Teaching Discipline in Elementary Schools: Responsive Classroom Provides New Professional Development Resource

TURNERS FALLS, Mass., Oct. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Positive behavior enables maximum student learning, and positive behavior can be taught. That is a key principle of the Responsive Classroom® approach to elementary education. Now, with Teaching Discipline in the Classroom, the newest professional development kit from Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc., schools and districts can conduct their own structured, multi-session, school-based study of how to teach discipline and positive behavior. Using the classic book Rules in School: Teaching Discipline in the Responsive Classroom, teachers learn practical strategies and study videos of real teachers using the strategies in their own classrooms.

Mary Beth Forton, Rules in School co-author, says, "Discipline is a subject that can be taught just as we teach reading, writing, and math."

Using the professional development kit, teachers learn to:

• Establish a calm, orderly, and safe learning environment
• Help children develop self-control and self-discipline
• Teach children to be responsible, contributing members of a community
• Promote respectful and kind teacher-student and student-student interactions.

Forton adds that "teachers need professional development resources to use in their own school or district so they can learn with colleagues. The kit provides a structure that encourages teachers to go into more depth than an informal book study group typically allows."

The new multimedia kit, third in a series, is modeled on the Morning Meeting Kit, a 2009 winner of the Association of Educational Publishers' Golden Lamp Award. Judges commented, "You can take the kit right off the shelf and use it. Excellent reproducible materials." Priced at $695, Teaching Discipline in the Classroom is a reusable resource that enables school teams to learn the principles of effective classroom management together.

About Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc.
Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc. (NEFC), a not-for-profit organization, was established in 1981 by elementary school educators who envisioned a way of teaching that would bring together academic and social learning throughout the school day. That way of teaching, called the Responsive Classroom® approach, is now being used in schools across the country. For more information, visit http://www.responsiveclassroom.org.

SOURCE Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc.