Teach English in LiujiAzi Zhen - Tongliao Shi

I will note that I will be writing about discipline mainly as a use for younger students, high school age and below, because I believe that since adults are usually in a learning environment because they choose to be, not because they are told they have to, which means the use of discipline is a lot less needed for them as they already generally have the motivation to learn as well as they can. The two most simplified categories of discipline are positive and punitive discipline, both containing a myriad of different methods within them, but at its most basic, positive discipline would be using things like rewards and positive encouragement whereas punitive discipline would focus more on punishing students for negative actions in hopes that they will not repeat said action, the most common use of punitive discipline would be in schools, when students are given detentions or have the teacher speak to the students parents for performing their negative actions. The most common use of positive discipline would also be in schools I believe, however the methods tend to vary more in this case, some schools might; . Give children stickers or little prizes for good deeds. . Write letters or emails to parents praising students. . Give students and identifying badge or sticker to put on their person that shows that they have acted well on a given day or in a given class. There are different pros and cons to each of these methods, for example, i believe that punishment should be used only as a last resort for students, and when it used you should always go the route of trying to speak to the child first and explain to them that the behavior they are showing is not good for their learning nor is it good for their fellow classmates, and try to explain to them that if they act in the way that you ask them to you will be happy to reward them for this behavior, the next step would be to speak to the child's parents beforehand to explain any issues that the student is having, and try to come up with ways to improve this behavior with help from the parents without punishment first, however this is not always an option, and when it is it still will not work 100% of the time, in lue of these times I feel it is important that if you are going to resort to punishment to make sure the student is told about this first, and given a chance to change their behavior before punishment is given, and once it is, it shouldn't be administered in class, but afterwards, as you do not want to punish the student in front of other students, as this may affect said students confidence in front of others, or in other cases may even do the opposite, where the child is then thought of as cool for being punished, which will have the opposite effect as intended, as then the student will want to get into trouble in order to show off to other students. As for positive discipline, I believe the method with the most cons and fewest positives is giving a student an identifying badge to show to other students and parents that they have acted well, the reason I believe this is the least effective is because in a lot of cases, just as punishing kids in front of other students can backfire, so can this, it can make other kids start to either resent or make fun of this student, calling them things like "teacher’s pet" and so on, I also believe it is ineffective as anything like this can easily be taken of the student without anyone's knowledge, either by the student to avoid ridicule, or by other children in an attempt to take it for themselves. The best way I believe to use positive discipline would be to firstly, at the beginning of a semester or class, explain to the students the rules of the class and why the rules are what they are, then to show the children whatever form of discipline you intend to use, for example, I tend to use a point scoring system, the children that have over a certain amount of points at the end of the lesson will get a reward, these rewards can vary, and the children below that amount of points will not, on top of that, the child with the most points at the end of the lesson will get an extra reward. this serves to not only have the children trying to get points so they can get their reward, but also makes it like a game for the students, competing to get the most points for the extra reward, this makes it more fun overall for the students as they want to play the head to head games that I make for my class so they can get points, whereas without this method some students may be too nervous or just not want to try. This method is best used on younger children, below 13 years of age, as rewards tend to hold less value for the older students. In conclusion, I believe that the best way to discipline students is using positive discipline and reinforcement, which should be done using more than one method, I believe some methods are better than others but almost all methods hold some value in different environments. And mostly I believe the best way to get students to act well in the classroom is to first and foremost treat them with respect, because if you don't, no amount of discipline will be enough to get them to learn effectively and in a healthy manner.