Emily Corning

Professor Bennett
En466 FA13
11/20/13
Tools Kit
In the books and on TV, teaching looks like its all fun and games. They
make it seem like teaching is the easiest job out there, and that to be a
teacher you only have to put minimal work in. Teachers just show up and
start teaching students about math, English, history, and so on, and thats
that. Well when it comes to teaching, its a lot of work, and its not always
easy work. One aspect of teaching that in particular is a lot of work is
classroom management. In class, we learned a lot of different methods for
classroom management from the tool kits. The purpose of the tool kit is to
offers many different strategies to teachers, to help with managing their own
personal classroom. In my opinion, it is important for teachers to use a tool
kit approach instead of a single program approach, because there are going
to be many different types of scenarios that happen in your classroom. Not
one class is the same, and from year to year you are going to have many
different students in your classroom, and different techniques might work
with different students. With a tool kit, you have many different programs
that you can use, and you can take things you like from these programs, and
make something that you do like. When choosing the tools that you like, and
the ones that you can personally do, you can start to make your own
personal tool kit. By having your own person tool, this will help you when

becoming a teacher, because when situations come up in the classroom, you

will always have something to come back too and have a plan.
Some of the programs that we talked about in class, I personally
will not use, but there were many that I really liked and that I will use for my
tool kit. Some of the tools that I really liked and will use in my tool kit are:
Kids are Worth It, Strategies for Engaging All The Students All The Time,
Capturing Kids Heart, Responsible Thinking Process, The First Day of School,
Attitude Check, and Restitution. Kids are worth it, is a program that children
are taught to think and act on their own. When it comes to discipline, the
students are to focus on their inner discipline. With inner discipline the
teacher severs as a guide and helps manage the students. This method also
allows students to manage themselves in the classroom, and I believe that
this is going to teach them more if they have to be an advocate for
themselves, rather than always having an adult yelling at them. Everyone
makes mistakes, and adults/ teachers shouldnt just jump the gun and start
yelling and trying to punish children/students. This program also has the
triangle of encouragement. I really like this, because the students are
always receiving positive feedback from the teacher, and they know that
they have someone behind them that believes in them. The triangle of
encouragement is: encouragement, feedback, and discipline. It is important
to give feedback so that the students can be guided in the right directions,
and discipline is so that the student can know what they did wrong. This
program can be taught at any grade level, but is more effective around 1 st

and 2nd grade and above. With the younger kids, kindergarten, they may not
be ready for this, because they are still learning a lot and would need a lot of
guidance. The next program that I like is the strategies for engaging all the
students all the time. I think that it is so important to engage students as
much as you can. Im going to teach early elementary, and its so important
to keep these students on their toes. They can get distracted very easily, so
as a teacher Im going to have to keep them interested. I really like the idea
of writing kids names on note cards, because they dont know who will be
called. Also with this method, I think how students dont always have to
answered, because I know that some students get really bad anxiety from
this. Another thing that can keep students interested is fill in the blank note
sheets. There are so many ways to keep students involved and engaged
during class, and as teachers we need to make sure that we do this. The
third tool that I liked was, capturing kids hearts. This method helps students
learn skills that will teach them to develop safe, trusting, and self-managing
classrooms. As teachers this should always be number one. We need to make
our students feel safe while being in school, and they should feel especially
safe while being in a classroom, and not have to feel afraid. This program
came up with the acronym EXCEL: E engage by greeting at the door. X
Explore and talk with students, take and interest. C Communicate; dialogue
not monologue. E Empower; be affirming about self-management, build
confidence. L Launch; leave on a positive note. The idea of this program is
to come up with a contract between the student and the teacher, and they

are to uphold this contract. This program I believe can also be taught to any
grade level. The fourth tool that will be in my tool kit is the responsible
thinking process. The purpose of this tool that I really like is that the student
is to come up with goals and write them down and then they are too achieve
these goals. Once the student comes up with a goal, they are to defend
themself, and explain why their goal is good. The teacher will first listen,
then discuss and focus on the action, ask great questions, and help them
resolve the problem when they are ready. If the student does not change
their behavior and abide by the plan, then the teacher sends the student to
RTI. If the student continues to have a behavior problem, then they get sent
to the principals office. The purpose of this tool is for the student to see
what they did wrong and fix it. The fifth tool that I will use, is The First Day of
School. The first day of school is the most important day. Its the first time
meeting your students, and you are trying to figure out whats going to work
for the rest of the year. Also, the students will be sizing you up, so you have
to make sure you make a good impression on them as well. For this program,
the teachers are to send a letter out to the students once you receive the
class list. I liked the idea about in the beginning of the summer sending a
letter out, and giving the student your address to let you know about how
their summer is going. This allows you to have a positive relationship starting
way before the first day of class. I also liked how right before the first day of
school, that you send a letter out to the parents. I think that it is so important
to have a good relationship with parents. This letter that you send, is the

tentative plan for what you have planned for the year. This allows the
parents have somewhat of an idea of what their children will be learning, and
they will also be able to know what your discipline plan as well. I think that
this program is great for any great level. The first impression is huge, and if
you have a bad one, you could have a bad year trying to make up for one
thing. The sixth tool that I am going to add to my tool kit is Attitude Check.
Especially working with younger students, I think that this tool is really
important. You take 15 minutes out of the day to have an intervention with
your class. During this time, students are allowed to talk about whatever
they want, the one rule being no names. You are not allowed to mention
whom you are talking about, and once you do the topic is dropped and then
you talk about the next topic. This is also a great tool for any grade to use. I
think that this should be integrated into high schools more often, because
these students have a lot to talk about and their voices are never hear. I
think that this shouldnt be just for individual classroom, but something that
the whole school should do.

The last tool that I will use is Restitution. This

tool was the one I liked the most. In this program, the person who makes the
mistake is able to have the opportunity of restitution. An example of this
program is: a student gets caught throwing paper on the ground. The
teacher will ask the student if they want the opportunity of restitution. If they
do, then the students will have to come up with a plan and tell the teacher.
So the student comes up with a plan, and in this case the students decided
to pick up all the trash on the floor before recess. The students have to come

up with a plan that has to deal with what they did wrong. The whole point to
this tool, is that its teaching students that its ok to make mistakes, just as
long as they own up to their mistakes. I think that this tool will work for any
grade. I think that students all throughout school get punished for the same
silly things, so restoration is a great way of eliminating punishments in your
classroom.

The programs that I wont be using in my tool kit are: love and logic,
reality therapy, assertive discipline, emotional intelligence, and Alfie kohns.
Love and logic is a great program when it comes to really listening to
students and talking to them in a meaningful way. The reason that I choose
not to use this program, is because I am going to be teaching younger
children, and I felt as if this program is more for middle school students and
high school students. This program wants teachers to help the students to
come up with a plan, and the students are to uphold that deal. If the student
breaks it, the teacher isnt going to go and talk to the student right away but
rather waits, so they can think about it themself for a while. I dont think you
can do that with younger students. Once they do something wrong, you
should talk to them right away, because they will either forget, or not fully
understand what they may have done wrong. The second tool that I choose
not to do was reality therapy, because just like love and logic, I think that
this is for older children. In this tool, I felt like it would be too complex for the

younger students. In this program the teacher shows the students that she
care for them whether it is mentally, physically or emotionally. I believe that
students in early elementary wont be able to fully comprehend this yet. The
third tool that Im not going to use in my tool kit is assertive discipline. In this
tool, I felt as is the teacher was really strict and almost acted more like a drill
sergeant rather than a teacher. It seemed like everything had rules: raised
hands to speak, line up at the door, no food or gum, chair legs on the floor,
and sharing supplies, and everything seems to be more black and white. I
also disagree that teachers are supposed to punish and reward. We talked in
class about how teachers shouldnt punish or reward students. I think that
its important for classrooms to have not just rules just also guidelines as
well. The emotional intelligence program is another one I wouldnt include in
my tool kit. The reason why is I think this is a better fit program for high
school aged kids. Its helps are students understand how to manage their
different emotions that they deal with day in and day out. I would like to
teach somewhere between k-2 so I dont think I would ever use this program.
However I do believe that this is a great program for teachers to use once
the students are upper elementary and on, because these are the ages when
students find out who they are. So I think that this program would be great,
but for the age I want to teach, I wont use this program. The last tool that I
am not going to use is Alfie Kohns. I dont like this tool at all, because the
students punishments are supposed to make the students suffer. The
students must suffer to learn their lesson. Teacher are supposed to make

students feel comfortable in their classroom not afraid, and also we should
be teaching them and help guiding them through their problems. Another
thing that I dont like about this is that there is no competition allowed in the
classroom. Children are naturally competitive, and students will push each
other to do better. As example of this: when students are learning spelling
words, make a competition out of this by doing a small spelling bee in the
classroom. The students will really try really hard to do better than their
friends, and this will push them to learn more. Having competition is
classrooms is one was of getting every student in the classroom engaged.