GRETA Granada (Spain): Christopher Roland on discipline

Christopher opened the session by imploring management to make sure that the spirit of an institution is behind its teachers so they know they have supported when it comes to issues of discipline. He then gave an entertaining and thought-provoking plenary on how to deal with challenging teaching situations and defuse tension in classrooms with primary, teenager or adult students.

He presented many techniques and strategies for dealing with discipline problems, including talking about and sharing definitions of discipline with students in calm rather than heated moments, suggesting we teachers keep the pressure inside our heads the same as that in the room, advising that we make every attempt to not dislike the whole child and that we even go so far as to use trips to the bathroom to our own advantage.

Christopher shared a couple of slide shows he has designed for primary and secondary school students. ‘What we like in this class’, is for primary students, who can look at the illustrations and boo or applaud depending on whether the illustrated behaviour is acceptable or not. Logic videos, on the other hand, deal with the logical circumstances and consequences of various situations, for example: collaborating in the classroom, learning strategies, self-fighting behaviour, mature behaviour, time-wasting and trust and are suitable for secondary school students.

These videos are available at http://chrisroland.net. Christopher has also published an article on ‘Micro-mechanics’ in ETp (Issue 79, March 2012), and will be posting his talk and related links on the GRETA web-site.