Time Out

Positive Parenting Connection

           As a future educator I believe that there is a proper way to deal with children who misbehave in the classroom.  What I like most about the education field is that I have already had 19 years of experience of what it is like to have a good and a bad teacher.  Although I have had many amazing teachers throughout my educational career, I have also had some teachers that are not that great.  One teacher in particular is the reason why I am so against to the well known consequence called a Time Out.
           When I was in the fourth grade I was a very shy student.  I did not talk much during class because I was just afraid to answer a question and be wrong.  My teacher finally had enough of my shyness, and called me out in front of my entire class.  She told me specifically that if I did not begin to participate in class she would put me in time out.  I was very confused because it was not like I was misbehaving I was just extremely shy.  I was so upset that my teacher embarrassed me in front of all of my classmates that I just began to cry.  She then made me sit in the back of the class and did not ever come over to me to talk to me individually. 
           Luckily I have also had some amazing teachers.  In fact I remember a technique that my third grade teacher mastered wonderfully.  She had a system called "moving out rockets".  This consisted of a behavior chart.  At the start of the day my rocket started at as being "Right on track".  Throughout the day we could either move up two categories which was "Awesome, lets keep moving", and "Outstanding, you got to the moon", which meant that our behavior was awesome.  On the other hand we also had the option of moving down two categories if we were misbehaving.  These two categories were "Off track, Lets move back up", or "Mayday we have a problem".  If we moved our rocket ship down to "Mayday we have a problem" then the teacher had the option to call home or another consequence that usually consisted of staying after school with the teacher.  What I liked most about this was that the teacher never did anything to embarrass the students who were misbehaving.  I think that this is extremely important because elementary school children are just too young for that kind of consequence. 
          I personally like to use Pinterest for ideas and articles related to teaching.  As I was scrolling through I found the picture on the top right corner of this blog where it gives alternatives to Time out.  When a child misbehaves there are so many positive ways that a teacher can use in order to get the child back on track to what the appropriate behavior is.  My favorite out of the ideas listed is "Give two choices".  Here the teacher can the student an ultimatum, one being positive and one being negative.  The student will then result in acting the correct way because they would not want the negative behavior to happen to them.  I am a strong believer that Time Out is ineffective.  A child does not learn from sitting alone, away from interaction, reinforcement, and school work.  A child is much more likely to learn from conversation, and consequences that make the student finish his or her school work.  At the bottom of this picture an article is linked to "Positive Parenting Connection" where a whole list of alternatives to Time Out is listed.