University of Hawaii where I ran a number of research and curriculum projects. After sitting behind a desk for eleven years in that position, I decided to switch to the Division of Field Services where I served as a college coordinator supervising student teachers. Thus, when I entered my first classroom to observe a student teacher in 1980, it had been fourteen years since I had been in a regular public school classroom. And boy, was I in for a big surprise!

The Rude Awakening

I was assigned student teachers at almost every grade level from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in my first year of supervising student teachers, and in classroom after classroom I saw rude and disrespectful student behavior. In a third-grade classroom, children would not cooperate or obey the simplest of commands. The teacher had four time-out locations in the room where she sent disobedient children, but she needed many more. In an intermediate school Physical Education class, I witnessed students slap the student teacher on the back of the head at the beginning of each period. When I asked him why he permitted this, he pretended he was unaware of it. In a high school English class, a glassy-eyed boy, wreaking of alcohol, arrived ten minutes tardy. When the student teacher moved towards her desk to mark the attendance book, the boy kicked over a desk and shouted obscenities at her. And so it went.

To be sure, there were classrooms in which students were orderly and attentive. Even so, I would estimate that fewer than ten percent of the teachers were without discipline problems. Teachers had lost their authority, and teaching had become a very stressful occupation.

For a number of years I tried to find someone to blame for these conditions. At first I blamed teachers for not cracking down on students. Then I blamed principals for not backing teachers when they referred students to the office. Then I blamed the Board of Education and the State Legislature for enacting legislation and rules which granted rights to students which made it difficult to maintain order in the schools. Then parents for not raising their children properly. Then Education professors for ignoring the discipline problems in the schools. Finally, I realized it did little good to place blame: everyone, including myself, was to blame. The situation in the schools was very complicated. And so I decided to study the problem.

Looking for Solutions

The student teachers I supervised had been exposed to three approaches to discipline: Discipline Without Tears (Dreikurs and Cassel, 1972), T. E. T. : Teacher Effectiveness Training (Gordon, 1974), and Schools Without Failure (Glasser, 1969). Each of these approaches might be described as student centered in that they are based on the belief that students will behave if they are treated humanely. However, I observed that students frequently (indeed, usually) took advantage of teachers who tried to be kind and democratic; it was usually the strict teachers who had control of their classes. Of course, I must admit that many teachers who tried to be strict were also suffering from serious student misbehavior.

In 1983 I had a stroke of good fortune. I supervised two student teachers in the same school, one in English and the other in Health and the same seventh grade students were in both classes. On my first visit to the school both classes were still in the hands of the regular classroom teacher. In the English class, the students were rowdy, used four-letter words, and generally sabotaged the efforts of the teacher. The following period I visited those same students in a Health class, and to my surprise, they were polite and respectful of the teacher. I asked the Health teacher for an explanation of his success with students. He had no secret system, he assured me, he was just being himself. He simply refused to let students misbehave because it was his job to teach them to be polite and considerate of other people, including the teacher. Although this did not provide me with a system which I could share with other teachers, it did show me that teachers can and do make a tremendous difference in how students behave. There was hope.

During my travels about the schools I had come across a small number of teachers who were consistently outstanding in developing polite and productive students. I decided to revisit these teachers in search of answers, and I videotaped each of them in the hopes of discovering their common techniques. At first glance, the outstanding teachers were different from one another: Some were loud and aggressive, others were quiet; some were large, others were small; some were friendly, some were cool and distant; some appeared democratic, others authoritarian; some were Caucasian, others were Oriental. Yet as different as they were, they all had very cooperative students. But why? I could see no common thread.

Gradually, the interplay of my classroom experiences and my reading began to reveal some common characteristics of these effective teachers. From the works of Canter and Canter (1976, 1989) I came to realize that effective teachers were assertive teachers who believed it was their job to teach values and who insisted upon polite behavior. From the works of Charles (1981) I learned that effective teachers prevented most problems through their planning and organization. From Jones (1987) I learned that effective teachers used body language, especially their facial expressions, to convey that they meant business when confronting student misconduct of any kind. From French and Raven (1960) I learned that teachers gain the cooperation of students through the exercise of five different forms of power. And from Harry and Rosemary Wong (1991) I realized that effective teachers set the proper tone in the first few minutes and days of the school year.

There was, after all, some common characteristics of effective teachers. In the remainder of this paper I shall share with you what I consider to be some of the more useful ideas I have discovered about discipline in the schools.

The Issue of Who is in Charge

Table 1 presents a continuum along which are placed some of the leading theorists on classroom discipline (adapted from Tauber, 1995). The descriptors at each end of the continuum are self-explanatory: To the right are theories which believe the teacher must exert control in the classroom, and to the left are theories which believe students can manage themselves if given the chance. Most teachers fall somewhere between the two extremes. However, I think it is a mistake for teachers to think of themselves as being in a fixed spot on the continuum. The most effective teachers I know adjust their management style to fit the situation. For example, a friend

of mine, Alfred, has a group of Advanced Placement Calculus students with whom he is a very student centered teacher. They are bright and highly motivated, and Alfred gives them a great deal of freedom. He can afford to ignore an occasional transgression, and even smile at it, because he knows the students will get back on task. During another period, Alfred has a group of Pre-Algebra students with whom he is a highly teacher centered teacher. Experience has taught him that he must provide them with strict guidelines and constant surveillance. If he smiles at a minor transgression, students frequently perceive this as weakness or approval, and things worsen. Alfred does not prefer being strict, but he has found this is the most effective way to handle the group. Hence, a teacher's position on the continuum is not fixed and can vary depending on the maturity of the students. A teacher's position on the continuum can even change with the same group of students during the school year.

I believe a teacher should start the school year being highly teacher centered. As the year progresses, and as students demonstrate their maturity, the teacher can slowly relinquish more and more control to them. Perhaps you have heard the old saying "Don't smile until Thanksgiving." I do not personally follow this advice, for I smile and laugh throughout the year. There is, nonetheless, a bit of wisdom in the saying. It is based upon the knowledge that if you begin the year by being in tight control of the class, you can gradually relinquish control and establish a student centered classroom. However, if you begin the year by being permissive and letting students dictate the mood of the classroom, and if things get out of control, it is extremely difficult to regain control of the classroom. This means it is possible to go from the right to the left on the discipline continuum as the year progresses, but it is difficult to go from the left to right.

The authors with whom I agree the most, authors such as Jones, the Wongs, and the Canters, fall towards the teacher centered side of the continuum. These authors have their roots in the classroom and I find their ideas about teaching to be the most practical. Those authors who fall on the student centered end of the continuum, men such as Glasser, Gordon, and Dreikurs, are psychologists or psychiatrists who have their roots in private practice dealing with individuals rather than large groups of children. For the most part, I find their ideas to be idealistic and less applicable to the real world of kids in classrooms. An example will illustrate the differences between the two positions.

Dreikurs and Cassel (1972) recommend that the teacher ignore a student who is misbehaving to get attention. They reason that by responding to the misbehavior, the teacher is unwittingly giving the student what he wants, attention, thus reinforcing the bad behavior and increasing the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated. Jones (1987) points out that this might work with a child at home, but it backfires on the teacher in the classroom with 25 other students. If a teacher ignores a student's blatant misbehavior, these students will get the idea that they can do the same thing. And so, instead of extinguishing the misbehavior of one student, by ignoring the infraction the teacher is reinforcing the notion, in the minds of 25 other students, that misbehavior will be tolerated by the teacher. And things will get worse. My experiences tell me that Jones is right.

The Three Faces of Discipline

Charles (1981; 1985) has defined three faces of classroom discipline which provide a useful framework for examining discipline. Preventive discipline are those things a teacher does to prevent student misconduct. Supportive discipline consists of the techniques the teacher uses to help students maintain self-control and to get back on track when they start to misbehave. Corrective discipline consists of the consequences or punishment a teacher administers following student misbehavior. In the following pages, I shall indicate how the leading theories of discipline fit into this framework.

As they read this, teachers might think about developing their own written discipline plan. Using the headings of preventive discipline, supportive discipline, and corrective discipline, they might select ideas for each category which are consistent with their personality and outlook on schooling, keeping in mind that there is no right or wrong approach to discipline. If something works for them, they should use it.

Preventive Discipline. Preventive discipline consists primarily of those things a teacher does before students enter the room. Jones (1987), Emmer and Everton (1984), and Sprick (1985) emphasize the importance of classroom structure, and this topic is a major component of preventive discipline. Structure refers to a broad range of topics from the arrangement of the furniture in the room on the one hand to how teachers plan and teach their classroom rules and procedures on the other. It includes room arrangement, walls and bulletin boards, storage space and supplies, teaching style, rules and procedures, the content of the curriculum, the teachers' uniqueness as a person, their skills in motivating student interest, lesson plans, and their own physical and mental preparation are all vitally important parts of their preparation for teaching. Structure provides a framework for everything that happens in the room. According to Jones, "Adequate structure is the cheapest form of behavioral management, since once you establish a routine you can produce needed cooperation and rule-following thereafter at relatively little effort." (1987, p. 41)

If students clearly understand the rules, routines, and standards for the class, student misconduct can be minimized. Jones (1987) believes classroom discipline problems can almost always be traced, at least in part, to inadequate structure. Therefore, it is important that teachers plan a clearly defined classroom structure before the students arrive. Many authors, including Chernow and Chernow (1981), Emmer and Everton (1984), the Wongs (1991), and Sprick (1985) agree with Jones that classroom rules and procedures must be clearly taught on the first day of school and retaught throughout the school year.

The Wongs (1991) provide a wealth of suggestions for improving a teacher's preventive discipline arsenal. Their approach emphasizes the positive: having positive expectations, helping students experience success, inviting students to learn, dressing for success, and being mentally prepared for teaching. They also provide many practical suggestions, such as how to take roll, how to keep a grade book, and how to introduce oneself to the class.

There is more to preventive discipline than being organized and prepared. Jones (1987, p. 8) defines classroom discipline as "the business of enforcing classroom standards and building patterns of cooperation in order to maximize learning and minimize disruptions." Hence, discipline is a two-edged sword: on one edge is enforcing standards, on the other is gaining the cooperating of your students. Jones believes cooperation to be the more important of the two. But how do we get cooperation? How do we get students to do what we want them to do?

An understanding of the difference between authority and power can be very useful in gaining student cooperation (Froyen, 1988 ). Authority is the right to decide what happens in the classroom. The teacher is granted that authority by the school board. Power, on the other hand, is teachers' ability to get students to do what they want them to do. While all teachers are vested with authority, not all teachers have power. There are five forms of power that can be used to get an individual to act in ways the teacher deems appropriate: legitimate power; coercive power; reward power; attractive power; and expert power (French & Raven, 1959; Froyen, 1988; Shrigley, 1986).

To some extent, teachers have always had legitimate power. This power emanates from the students' belief that the teacher has the right to determine what happens in the classroom. Students behave because they recognize and accept the right of the teacher to be in charge. To a large extent it was legitimate power which enabled me to remove Fred from my class in 1963. The students, as well as the administrators, acknowledged the legitimate power of the teacher. While teachers still have legitimate power, in recent years many forces are eroding this form of power.

In the past, teachers usually combined their legitimate power with coercive power, the threat and use of punishment to gain student cooperation. In today's schools, the continued use of coercive power, especially in the absence of other forms of power, alienates students and often has detrimental side effects. Nonetheless, coercive power has a legitimate role in the classroom, and when used in conjunction with other forms of power, can contribute to a productive classroom.

Teachers can also use reward power. In this case, students behave in anticipation of receiving some kind of reward from the teacher. The outline in Part II below lists many types of rewards, but recognition, praise, and appreciation are probably the most effective rewards a teacher can give, especially if the teacher is also using attractive power.

Attractive, or referent power is relationship power, the power teachers have because they are likable and know how to develop good relationships with students. Teachers who rely upon attractive power go out of their way to make students feel good about themselves, and they work hard at developing good relationships with all students. I know of teachers who proudly state that they do not care if their students like them so long as they respect them. To some extent this attitude is based upon the belief that popular teachers buy the good will of their students by being lenient with them. But this need not be the case. Many popular teachers are strict; yet, at the same time, they treat students in a friendly and respectful manner, they make their classes as interesting as possible, and they try to make every student feel a part of the class. Such teachers are both liked and respected, and they wield a great deal of power with students.

The final type of power identified by French and Raven (1960) is expert power, the power teachers have because they possess superior knowledge. Teachers who rely upon expert power take pride in their command of the subject matter, are enthusiastic about the subject, prepare interesting lessons, and derive great pleasure in transmitting this enthusiasm and knowledge to their students. When students respect the teacher for the knowledge she possesses, when they master significant knowledge and skills, and when they feel good about themselves because they are achieving, they are less likely to misbehave.

A generation ago, when I began my teaching career, a teacher could reply upon legitimate power, supported with coercive power, to maintain control in the classroom. This will not work in most classrooms today: many students do not automatically respect their teachers, and the arsenal of available punishments is so small and ineffectual that the most disruptive students are unafraid. Therefore, all teachers would be well-advised to develop other sources of power. By consciously developing and combining various forms of power, a teacher can geometrically increase his or her influence with students (Fairholm & Fairholm, 1984). If a teacher is liked by students (attractive power), is admired for his knowledge of the subject (expert power), and gives authentic praise to his students (reward power), then the teacher truly has power to influence learning in the classroom. The challenge to any teacher is to find that combination of power which is compatible with his or her basic beliefs, abilities, and personality.

Jones (1987) has also made a significant contribution to the discussion of power in the classroom. In a sense, his discussion of power is more relevant to teachers than are the other theories, for he deals with the most common of classroom experiences, confrontations between student and teacher. In such situations, the person who get his way wields the power. Many authors are uncomfortable discussing confrontation, and some recommend that teachers withdraw from power struggles (e.g., Dreikurs and Cassel, 1972). Jones does not. He suggests that the teacher use gentle yet firm techniques (which he refers to as "limit setting") which enables the teacher to prevail in interpersonal power struggles between student and teacher. I refer to this as personal power, and it will be discussed more fully in the next section of this paper.

No discussion of preventive discipline would be complete without discussing the importance on the first day of school. In the outline in Part II below, I have included the suggestions offered by the Wongs (1991) for getting off to a good start with students. The most important lesson plan of the year is the one teachers prepare for that first day of school. If they do it well, and they greatly increase their chances for a successful year.

Supportive Discipline. The outline of Part II of this paper describes the theories of eight approaches to discipline, including the works of the Canters, Dreikurs and Cassell, Glasser, Gordon, Jones, Kounin, Skinner, Redl and Wattenberg, and the Wongs. While there are good ideas in each of these approaches, I find the work of Jones (1987) to be the most relevant for teachers. Let me explain.

In my efforts to help student teachers with their discipline problems, I would listen to their situations, then suggest ways for remedying the problems. In some cases it worked, but in many cases it did not. After reading Jones, I have come to realize it is not what you do, but how you do it, that makes the difference. Unlike other writers, Jones (1987) tells us precisely how to deal with a student who is misbehaving, he tells us how to do it. He calls this process "limit setting" and I refer to this as exerting personal power.

When I first read Jones' description of limit setting, I realized that this was what the effective teachers I know actually do. I had known that a certain seriousness characterized their actions, but I had not translated that seriousness into more definable terms. Jones does. He calls it "body language."

The body language of teaching is different from the body language of discipline. When in a discipline mode, Jones recommends that you move very deliberately and more slowly than normal; keep a relaxed, non-smiling, non-angry face; look the student in the eyes; face your entire body towards the potentially disruptive student; have your arms at your side, in your pockets, or behind your back, and not on your hips or folded across your chests; avoid speaking unless absolutely necessary, and then in a unemotional, calm tone; and wait until the student complies. If the student refuses to comply, you must eventually apply a consequence. Since this is not natural for most persons, Jones has teachers practice these techniques until they look and feel natural performing them. For persons who can do it well, the calm, firm, and patient use of body language is a powerful yet caring way to get your way in the classroom. A more detailed account of limit setting is contained in outline in Part II of this paper.

I have found that some teachers are not comfortable in facing a student down with limit setting. Others are not very adept at establishing warm and friendly relationships with students. Still others dislike the use of coercive power. However, if one is to be a successful teacher, one must find a style of teaching with which one is comfortable and which gives the ability to get students to do what one wants them to do. An awareness of the forms of power can help the teacher to reach this goal.

Corrective Discipline. Corrective discipline refers to the actions a teacher takes when preventive and supportive discipline fail, when in spite of our best efforts, students continue to misbehave. Jones refers to this as the backup system. It is coercive power, the application of punishment. The most extreme form of punishment in schools is corporal punishment (such as spankings), and Dobson (1970; 1992) is one of the few authors who advocate it. While this is appealing to many teachers, corporal punishment is not allowed in most schools and is generally frowned upon as a measure to be applied in schools (Orenlicher, 1992; Kessler, 1985; Kohn, 1991; Tauber, 1990).

Since corporal punishment is not an option for most teachers, it is sometimes difficult to find a consequence which will deter misbehavior. When an effective deterrent is found, parents often object to it. For example, one high school initiated a lockout in which teachers locked their doors when the tardy bell rang. Security guards then corralled the tardy students and made them remove graffiti from walls and sidewalks with scrub brushes. The policy was very effective, and tardiness was all but eliminated from the school. But when several parents complained about the policy, the scrubbing stopped, and tardiness became a serious problem once again. It is for such reasons that preventive and supportive discipline must be the main lines of defense for most teachers.

To help eliminate the adversarial relationship created by corrective discipline, Dreikurs and Grey (1968) suggest that teachers make a distinction between "punishment" and "consequences." Punishment is often viewed by students as being arbitrary and delivered by a vindictive teacher who wishes to inflict pain into a student's life. Consequences, on the other hand, follow logically from the behavior of the students. If students act in appropriate ways, there will be positive consequences; if students act in inappropriate ways, there will be negative consequences. By making students aware of both positive and negative consequences before misbehavior occurs, the teacher can avoid the perception of being vindictive. By misbehaving, a student chooses the consequence. A fuller description of consequences appear in Part II below.

School wide Discipline

There were two episodes in my professional experience which shocked my sensibilities and convinced me that it is not sufficient to deal with discipline solely at the classroom level, that discipline is in fact a school wide problem. The first episode involved a student teacher who was visibly pregnant. She taught in a high school, and during the lunch hour she and her cooperating teacher would allow students into the classroom to eat their lunches. One day a boy approached the pregnant student teacher and told her, in the crudest of street talk, that he would like to make love to her. She ran from the room to find her cooperating teacher. The teacher, in following the school's policy of trying to settle things at the classroom level before referring an offender to the office, talked to the boy. She then assured the pregnant teacher that it would not happen again. Several days later the boy returned to her classroom, grabbed her by the arms, and tried to pull her body into his, all the while muttering his passion for her (in words unsuitable for print). She ran in terror to the principal's office to report the incident. After school, the principal talked with the student teacher, stating "Don't worry. He'll never do that again. I told him if he ever touches you again, I'll kick him out of school." In both instances the student should have been referred to the police; for assault and sexual harassment in the first case, for battery in the second. Yet the school administrator chose to merely warn the boy. The message was clear: A student can sexually harass and assault a teacher without serious consequences.

The second episode affected me personally. During a seminar a student teacher came up to me to explain that her sixth-grade students were doing something awful, and since I was going to visit her the following day, she wanted me to know that the students did the same thing to their regular teacher. It seems that Robert, a difficult lad, would repeat everything she said. The entire class would then repeat it in unison. Sometimes, she said, this would continue all day long.

I reassured the student teacher that I understood, and the following day I arrived at the school during the lunch hour to find eight teams of students playing basketball on the outdoor court. The class that I was to visit was playing, and Robert and four of his friends were sitting in the shade of a building watching the game. I wandered over and watched the remainder of the game with them. When the game was over, the teams gave a cheer for one another.

"Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate? Mrs. Nakamura's team! Mrs. Nakamura's team! Mrs. Nakamura's team!" And so on.

Suddenly Robert and his four friends shouted, "Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate? Mr. Bald Head! Mr. Bald Head! Mr. Bald Head!"

Oh, did I forget to mention that I am bald headed? Well I am, and being the true professional that I am, I ignored their rudeness, smiled at them, and walked back towards the classroom.

"Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate? Mr. Bald Head! Mr. Bald Head! Mr. Bald Head!" they yelled at an even louder pitch.

This time I couldn't ignore it, and being the true professional that I am, I said, "Geez thanks boys, that's the first time I've ever received a cheer for being bald headed!"

And Robert said, "Geez thanks boys, that's the first time I've ever received a cheer for being bald headed!"

And his four friends shouted, "Geez thanks boys, that's the first time I've ever received a cheer for being bald headed!"

Now there were about a hundred kids and ten teachers walking nearby, watching the gathering storm. Being the true professional that I am, I said, "Come on, boys, that's not very nice!"

And Robert said, "Come on, boys, that's not very nice!"

And the four boys shouted, "Come on, boys, that's not very nice!"

And being the true professional that I am, I walked away quickly, ignoring the boys. Suddenly, one of the boys ran up and slapped me on the back of my bald head, very hard. Whap! And being the true professional that I am, I turned and shouted, "You little b_*st_*rds!"

And Robert gleefully shouted, "You little b_*st_*rds!"

And the four boys, juking theirs heads back and forth, arms extended, as if enticing me to chase them, laughingly shouted, "You little b_*st_*rds!" Things went downhill from there.

This episode was a turning point for me. For the first time, I understood at the emotional level what it was like to be teacher when students are being rude and disrespectful. I recalled the student teacher who had let his students slap him on the back of the head, and suddenly I was less critical of him. I was less critical, too, of other teachers who, from time to time, had performed an unprofessional act towards students. If I could lose my temper, then anyone could!

In retrospect, it is rather funny episode. But at the time, I was so humiliated by the incident that I did not mention it to anyone for more than a year. Then, one afternoon while addressing a group of teachers, I spoke of my experience with Robert and his friends, I spoke of my embarrassment and humiliation. After the meeting, several teachers waited around to speak to me in private. One by one they confessed to me stories they had never shared with anyone else, stories, similar to mine, of their humiliation by students in classrooms, stories of reprisals by students, stories of years of silent suffering.

One teacher caught two boys smoking marijuana outside her classroom and turned them into the principal. The following day students started throwing rocks at her from behind bushes. When she reported this to the principal, she was told that it would be impossible to catch the kids since they hid behind bushes. Long after those students had graduated, other students still carried on the tradition of throwing rocks at her.

Another teacher's small children came home from school from time to time with gum in their hair, placed there by older students who told the children their mother was a witch. Since it occurred on the bus, the school administration could do nothing about it.

Yet another teacher was tormented by a group of sixth-grade boys who would get behind her and run their hands up her legs to her panties. She scolded the boys, but they continued to do it. Finally, she told her story to the principal. He reasoned that since she was an attractive young woman, and since she wore dresses and skirts, she was partly to blame for the problem. He advised her to wear jeans or slacks.

Over the past several years many other teachers have told me of the daily abuse they silently suffer at the hands of children. Gradually, piece by piece, a rather disturbing picture began to emerge. Rather than just a few isolated incidents, there appeared to be a general pattern of teacher suffering at the hands of children. But more disturbing was the fact that teachers suffered in silence, not knowing what to do about the humiliation they suffered each day. Just as many battered wives blames themselves for the abuse their husbands' unleash upon them, so, too, do many battered teachers blame themselves for the troubles they have in class. They are ashamed of their situation, and they suffer in silence. My message to such teachers is clear: I tell them they are not alone, that many other teachers suffer similar insult. I also tell them it is not their fault, that there is no excuse for rude and disrespectful behavior, regardless of the teacher's shortcomings.

Teachers need to support and help one another far more than is currently the case. I believe an assault on one teacher is an assault on all teachers. As a community of professional teachers, everyone needs to be more aware of the conditions in the schools and be willing to help each other in times of need. Strong teachers should not criticize teachers who are having discipline problems. Instead, they should be willing to help them. Teachers having problems with students should seek help. It might be embarrassing at first, but in the long run such individuals will become stronger teachers.

Many educators believe that teachers will not have serious discipline problems if they have good lesson plans, or are democratic teachers, or genuinely love their students, or whatever. The implication, though perhaps not intended, is that if students misbehave, it is the teacher's fault. I wish it were true that good teaching would end all discipline problems. But it won't. To be sure, the suggestions offered in this paper will help teachers become more effective, and teachers should continuously strive for improvement. But the problem of discipline in our schools today far transcend the individual teacher's ability to cope with them. Problems such as that encountered by the pregnant student teacher, as well as many of the other situations I have described in this paper, are caused by school policies which do not hold students accountable for their actions. Until we do hold students strictly accountable, we will continue to have serious problems.

For this reason, I now believe it is absolutely essential for all schools to develop a school wide discipline plan which everyone will support and enforce. This is not as easy as it may sound, for it is often difficult to get an entire faculty to agree upon and enforce the rules and procedures in the school. Nonetheless, if we are to create schools which are places of respect and learning, we must make the effort. The last section of the outline in Part II of this paper contains some ideas on school wide discipline.

Concluding Remarks

I began this paper by stating that all teachers had the common goal of wanting to see their students learn and grow as a result of their teaching. Today, more than ever before, that goal includes the development of character as well as academic and cognitive skills. If our culture is to survive, we must first produce decent people. I hope I have not sounded pessimistic in my remarks, for I am optimistic about the future. This is a great time to be a teacher, for both the community and the teaching profession are beginning to acknowledge the seriousness of the problems which face our schools. I view these problems as opportunities, and opportunities abound.

Your Discipline Plan?

As the culminating assignment for the course I teach on classroom discipline, I require each student to develop a written discipline plan. The outline of discipline which follows in Part II presents many practical ideas for the classroom teacher. Readers might search for ideas which they think might be useful to them. If they do not have a written discipline plan, and if they need one, why not try to develop one? Using the categories of preventive, supportive, and corrective discipline, they might put down those things which they think might work for them. They might determine which kinds of power they can most reasonably develop, and list ideas which might enhance this power.