Discipline is one of those topics that people can’t seem to get enough of.  Quite a few of you have been using some of the ideas we discussed last year to great effect (e.g. here and here and here).  But what I find most useful is to look outside of teaching to find ways of motivating, and yes disciplining, students.

One of the best podcasts out there is by a guy called Zig Ziglar (oh yes!).  Here’s one of his episodes, it’s about leadership, but contains some very useful stuff.  It’s 12 minutes so listen to it all, part way through it may seem like he goes off topic, but you’ll see he brings it all back round at the end!

(Hit play above or right click here to download)

What your students expect

A couple of things he says:

* The work would have been fine, but his mother held him to a higher standard.

* He knew she would show him exactly what to do.

* He knew he would be inspected afterwards … “you got to inspect to get what you expect”

* He wasn’t a bad boy, he just did a bad thing.  Don’t blame the person, blame the thing.

Anyway zig explains it a whole lot better himself!

What your students want?

Then in the boss – employee section, what the boss (teacher) thought the employee (student) wanted, wasn’t what they wanted at all!

Humans being humans, the three things he says that employees say they want is exactly the same as what students say they want from us.

What do you think?  Does this help?