The Behavior Management Cycle and Gallons of Coffee

5:45 am, Saturday September 17^th, the Union Circle Drive:

Ten members of UNITE gathered around three cars with thermoses full of coffee, drooping eyes and business casual clothes. What were we up to at 5:45 in the morning on a Saturday?! (I’m sure many of us asked ourselves this question as our alarms went off…)

We were waking up with a palpable excitement to get to our Classroom Management Workshop developed by UNITE National Headquarters Staff (hosted at Henson Elementary School, just West of Douglass Park in North Lawndale, Chicago).

Two and a half hours of driving, multiple radio station changes, and a few McDonalds refill stops later, we arrived to our destination. We were welcomed by UNITE staffers, CPS teachers, City Year participants, and fellow UNITE chapter members from ISU and Indiana University.

Everyone jumped right in to learn more about The Behavior Management Cycle from Sherita Carter-King, a teacher-educator from the AUSL (Academy of Urban School Leadership, Chicago’s Turnaround Partner). After she explained and modeled the cycle of Explicit Instruction, Behavioral Narration, and Corrective Behavior, we were all impressed with how effective it could be. She asked us to specifically, “please work with your elbow partner for two minutes to develop a single sentence representing your ideas.”

What sold us most on this approach? After Mrs. Carter-King modeled it on us for 40 minutes, she asked us to generally discuss the Cycle with those around us. Without explicit directions she’d been providing us with, we were at a loss for how to proceed! We all laughed at how quickly we followed her modeling, but the true message was there: effective classroom management can boil down to providing clear instruction, narrating behavior we want to see in our students, and providing a choice system for corrective measures in the classroom.

Next, we attended break out sessions with headquarters staff, ranging from the usage of peace circles in the everyday classroom, to structuring the classroom setting to explicitly teaching students how to act like the students we expect them to be.

Four hours, countless models, discussions, critical thinking exercises, practice sessions, and tiny tips later, we were finished! We came away with concrete knowledge and resources for further exploration.

Our approval rate of our first ever University of Illinois attended UNITE workshop? 100%. (We’d like to extend a special thanks to the staff who hosted us!)

Wondering more about what we learned, and how you can learn it, too? Attend our meeting this Wednesday at 5:00 pm in Room 210A of the Education Building! We can provide you with the resources to check out the Behavior Management Cycle, and our other tips, for yourself! Also, check out the links below:

Got questions about our upcoming workshops? Look here!: http://www.urbanneeds.org/Workshops.html

Are you wondering more about AUSL? Check this out: http://www.ausl-chicago.org/

Don’t know what is the world City Year is? Find out: http://www.cityyear.org/default_ektid22283.aspx