CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT In order to have effective learning take place, discipline must be present. We provide workshops that focus on proven discipline techniques that work and, in turn, enhance student learning.

In the Annual Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes, lack of discipline has been the most serious problem facing the nations educational system. Many educators and students are also gravely concerned about disorder and danger in school environments -- with good reason.

School personnel, students, and parents call attention to the high incidence of related problems in school environment problems, such as drug use, cheating insubordination, truancy, and intimidation, which results in countless school and classroom disruptions and lead to nearly two million suspensions per year (Harvard Education Letter, 1987).

In addition to these school discipline issues, American classrooms are frequently plagued by other minor kinds of misbehavior, which disrupt the flow of classroom activities and interfere with learning. Approximately one-half of all classroom time is taken up with activities other than instructions, and discipline problems are responsible for a significant portion of this lost instructional time (Cotton, 1990).

Is "discipline" concerned with preventing misconduct or with punishing it? The word, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, refers to both prevention and re-mediation. It can be "training that is expected to produce  specified character or pattern of behavior" or "controlled behavior resulting from such training." It can also be "punishment intended to correct or train."

Frame of Reference

As teachers we continually contrast skills and knowledge, and the effective learner does the same. In both cases, thinking about how learning takes place - the metacognitiveness of learning -- has a central role. Current inquiry has led to multidimensional concepts of intelligence and to the belief that a major outcome of education is increase in intelligence.

At BPE we offer programs that assist classroom teachers with round educational practices and methods that prevent the opportunity for misbehavior. Programs include helpful techniques and skills that help a teacher manage his/her classroom as well as helpful tips and do's and don'ts of effective classroom management techniques and skilled research on student learning and also on students with special needs.

BPE has also designed a process to help students understand and develop their social values. Role playing of problematic situations is used to open up discussions of values and how they operate in our daily lives. This model permits values to be studied as a core of the growing self -- the place where social norms and personal identity and sense of meaning come together.