Dear Kid Whisperer,

I teach in an urban K-8 school. Several years ago, we got a new administrator who took a lot of control away from the teachers and, in my opinion, has made teachers do many things that I believe have made behaviors worse. One thing she has done is to make sure that kids get warnings in the classroom, and that we have a system of warnings. This has made behavior worse across the school. We have to have a check-mark system or a card-pulling system that gives students three warnings every day. Is this a good idea and, if not, what do I do to convince my principal to not require this?

Answer: While it is a really, really hard job for administrators to be able to effectively decide how and when to intervene in how classrooms are run (I was never great at it) it is clearly, absolutely and demonstrably true that systems of warnings are a terrible idea and make behaviors so much worse.

Just to get all readers on the same page, what we are talking about is two very traditional, old-school warning systems that pretty much everyone is familiar with. In this school, three cards are pulled, one at a time each time a kid uses a negative behavior, or a name is put on the board, followed by two check marks, each for a negative behavior.

It doesn’t work because if kids know that they will get attention, and thereby a feeling of control, by using a negative behavior (by a teacher pulling the card or writing the name or putting up a check mark), and if they know that there will be no consequence for using a negative behavior, teachers who use these systems will actually be reinforcing negative behaviors by using these systems.

Put another way, if you have 25 students in your class, and each of them gets three warnings per day, 75 negative behaviors can happen every single day without any consequences happening to anyone! Also, if 75 negative behaviors can happen every day with no consequences in your room, in a 180-day school year, 13,500 negative behaviors can happen every year without a consequence.

Also, with this prescribed system, if your school has 600 students, if everyone gets three warnings per day, that’s 1,800 negative behaviors per day with no consequences, and 324,000 possible negative behaviors per year in your school with no consequences.

So, no. Doing this system is not a good idea.

What’s more, consequences, when done correctly as Delayed Learning Opportunities (DLOs) -- whereby we teach behaviors the same way that we teach academics during otherwise non-instructional times -- are good things because they teach kids how to be better people. They should not be avoided, they should be embraced!

Upon reading this, you may have realized that using systematized warnings does have consequences: for you! I agree. It’s just not fair for you to have to teach in an environment where you are being forced to make kids’ behaviors worse. Teaching is hard enough as it is.

I’m going to give you two “Hail Mary” pieces of advice. The first may not solve the problem, and if doesn’t, I’ll give you another solution that will work, but you may have good reason not to do it.

Step one is to go to your principal and, in an emotionally intelligent way, explain the problem as I have explained it above, complete with the “Warning Math." If he or she does not allow you to stop using this system, step two is to look for another job at another school. I realize, depending on how many years you have in with your district and depending on whether or not you can move within your district, that this may not make sense, but being set up for failure every day of your professional life is no way to live.

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