Communicating Positively

Author: Scarlett, W. G., Ponte, I. C., & Singh, J. P.

Excerpt from Approaches to behavior and classroom management: Integrating discipline and care. (Scarlett, Ponte, & Singh, chapter 3, 2009)

Communicating Positively

Showing care can also be expressed by communicating positively. Communicating positively can mean something simple, such as making sure that when communicating with students, positive statements outnumber negative statements.

The research shows that this matters (Becker, Engelmann, & Thomas, 1975). However, communicating positively has different meanings and different effects, including the effects of feeling known, understood, accepted, and supported.

Gordon and Teacher Effectiveness Training. Feeling known and understood comes about when teachers, from the very first time children and adolescents walk into their classrooms, address students by their names; when high school teachers take time to meet with students individually; when teachers of all grades show interest in students’ passions and interests—the list is long. For many, the single most important way that students feel known and understood may be when teachers listen. Nowhere do we find this message about listening more clearly explained and emphasized than in the writings of Thomas Gordon (2003), author of the book Teacher Effectiveness Training, which was widely read during the 1970s and 1980s and is still referred to often today.

Gordon (2003) came from the counseling tradition associated with the “clientcentered” approach of Carl Rogers (1951). The central idea in this approach is that all of us, children and adolescents included, have within ourselves the strength and wherewithal to change, grow, and develop, but we may be momentarily blocked from developing by having conditions of worth placed upon us by others. Conditions of worth are imposed when the message from others is that so long as we measure up to others’ standards, we are worthy or fine. So, both negative judgments, such as “You are being inconsiderate,” as well as praise, such as “Wonderful that you are being considerate,” are messages about conditions of worth.

Given this analysis of the root cause of persistent problem behavior, the logical prescription is to communicate to children and adolescents a kind of acceptance that is almost a synonym for care. This approach does not deny the existence of problem behavior; rather, it calls for a radical reaching beyond problem behavior to continuously show respect for and trust in the person.

Gordon (2003) provided teachers with two big ideas for dealing with problem behavior by showing respect, trust, and unconditional positive regard (Rogers’s [1951] term for acceptance). The first idea is taking ownership of problems. Teachers take ownership of problems when they communicate with “I” messages that stick to the facts and avoid negative evaluations of students. For example, if two students are whispering in the back of the room while a teacher is explaining the next assignment, following Gordon, the teacher might say, “Jimmy and Billy, when you whisper while I am explaining an assignment, I worry because I know you will miss what I am saying, and then I’ll have to repeat myself.”

These “I” messages have three effects: first, they locate the problem in the teacher. That is, they communicate that the teacher “owns” the problem (of feeling worried). The effect is to make the communication more personal. Second, they avoid casting students in the role of bad guys. Third, they leave the solution up to students.

This third point may not be clear enough by itself, so Gordon (2003) explains that whenever a teacher gives a “You” message (e.g., If the teacher in the previous hypothetical example were to say, “Stop whispering and pay attention”), the implicit message is that the students can’t or won’t find a solution on their own; they must be given the solution by someone else and made to behave. In contrast, “I” messages communicate that the teacher assumes the students, once they understand the problem that whispering causes, will find and carry out a solution on their own.

Gordon’s (2003) second big idea is active listening. When listening actively, educators (and here we include school psychologists, reading specialists, and all those involved in helping children and adolescents in school settings) not only listen carefully with empathy and acceptance to what students are saying, they provide proof that they have understood by feeding back what students have said to them to make sure they have understood correctly. Active listening is especially important when students are upset and feel misunderstood.

The paradox Gordon (2003) points to is the fact that rather than reinforcing misbehavior or leaving students stuck in their problem, active listening often frees students to problem solve. But even if no perfect solution emerges from active listening, the experience of feeling listened to and understood can be a powerful and positive experience for students, making future cooperation more likely.

When first hearing what Gordon (2003) is suggesting, many teachers do not believe these methods of giving “I” messages and active listening can possibly succeed, so they are surprised when their initial experiments with “I” messages and active listening often help considerably. Indeed, Gordon’s advice has helped many teachers regain control of their classrooms, and in positive ways, a conclusion that comes not just from anecdotes and informal observation but also from research (Carducci, 1976; Peterson, Loveless, Knapp, Basta, & Anderson, 1979).

Furthermore, and consistent with the suggestion that we remove conditions of worth from classroom teaching, several studies have shown the benefits of replacing nonspecific praise with encouragement (Hitz & Driscoll, 1988). This distinction between nonspecific praise and encouragement is subtle, but real. Nonspecific praise often refers to achievements; for example, saying, “Nice picture” to a preschooler who has just completed a drawing. Encouragement often refers to specific feedback about effort and process; for example, saying “You worked hard on that picture, and I see you made different kinds of lines over here: straight lines, curvy lines, short lines, and lines that go in different directions.”

As can be seen in this example, encouragement also has cognitive, and not simply emotional, meaning and value because encouragement of this sort helps provide students with a language they can use to help them describe, understand, and evaluate what they are doing. Nancy Smith (1983) makes essentially this same point in her advice to teachers on how best to provide feedback to young children about their drawings.

So, with respect to building positive teacher-student relationships, Gordon (2003) gives us two methods in particular—the method of using “I” statements and the method of active listening—while he also gives us ways and reasons for using encouragement, not praise, to establish positive teacher-student relationships.

Reframing. Reframing is another method for communicating positively and for building positive teacher-student relationships. As mentioned in Chapter 1, reframing occurs when a teacher sees a student or group of students doing something negative, but first communicates something good in the situation. Doing so may be enough to get a child or adolescent to change something we normally would call a behavior problem—as we saw in Chapter 1’s example of a teacher saying “Jimmy likes to dance” in response to Jimmy’s jumping up at meeting time and starting to dance.

With reframing, the wording will change depending on age and situation, but the principle remains the same: to find and communicate something positive before setting limits, suggesting alternatives, or otherwise managing students’ behavior. Reframing does so because central to that approach is the need to change the interpersonal system that defines some student or group as being a “problem.” In using a systems approach, reframing solves this problem by redefining the situation so that there is no longer a problem or, at least, no longer a problem student.

However, when using individual-oriented approaches emphasizing positive teacher-student relationships, reframing is more important as a way to keep things positive, to make it more likely that students will want to cooperate and learn. That is, the meaning and purpose of reframing changes as we go from a systems approach to an individual-oriented approach focusing on building positive teacher-student relationships. Once again, we see that different kinds of approaches can employ the same method, but the meaning of the method is apt to change from one approach to another.

Showing Interest. Finally, with respect to developing teacher-student relationships through communicating positively, educators do well when they mark what students are interested in and passionate about and when they occasionally reverse roles and let students teach them. Here, the marking can be as simple and straightforward as when a teacher says to a 3-year-old building with blocks, “I see you made a tower” or as complex and subtle as when a teacher listens carefully to an adolescent explaining the various strategies he uses when playing his favorite video game.

Interest is also shown in actions. For example, many teachers take time to

have lunch with students and, outside of school, attend students’ athletic, musical, or other extracurricular events. Some visit students’ homes and attend community events important to both students and their families. These and other actions all show interest in students as persons.

Whatever the occasion or child’s age, getting to know a child’s or adolescent’s likes and interests and validating those likes and interests by showing interest can have a powerful and positive effect, as this cartoon is meant to convey.

DMU Timestamp: February 19, 2015 14:07