Happy Hollow Philosophy on Discipline

Our goal is to help young students develop and practice self-control and social responsibility. We think it is important to create and environment where students know what is expected of them and what their choices are as an important member of our school community. This provides them with the opportunities and the knowledge they need to make the right choices, how to accept consequences for personal choices, and a secure sense of belonging and self-worth. We offer young students guidance while they develop the ability to experience autonomy, personal decision-making , independent judgment, and personal responsibility for their choices.

We will attempt to reduce the chance that discipline problems will occur by:

• Providing an environment and daily schedules with developmental needs in mind, taking into consideration what is realistic and appropriate for age and developmental levels.
• Treating each other and each student with respect, affection and patience.
• Setting classroom and individual student boundaries that are clearly stated, modeled and consistently followed.
• Looking for opportunities to praise and encourage good choices & behaviors. Telling students what they did right!
• Attempting to distract and redirect students before a problem may occur.
• Recognizing multiple intelligence skills and promoting the awareness of how special each person is allows young students to develop a conscious recognition of their own self-worth and how their behavior affects others.
• Promoting our school motto: You are a good person, worthy of self-respect and capable of self-discipline.

Sometimes even when steps are taken to prevent problems from occurring, situations will require our intervention. We do this by using using positive guidance and behavior techniques:

• Remind students of the rules. When a problem occurs, we can calmly stop what is going on and state the rules simply and directly. People are not for hitting. We keep our hands to ourselves in school and show our friends respect. You may not hit your friend.

• Use positive statements. We want to tell a student what they can do or the choices they can make. We ride our bike around the cones with our helmet on.

• Help students find the words to solve their own conflicts. Using role-playing and allowing students to come up with their own ideas about conflict resolution, helps students take ownership of and practice peer mediation. Guiding students to find, use, and listen to the words they need to solve conflicts with other students helps them develop self-respect and an appreciation of another viewpoint. How can you tell Mary not to knock over your blocks? Tell her you do not like it when she does that.

• Give student choices. We want to guide students to help them make the right choice and sometimes that is simple as reminding them of what those choices can be for the moment. You can build the blocks on the table or the rug.

• Time-outs or conferences with the teacher is only used to help students gain self-control when they need time to calm down and re-assess their choices.

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