Discipline: responding to socioeconomic and racial differences.

Changing school demographics, coupled with a teaching force that is predominantly white and female, has created a growing discrepancy between teachers and the students they teach. Many children and children in poverty do not display the behaviors or experience the type or degree of success in school as white or middle-class students do. Consequently, they create challenges for the teacher. They may pose disciplinary problems, and so teachers may underteach these students as they focus on addressing the behavior.

In what follows, I will share my experiences teaching in a 4th-grade class of predominantly African American children for a year. After residing in the midwestern United States for 12 years, I decided to return to the state where I received my teacher preparation to pursue a teaching opportunity in the public school system during a year-long sabbatical from a university faculty position. The sabbatical provided me with the opportunity to work with predominantly African American, lower socioeconomic students in a magnet school program--a school within a school program founded on the philosophy of educator Marva Collins.

Review of Research

Children from minority and low-income backgrounds are less likely, when compared to middle-class and majority students, to have positive relationships with their middle-class teachers. A number of explanations have been offered for this situation (Pianta & Nimetz, 1991; Townsend, Thomas, Witty, & Lee, 1996; Vondra, Shaw, Swearingen, Cohen, & Owens, 1999). One explanation is that these differences reflect teachers' biases, classroom management styles, and disparities in the severity of practices used for discipline. The use of prejudicial classroom management techniques with minority students, particularly African American and Hispanics, is well-documented (Banks & Banks, 1993; Sheets & Gay, 1998; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Teachers perceive that the behavior of African American males is more aggressive and severe than that of their white counterparts. African American males who misbehave in the same way as their white counterparts are more likely to be punished (Ferguson, 2000; Obidah & Teel, 2001; Sheets & Gay, 1998), resulting in suspensions and expulsions (Costenbader & Markson, 1994; Pauken & Daniel, 1999; Townsend, 2000). The severity of these disciplinary practices against minority students impedes their achievement in the classroom, excludes them from courses, alienates them, increases misbehavior, and leads to higher drop-out rates, lowered expectations, and more frequent grade retention (Garibaldi, 1992; Irvine, 1990; Meisels & Liaw, 1993; Oakes, 1994; Rodney, Crafter, Rodney, & Mupier, 1999).

Rodney et al. (1999) pointed out that suspensions of African American males, 13-17 years old, are associated with poor academic performance. Yet poor academic performance by African American males is not likely to improve unless the school environment improves for African American males. According to Gottfredson, Fink, and Graham (1994), grade retention is a generally preferable alternative to suspension and expulsion for African American males. Retention could reduce rebellious behavior in school, reduce feelings of alienation, and increase 6th- and 7th-grade African American males' feelings of attachment to school. However, there is evidence that retention does not reduce in-school rebelliousness or feelings of alienation in these students (Gottfredson et al., 1994). Indeed, accumulated research shows that most students who are retained perform less well and misbehave more than those who are socially promoted.

Classroom disciplinary practices also are influenced by students' socioeconomic level. Teachers frequently view low-income students as having the highest potential for behavior problems (Malone, Bonitz, & Rickett, 1998). Consequently, students from low-income homes, regardless of ethnicity, are disciplined more often by teachers than middle-class white students. Additionally, teachers of low socioeconomic children most often use or support the use of corporal punishment, verbal punishment, or suspension, compared to teachers of middle-class students (Lezotte, 1998-99). Lezotte argued that some of the behaviors by culturally diverse lower socioeconomic level students that teachers may find annoying and/or problematic are behaviors that serve a function in the students' world outside of school.

There is a scarcity of literature and discussion about culturally responsive teachers and issues associated with classroom management (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004) and limited scholarship that addresses disciplinary practices (Monroe & Obidah, 2004). Especially lacking is systematic research with African American children that addresses behavioral problems and ways to promote successful classroom experiences. In one of the few published studies on the subject, Tucker, Herman, Pedersen, and Vogel (1998) conducted interviews with 13 African American teachers as part of a pilot study on the behavior of African American students (five elementary and eight high school teachers). The five elementary teachers reported that the most common classroom behavioral problem of African American males that they encountered was inattentive behavior and failure to follow directions. Next in order of frequency were inappropriate talking and horseplay, followed by talking back to teachers in a disrespectful manner. The high school teachers reported that the most common behavior problems they encountered with African American males were talking back to teachers in a disrespectful and argumentative manner and inappropriate talking and horseplay in the classroom.

Ecological behavioral theorists explain that children's behavior is influenced directly by aspects of their immediate environment (e.g., interactions with their peers and family), as well as indirectly by aspects of the environment in which they themselves are not participants (e.g., the stress their parents face at work) (Tucker, 1999). Educators of students from diverse backgrounds must teach them to separate school behavior from non-school behavior. Most important, the behaviors presented must be grounded in structure and choice. The element of choice is important because it moves these students from being dependent upon others for controlling their behaviors to self-control of behaviors they choose to perform.

The school, home, and students must work together to clearly identify appropriate school behaviors, and the consequences for not choosing those behaviors must be clearly stated (Delpit, 1995; Lezotte, 1998-1999). For students who perceive that there is no good reason to control their behavior, appeals can be made to their ethnic pride, or to their community or family values and expectations. In other words, teachers must acquire cross-cultural literacy, or the ability to use students' cultural backgrounds, to help them develop more adaptive classroom behaviors (Cartledge, Tillman, & Johnson, 2001). Ladson-Billings's (1994) research involving successful African American teachers of African American children reinforces the need to employ culturally relevant teaching practices.

Three principles of culturally relevant teaching that are especially important for discipline include judicious use of authority in the classroom, viewing students as extended family members, and changing one's perceptions about student achievement. Among things that majority and minority teachers must do to employ culturally relevant classroom management practices are the following: 1) recognize their own ethnocentrism and biases; 2) increase their knowledge of their students' cultural backgrounds; 3) understand the effect of broader social, economic, and political contexts in interpreting and responding to the students' behavior; 4) use culturally appropriate classroom strategies to help students assume responsibility for behaving appropriately; and 5) display a commitment to creating caring classroom communities (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004). Strategies that help establish culturally responsive classroom management include: 1) establishing behavioral expectations for students, 2) developing a caring classroom environment, 3) working with families, and 4) using appropriate interventions to assist students with behavioral problems (Weinstein, Curran, & Tomlinson--Clarke, 2003).

Marva Collins's Methods

Marva Collins, a noted African American educator, employs humanistic principles to manage urban classrooms in Chicago. At the center of her approach is the belief that teachers who display high expectations and recognize that teaching itself is discipline will be successful (Collins, 1999). Collins tells her students that she expects them to behave in ways that contribute to the learning process and benefit other children. Teachers are encouraged to establish a positive relationship with their students before discipline problems develop. When it is necessary to discipline a student, Collins believes that it must be done in a caring manner (Collins, 1992; Collins & Tamarkin, 1982). Collins encourages teachers not only to praise, or, if need be, express concern for, student behavior, but also to demonstrate tough love. That is, teachers should show empathy and understanding for students' out-of-class problems/stressors that may contribute to problem behaviors, while continuing to hold high expectations for their achievement and behavior. Collins expects teachers to be direct with students about the negative consequences of inappropriate behavior, and work diligently to teach them that self-discipline and self-determination are necessary for success (Collins & Tamarkin, 1982).

Collins's philosophy of teaching includes informing students of their freedom to make choices about learning or not learning, and making them aware of the consequences for choosing not to learn. Teachers are responsible for encouraging students to demonstrate leadership, display confidence in their convictions, engage in reflective thinking, and assume control over their futures. If teachers want to eliminate discipline problems, they must create an organized classroom environment and adopt a consistent strategy of presenting information to students. The presentation strategy that Collins uses informs students about what they will be learning, outlines the methods and techniques to be used in presenting content, and makes connections between the content to be learned and the students' short-term and long-term goals (Hollins, 1982). The opportunity for success is greater if the process is started with children in the early grades. If students do not possess the skills of self-control or positive socialization, they may need assistance from a counselor in addition to the support provided by the regular classroom teacher.

Collins (1999) argues that teachers who hold low expectations for low-income African American children are not helping them to be successful in controlling their behavior or in achieving academically. Teachers should let their students know that they are confident of their abilities to exhibit self-control and to analyze and reflect about their behaviors. Self-control and reflection can be taught directly through systematic and situational-based instruction, and indirectly through discussion and teacher modeling. Collins (1999) reports that she successfully used writing as an integral part of a reflective process in which students are asked to record the reasons why they are too intelligent to engage in disruptive behavior. Collins also reports that she taught students proverbs and had them write and recite the proverbs as a means of teaching the students how to change disruptive behaviors (Collins & Tamarkin, 1982). Proverbs, poems, humor, and multicultural literature are powerful forms of language that have historically been used in African American culture to teach life lessons and can be used to convey expectations for success. Such poems as Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" and Langston Hughes's "I, Too" can be used to motivate students and provide them with culturally relevant messages about establishing self-control by being optimistic about their future, setting goals, and maintaining high expectations.

The Marva Collins plan requires students to establish individual expectations for behaviors. Students are challenged to change their inappropriate behavior because of teacher expectations, or because of situations in which they are placed. Teachers are encouraged to promote student self-reflection, as opposed to recording students' infractions with a penalty system (Collins, 1999).

The state where I taught established the magnet school concept in an effort to provide alternate instructional models to meet students' varying talents and needs. The enrollment in the magnet program was approximately 50 percent white and 40 percent African American. Approximately 63.4 percent of the students received free or reduced lunch. My class of 14 students was 79 percent African American and 21 percent white. Seventy-one percent (10) were female and 29 percent (4) were male. Sixty-seven percent of the students were designated as limited income. Student performance on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test indicated that only four of the fourteen 4th-grade students (30 percent) were reading at the 4th-grade level. None of the students scored higher than 50 percent on the Inventory and Cumulative tests associated with the Addison-Wesley mathematics series.

I learned the basics of teaching in a teacher education program at a historically African American university in the southeastern region of the United States and applied those principles and practices during my initial teaching experiences in a predominantly white, middle-class school setting. My teacher education program did not include a specific course in classroom management. Prior to student teaching, we were told that it was important that we maintain control over our respective classrooms if the students were to learn and we were to be effective teachers. We were taught indirectly that we needed to maintain order through appropriate punishment (firmly warning against misconduct, sending students to time-out, using assigned seating, and removing students from the classroom and sending them to the principal's office). Disciplinary challenges were expected to be few in number; to be successful, we should only need to make examples of a few students and the rest of the class would know that certain behaviors would not be tolerated. Before embarking on my sabbatical, I thought about what I knew and realized that more would be required if I intended to be successful in working with students facing great challenges at home.

Drawing upon my personal knowledge of African American culture and classroom experiences teaching African American children in integrated classroom settings, I re-entered the classroom feeling prepared for the challenges ahead. I knew that my year would not be without problems but I was prepared to facilitate and support my students' decision making, academic success, and self-concept, and to expect nothing less than their very best behavior and work.

Implementation of the Marva Collins Methods

At the beginning of the school year, my attempts to impose discipline were most frequently met with shrugs, eye rolling, and talking back. Students engaged in verbal disputes and ridiculed each other, often disrupting the daily class functioning. It was clear that these behavior problems had to be resolved if students were going to achieve the individual goals reflected in their mission statements, as well as reach the district-level academic goals for 4th grade. While I was concerned about fostering a classroom environment where all students could learn, I was particularly interested in helping those students at high risk for failure and alienation from school. The students who were the most disruptive and presented the greatest disciplinary challenges were two low-income, low-achieving males.

The teachers in our magnet program believed that parents were a key to preparing students to learn. The parents were expected to sign a contract that identified the goals of the academy, the expected learner outcomes, and the expected teacher, parent, and student commitments to achieving the goals and outcomes. Parents, teachers, and students signed contracts during a special ceremony at the beginning of the year. A parent advisory board, consisting of parents with children in kindergarten through 4th grade, was formed to assist teachers with grade level and program level issues, including discipline.

Marva Collins suggests that teachers begin the school year by having students write a mission statement that puts into words what they hope to be or to accomplish in life. She recommends that these statements be taped to students' desks so that they can be reread each time students misbehave. I modified this process slightly by having students write their mission statement and goals in a journal at the beginning of the school year.

Each day, I read selections from the Children's Book of Virtues (Bennett, 1995) to provide them with stories and sayings that related to various aspects of self-control and motivation. I also wrote proverbs on the board and asked students to write their reactions to the proverbs in their individual journals. For example, students copied down a statement by Martin Luther King, Jr.--"We must all live together as brothers or perish as fools"--in their journals and then wrote what it meant to them. This exercise was followed by class sharing and discussion.

Some of the children brought unresolved conflicts with classmates from the previous school year, thereby creating early disciplinary challenges. Other conflicts in the classroom resulted from agitated feelings about race, economics, and social interactions. Another issue that challenged the class was the perceived differences in physical or personal attributes between both boys and girls. I used excerpts from the Marva Collins Creed to assist students in self-reflection when they engaged in verbal put-downs. The Creed, 22 verses long, emphasizes that achievement is an individual choice and that positive thinking and taking personal responsibility are important. Students were asked to select lines from the creed and to recite the line needed to redirect their behavior and/or thinking (e.g., "I was born to win, if I do not spend too much time trying to fail"). I also incorporated writing into the disciplinary plan by having students make journal entries in which they described how they had lost sight of their mission. They were expected to use appropriate lines from the Marva Collins Creed, the Book of Virtues, or from African proverbs or poetry, such as the poem "Perseverance" (author unknown), in an effort to help them learn from their mistakes and refocus their efforts in a positive direction. I found that students who were asked to write apology poems as a result of specific behaviors found new outlets to express their creativity and humor. I discovered that my students usually ended up learning by trying to outdo their fellow students in their written apologies. Creating and sharing songs or stories about conflicts or classroom situations also can be used to generate laughter and move students to view a situation from a different and more positive perspective. Again, students are presented with the opportunity to take responsibility for their behavior and recognize that they have choices.

I implemented the Marva Collins approach and the above techniques with my 4th-grade class at the beginning of my sabbatical year. By the end of the year, this group of students, which had a history of behavior problems and whose reading performance averaged two levels below grade, became a class with minimal behavior problems and an average improvement of two grade levels in reading performance.

What I Learned About Discipline

Teachers need to take time to examine their disciplinary and instructional practices and to change their attitudes and beliefs about African American children and their families (Townsend, 2000). There are no easy answers to finding the right combinations of actions that will help children to behave in ways that will allow them to be successful in the school environment. As more and more economically, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse students enter schools, teachers must continually seek ways to engage these students mentally and to channel their energies so that they have some control over their future, if not their present circumstances. New teachers must be informed about family/community norms and recognize and respond to the learning characteristics of diverse students. They must get to know the children as people who are not responsible for the quality of their lives and accept their parents as people who often have the desire but not necessarily the resources or skills to provide a better life for their children.

The most important lesson I learned is that it is critical for the teacher to establish a caring and supportive relationship with African American children. This relationship can manifest itself in individual and group conversations in which teachers share their interests, cultures, and beliefs with students. The teachers also might learn about the communities, the issues affecting students in their community, and the resources that those communities provide. Reading community newsletters or special African American newspapers, attending community events, or listening to radio stations or programs will provide teachers with background information. The information learned can be used to engage and motivate students by creating authentic learning experiences that address students' home environments. Relevance in learning through cultural connections is an essential component of classroom management. Enforcing classroom rules, by itself, will not necessarily create a classroom environment that is conducive to learning for African American children. It is more critical to make connections with students or nurture teacher-student relationships so as to convey to students that they are important--first, because of who they are and, second, because of who they have the potential to become.

I found it essential to establish communication links with parents before problems arose in the classroom. Home visits, if acceptable both to teachers and parents, can be used to make initial contact. Alternate sites for such meetings might be public library meeting rooms, churches, or other public places. Teachers should periodically follow up by calling parents to share children's school successes. I recall making one such call to a parent who thanked me for my interest in her child and said that it was the first time that she had been called to be told something good about her son. I found it important to dispel the fear that many African American parents have--that any communication from the teacher means the start of trouble for the child and spells conflict between teacher and parent.

I inquired from parents, via telephone and/or conferences, about family expectations for their children's behavior. The shared home and school expectations were recorded and used selectively to remind students of appropriate classroom and school behaviors. Middle-class or white teachers often need help in interpreting family expectations in light of cultural norms or values. I would recommend creating a parent advisory board. African American fathers, single mothers, and two-parent families should be asked to engage in dialogue about problem classroom behaviors and ways to empower African American students. The parent advisory board for our magnet program and the room parents worked in conjunction with our teachers in this area.

I learned that it is important to convey, both orally and in writing, the classroom expectations to students and parents. It is important to teach students what is expected of them and model appropriate responses to situations. It is essential that teachers demonstrate, through their language and actions, their belief that students are capable of working cooperatively to achieve class goals. Student-created mission statements and contracts can be effective tools in creating a classroom environment where students can be challenged to learn. I used individual conferences with students to develop contracts that were signed by parents as an expression of support for their children's efforts; these were used to establish benchmarks for behavioral and academic goals. Both documents were used as assessment tools for student reflection and teacher planning. By sharing their goals with parents, teachers can make essential cultural connections with the child's family and community by informing them of the goals and implicitly asking for help in supporting the child's efforts.

I learned that in the classroom, teachers must behave as compassionate but firm authority figures who will support their students in their efforts to reach their goals; they must not be afraid to hold them accountable for inappropriate behaviors. Middle-class white teachers must especially earn students' trust and respect by being assertive and strong in conveying their expectations for learning and behaving. They should treat their students as they would their own children (Obidah & Teel, 2001).

Summary

Monroe and Obidah (2004) believe that it is crucial to build cultural bridges between teachers and students in order to reverse the effects of students' misbehavior. Culturally based classroom management must be used in all classrooms--suburban, urban, and rural--where ethnically and culturally diverse students are found. It is incumbent on the teachers in these schools to analyze their perceptions of and interactions with African American students, especially boys. These teachers must establish a classroom environment that affirms and celebrates their students' cultures, promotes student control in setting and achieving academic and behavioral goals, communicates clear expectations for success, and promotes connections and communication between the school and each child's home and community (Cooper, 2003; Sheldon, 2002; Vondra, 1999). As teacher educators and researchers, we also must challenge ourselves to make cultural diversity an integral part of our discussions about classroom management as we strive to prepare preservice teachers to become multiculturally competent (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004).

References

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Weinstein, C. S., Tomlinson-Clarke, S., & Curran, M. (2004). Toward a conception of culturally responsive classroom management. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(1), 25-38.

Doris Walker-Dalhouse is Professor of Reading, Department of Elementary & Early Childhood Education, Minnesota State University Moorhead.