Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting, good communication, child development all over
the world through the lens of the principles self government. And in this video, which is
part two of a three part series, we are talking about teaching self government in the classroom.
In this video, we're going to be talking about vital skills that teachers and students can use
so that they can improve their communication and problem solving in the classroom. And we
are also going to spend a little bit of time talking about parents and how they factor in
to all of the self government that's happening in the classroom, if you happen to be working with
younger students. First, let's talk about the parents. So the parents do have a role as well.
And in the last segment, we didn't spend any time discussing them. And I really wanted to do that.
So let's just start with that now. So that I know and you know, where the parents fit into all of
this as well. So if you happen to be working with children, or younger students, and their parents
are involved in their education, or in getting them to your group, whatever it happens to be,
whether it's church related, or community related, then you need to know who they are as well. So
that's definitely a role that should be listed when you are discussing roles with your classroom.
Hopefully, I'm not hitting this too late. But you can always come back to it with the class again,
when you revisit the topic of roles regularly, which you are going to want to do. So what is
that role of parent? It's important that parents understand it, you understand it,
and the students understand it. Parents are the number one stakeholder in the education of their
children, which means they have the final say on everything. They are the ones who are in charge
of the child, they get to do all of the moral training for the child. They are the ones that
get to tell the child what's right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. Of course, teachers are
going to be chiming in. But ultimately, children need to be checking all of the information that
they learn at school with their parents as well, and making sure that they maintain good open
communication there. Now, within your classroom dynamic, you may have a system of discipline,
a system of communication, which we're going to be talking about right here in this video segment.
But the parents need to know what it is, they need to understand the skills that you're going to be
learning. And if they start using the same skills at home, wow, the consistency will be so powerful
for the students, it will take your learning environment to the next level. So always bring the
parents into it, help them learn it, and hopefully they will hold on to it. Now just law of averages,
not every parent is going to want to learn some new tricks. But you do want to make sure that your
child is able to have that optimal consistency if it's at all possible. So now let's move on
to some of the skills for good communication that are really going to help you. So when I
teach parenting, I teach skills for parents and skills for children. The skills for children are
technically for the parents too. In fact, they are just adult skills, they will help a person their
entire life, to solve problems, communicate well with people, handle disappointments, and be able to
emotionally regulate themselves. So they're super great skills for social and emotional learning.
If you want to see how they apply to social and emotional learning, be sure to watch the videos on
this channel all related to social and emotional learning as well. So those skills that are for the
children, and the skills that are for the parents, or in this case, it would be the teachers need to
be known by everybody. You can learn all of the skills for self government in this book,
Parenting A House United, or in my course, which is called the TSG parenting course. But right
now we're going to talk about four of those skills that we call the four basic skills. No matter what
age students you have, whether they are adults, or whether they are children, it is powerful to teach
them the four basic skills. Obviously you don't have to read these books to a group of adults. You
can find the skill set just in the book Parenting A House United, but if you are working with young
children, these are a great resource. So these four books each teach the four basic skills of
self government, which take care of 99% of your behavioral problems, really 99%. This book
teaches following instructions. Do your students know how to follow through, how to get things done,
how to push themselves to the end? This book here teaches accepting consequences. Do they
know how to accept the consequences of their actions, so that they can properly learn cause
and effect? Without that they can't learn self government. This book here teaches accepting "no"
answers and criticism, they're not always going to get everything that they want, they won't always
get the grade they want. Sometimes they might have to get some criticism from the teacher,
that's just part of the learning environment, right. So they need to learn how to accept it,
and not take it so personally that they take it emotional, right, they just need to take it to the
logical place of their brain. And you can teach them how to do that by teaching this skill. Then
the fourth of the four basic skills is the skill disagreeing appropriately. If they don't agree
with something that you are teaching, they should be able to say something about it. And
they can do it in a disagree appropriately way, they should know that they can always be heard,
and that there's a time and a place and a way to have that viewpoint be heard, even if it doesn't
match the teacher's viewpoint. So these four basic skills are power in the classroom. And this
is where self government begins. We're going to talk about the teacher skills or parents skills,
as well as go into some detail about some of those four basic skills. But before we do that,
do you see the button that says subscribe, that button is for you. Even though there are so many
videos on this channel related to parenting, all of them end up relating to what happens
in your classroom too, because every classroom is a nurturing environment. So click subscribe now.
So let's start with that skill following instructions. That is the basic of all of
the basic skills. If a person will not follow instructions from their instructor, then they
can't learn self government. And you can't teach anything. So if you stand up there and say,
I need you to do this, and the next year, you need to do this and they don't do any of it,
then they're not going to learn any of the lessons that you have to teach. Your whole environment is
now frustrated. So what you have to do is you have to teach them how to follow through and
what they get out of it. So, super important. So the five steps to following an instruction are
you look at the person or the situation. So it might be an assignment, you keep a calm face,
voice and body. So you don't allow yourself to get emotional about whatever the instruction is,
you keep it in the logical part of the brain, instead of the emotional part of the brain. Then
the third step is to say okay, or to ask to disagree appropriately. So a person could always
disagree appropriately with you or seek more clarifying information from you by using their
disagree appropriately skill, or they can just say okay to follow through, then step number four,
is they actually do the task, they follow through with the task. And then step number five is they
check back. Now most teachers give their students a time for when they need to check back they say,
Okay, I need you to have this assignment done by this time, or I need you to work on this project
during class for 30 minutes with your group, you know, whatever it is, they usually give them
an end time, which is the time to check back. It's really great and wise if a teacher will use that
check back time to make sure that they debrief with the students how they did at following
instruction and what they learned along the way. This helps the student learn time management,
learn follow through, it helps them be able to take full responsibility for their actions and
for their desires and behaviors in the learning environment. This is a very powerful skill,
and will really transform any classroom setting. If you're working with adults or older students,
obviously, just teach these as adult skills. You know, you just say okay, so in this class, there's
going to be certain instructions. And really, if you learn to give yourself instructions in all
things, you'll be a more powerful person. This is how a person gives themselves an instruction
or how they follow instructions from me the instructor, and so here's the process that we
want to make sure that you always follow through on your instructions. So you can keep a very adult
sounding okay, if it's a child, read the book, practice it out, help them see how this skill will
help them in their lives. All right, let's talk about accepting "no" answers. That's an important
skill. When a person accepts "no" answers, they look at the person or the situation. They keep
calm face voice and body, they say okay, or they asked to disagree appropriately, and then they
drop the subject. So maybe a teacher has to give a child or one of their students some criticism,
maybe about a behavior, they have to tell them no, don't do that or maybe they write some criticism
on the paper, they say something like, Hey, you really need to work on your punctuation or, you
know, maybe you don't phrase things like that in your classroom. But whatever it is that they might
need to say to their student. The student needs to be able to identify those things as just simple,
"no" answers, and that "no" answers happen throughout life all the time. So when we're driving down the
road, and someone cuts us off in traffic, that's a "no" answer. When we don't get our french fries
delivered to us as crispy as we would have liked them to be, then that's a "no" answer. Always,
there are "no" answers, they surround us on a daily basis, how are we going to handle them? Are we
going to be emotional about them or are we going to be mature and emotionally strong and say,
well, that's just a "no" answer. So I'm not going to spend my time thinking about it, I'll process
when I need to, so that I remember the criticism or the "no" answer, so that I don't do that again
in the future. But then after that, I'm just going to move on. And I'm not going to carry that
baggage with me throughout the day. That's what a person can do in a really healthy environment,
when they get a "no" answer or a piece of criticism from someone. Now, remember, as the teacher or
the instructor that because the parents are that number one stakeholder in the life of the child,
then if they give you instruction, you need to take that really seriously. Obviously, they don't
get to tell you what to do in your job. However, they are kind of like the employer and they're
watching over the child. So you need to take it seriously and follow any instructions you can,
but especially accept "no" answers, when it comes to things related to their child, or any bits of
criticism that they are giving you, you need to be able to accept criticism and "no" answers too. So
let's talk about disagreeing appropriately, this is every student's favorite skill, this is when
they get to actually talk about something or share their opinions, if they have a different opinion.
There is nothing worse than being in a classroom, hearing somebody say something and you not agree
with it, or feeling like it does not match your values in some way. And so then having no one
to tell this to. They should be able to tell it to you and you should be able to listen and not just
justify yourself. So when you do that they use the skill disagreeing appropriately. When a person
disagrees appropriately, they look at the person, they keep a calm face, voice and body, they say
that they understand the other person's point of view, they share their point of view, they listen
to what you have to say. And then they say okay, and drop the subject, they have to say okay to you,
because you do have a leadership role. Although when they disagree with each other in groups,
within their peer groups, they don't necessarily have to agree with the other person. And they
don't have to agree with you either. But they need to say, okay, that's what they think. Now with you,
they can't do anything about it, because you're the teacher, you're the leader, but with their
peers, they can say okay, that's how you feel, I don't feel the same way. But I'm okay
with you feeling that way. And then you just drop the subjects within yourself. So they can learn,
they don't have to agree with everybody. They do need to accept "no" answers from each other,
they don't have to follow instructions from each other unnecessarily, because that is not
their role, peer to peer to give instructions. So you're going to be bringing in the roles and the
identity as you learn all of these skills. Now, as you talk about that the final skill which is
accepting consequences, that skill takes a lot of humility, it takes a lot of respect for
roles. Now, you know, as the teacher, you may have someone over you in an administrative position,
if you do, then you know that you have to accept their authority, their roles. They give you
instruction, and then you have to follow through, but you can always disagree appropriately with
them as well, but you could do something wrong and have to be corrected. This is just part of roles,
the leaders often help the other people course correct so that we can meet our desired
objectives. How do you accept a correction? You look at the person or the situation,
you keep a calm face, voice and body. You say Okay, are you ask to disagree appropriately, and
then you follow through with whatever consequence it was that you earned and you check back and drop
the subject. So when a person gets the opportunity to be corrected, hopefully they feel like this is
a positive experience, even though it might not have been a welcome experience at first.
You can feel closer to a person during an after correction than you even did before. So keep that
in mind, it should not feel bad or negative. It should not feel emotional or punitive. It should
feel like good instruction, good communication and affirm boundary that you're setting to help
them know that they can feel safe and secure with you leading the ship. Now speaking of leaving and
doing those corrections, you're definitely going to want to learn the skills for how to do a proper
correction for your students. Make sure to praise all the good things, pre teach things before you
ever use them, as well. And make sure that you teach them how you will correct them. All of this
stuff is taught ahead of time before they are ever expected to use it. You talk about consequences.
You talk about how the communications or disagreements will happen, and then how
the corrections will happen, if needed. And if a person goes completely out of control, how
you will do intensive teaching or how the school plans to do intensive teaching when the parents
will be factored into any correction. All of these things need to be laid out ahead of time, so that
everyone knows how the environment will handle any problem. This will help them learn where their
stopping point is, so that they can better govern themselves. Those skills that you've taught them,
those four basic skills are going to take care of the majority of situations in the classroom.
If you all have the same vocabulary around the skills, and you discuss them regularly, or maybe
when you're reading a book or a story you bring up oh, that's kind of a "no" answer for that character,
isn't it? Are they dropping the subject, you bring it into everything, they will recognize how these
skills are just part of life. They're not just your classroom, they are across the board, you
are teaching them principles, you're teaching them truths of communication that will help them and if
they can start learning these four basic skills and learn to take a correction and instruction
from you, by you establishing the roles and helping the parents back you up in that role
that you have, then that child will start to push themselves forward instead of just pushing against
you. Many children, especially oppositional ones, or sometimes ones with ADHD or other non
neurotypical behaviors, will get into the habit of thinking that it's about them against you. It's a
power struggle that they have to have with each other, when in reality, it's always about them
against them, us against us. It's always about our own self government. And what we do with that,
that actually makes the greatest difference. So make sure that they understand that dynamic,
give them all the skills that they need, and then open that forum so that with them so that
they can have good problem solving. In the next video, we're going to be talking about
how to open that forum, how to have a proper discussion with them, how to help them take
responsibility for a lot of their classroom behavior and have a little bit of a say about
what's going on. So join me for the next video which is part three in this three part series.