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TEACHERS.NET GAZETTE
SEPTEMBER 2001
Volume 2 Number 6

COVER STORY
Harry & Rosemary Wong explain how a good university can help you master your classroom from day one. Read this month's cover story and be in control from the moment your students enter your classroom....
COLUMNS
Effective Teaching by Harry & Rosemary Wong
Promoting Learning by Marv Marshall
4 Blocks by Cheryl Sigmon
School Psychologist by Beth Bruno
Busy Educator's Monthly 5
ARTICLES
Around the Block With...
Back to School
The Unsinkable Sub
Diary of a Second Year Teacher
Find Online Degree Programs
Role Model For Visually Impaired
Reader’s Theater
2001 Fall CUE Conference
Magical Mystery Tourists
Teaching Reading after Elementary School
High Stakes Testing
From Curiosity To Concept
6 Traits: Tactile/Kinesthetic Manipulatives
Review: Gifts of All Children
Poem: Our Children - Their Future
REGULAR FEATURES
Upcoming Ed Conferences
Humor from the Classroom
Letters to the Editor
New in the Lesson Bank
Help Wanted - Teaching Jobs
Gazette Home Delivery:


About Marvin Marshall...
Marvin Marshall is a professional speaker and seminar leader who presents his program, "Discipline without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards - Raise Responsibility and Promote Learning," to schools across the world.

His program was developed upon his returning to full-time teaching after 24 years of counseling, supervision, and administration. He has taught primary and upper elementary grades and has been an elementary school principal. He has taught all middle grades and has been a middle school counselor and assistant principal. He has taught all high school grades and has been a high school counselor, assistant principal of supervision and control, assistant principal of curriculum and instruction, and high school principal. He has also served as a district director of education.

Dr. Marshall, who is certified by the William Glasser Institute, presents for Phi Delta Kappa International, for several leading seminar companies, and for schools and school districts. His presentation schedule is on the calendar of his website.

In his book Discipline without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards - How Teachers and Parents Promote Responsibility & Learning, he clearly and concisely demonstrates how the external approaches of relying on rules, imposing consequences, rewarding students for appropriate behavior, and punishing students to make them obey are all counterproductive.

The book can be purchased from the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National School Boards Association, Phi Delta Kappa, at local bookstores, or from his website www.MarvinMarshall.com. Questions submitted to Kathleen Carpenter at kathleen@teachers.net will be considered by Marv Marshall for responses in future monthly columns in the Teachers.Net Gazette.

Click to visit Marvin Marshall's Homepage.

Promoting Learning
by Dr. Marvin Marshall

Reflection And Self-Evaluation - Part 2

(Continued from last issue)

Inquiry precedes advocacy.

REFLECTION AND EVALUATIVE QUESTIONS

As important as reflection is in learning new information, the practice is equally as important for self-growth. When applied to oneself, reflection is referred to as self-evaluation. This practice engenders self-correction-the most effective route to improvement and growth.

Asking evaluative questions such as, "What can you do to accomplish that?" and "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" are designed to provoke deep and reflective thinking. When you use these kinds of questions, you are directing the other person's thinking in a positive way. The answers can be a gift to the person asking questions because is a quick way to obtain and understand the other person's perception and viewpoint, crucial in a student teacher relationship and so many other settings.

In addition, asking these kinds of evaluative questions empowers the other person because the ideas that people support most are ones they come up with themselves; the answers that are most important to people are their own. Ownership is a critical component for self-evaluation and change.

The following questions are extremely successful for changing behavior:

  • What do you want?
  • What are you choosing to do?
  • If what you are choosing is not getting you what you want, then what is your plan?
  • What are your procedures to implement the plan?

Here are additional questions for specific purposes:

For Getting on Task

  • Does what you are doing help you get your work done?
  • If you would like to get your work done, what would be your first step?
  • What do you like to do that you can apply to this task?
For Commitment
  • In the realm of all things possible, could you have kept your commitment?
  • What are you going to do to make it happen?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank your commitment to it?
For Improving Quality
  • How does that look to you?
  • What would you like to have improved even more?
  • If there were no limitations on what you did, what would allow you to do it even better?
For Complaining
  • How long are you going to continue this?
  • Is what you are doing helping you get what you want?
  • What do you notice about the experience you are having?
For Starting Conversations
  • What was most pleasing for you today?
  • What bothered you the most today?
  • What was your biggest challenge today? How did you deal with it?
  • If the situation came up again, what would you do?
The quality of the answers depends on the quality of the questions. Here are some ineffective questions which increase stress because of the responses they engender. Notice how reactive and counterproductive they are to changing behavior.
  • What's the problem?
  • What's your problem?
  • Why are you doing this?
  • Who did that?
  • Why did you do that?
  • Don't you know better than that?
The key point to remember is that the quality of thinking and the quality of answers depends upon the quality of the questions.

(Continued next month)

Past Gazette Articles by Dr. Marshall:



Dr. Marshall's website: http://www.MarvinMarshall.com
Email Dr. Marshall: marvmarshall@teachers.net
© Dr. Marvin Marshall, 2001.

 
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