Tips in green

Jacqueline took the Friendly and Fair Teaching course online:

I have learned a lot from the Friendly Tidiness course. Immediately applicable in practice and with amazing results! I feel, as a teacher, that I suddenly have many more tools to deal with undesirable behaviour in class. Where I used to be at a loss when a group was more challenging than average, I now have a whole arsenal of possibilities for redirecting this behaviour. The children are visibly impressed with the approach. I make a moment at the beginning of a lesson (especially in the first few lessons with a new group) to remind them of ‘Friendly and Fair’. The very first lesson with a new group of children, I ask the children what they think it means and often the thrust is already clear by then. Children find it a competition to keep the number of Tips ‘in green’ (zero Tips). Of course there are occasional lessons where we unfortunately end up in the orange zone, I always end with: ‘Next week we will try green again’. Often this succeeds. Even though I have been using the method with various groups since September, I have never had to hand out a ‘Future behaviour letter’. I am searching for (even) better ways to set my boundaries, because this course has made me realize that my own behaviour determines the behaviour of the group. I have always found group dynamics interesting and wish I had taken this course years earlier. In fact, I think it should be mandatory in every teacher training program because it prevents so many difficult situations in practice.