Discipline without stress, punishment, but maybe rewards??

Our school uses the discipline without stress punishment or rewards system and so these principles are brought into the classroom. If a child is not behaving properly, they are asked to “check their level” to ensure that they are constantly thinking about what level of behavior they are acting on. If the inappropriate behavior continues, the students are asked to fill out a reflection which requires them to think about what they have done and how they will prevent themselves from acting out in the future. In my classroom, about half a dozen students have been asked to fill out reflections, many of them multiple times. My cooperating teacher does not hesitate to hand out reflection forms; however, the students almost always get a warning, sometimes two depending on the situation.

All of our teachers are currently following the behavior contracts that the students and their parents signed for the field trip and I don’t know about you’re classrooms, but in mine, these kids are terrified that they will not be able to go on the trip!! We have two students that already have two reflections and its only January! They have another 3 months to go and at this rate, they won’t be coming with us  My teacher seems to have pretty good control over the classroom and the students know what is expected of them – whether that’s from the school wide discipline program or if it’s my teachers doing or possibly a combination of the two but they really seem to get it! Rarely is my class every behaving so poorly that the lessons are unsuccessful which I think is great! However, I kinda feel that these five strikes and you’re not going on the trip thing is somewhat of a reward? They are rewarding the students with good behavior at the end of the semester – they get to go on the field trip if they don’t get five reflections… I don’t know, it just kind of seems like somewhat of a reward and kind of against the whole discipline without stress punishment or rewards – what do you guys think??

I feel that all three of us have such different classroom environments that each of our teachers has to approach discipline in different ways – maybe we could rotate between the classrooms because I really would like to see each of your rooms!! I’ve never dealt with lower grades much less a combination class and I have never seen a classroom with ANY EC students in it (weird yeah??) Anyways… just a thought!