1. What has been the process of teachers re-defining heir concepts of disciplinary problems?
Since the Schools Attuned program is a professional development and service program that provides teachers with methods for recognizing, understanding, and managing students that have differences in learning, participation in this program led to changes in the manner that teachers define concepts of disciplinary problems. Teachers learned that students are not necessarily causing disturbances in an effort to be disruptive. Thus, disciplinary problems were viewed instead as challenges to be overcome with the use of neurodevelopmental content in the classrooms to teach all students and to help struggling students. Instead of disciplining the problem students, classroom lesson plans and assessment tools were modified to accommodate the different kinds of learners and help students with problems. To assist in this process, teachers participated in open communication (meetings) with other faculty to review and improve their skills and share experiences. Thus, teachers went from feeling frustrated and overwhelmed with what they considered disruptive behavior in need of disciplinary action, to feeling supported with new techniques to deal with problem students effectively and help them learn; negative behaviors became a source of challenge pointing to the need for further understanding of new methods to help students.
2. How have practices perceptions of the school regarding discipline changed over the course of the year?
The school goals and mission continue to focus on helping all students obtain an optimal education. However, the Schools Attuned program content helped educators and administrators understand that discipline practices must be changed from efforts to minimize negative behaviors to efforts to maximize student learning with new techniques. Thus, a problem previously viewed as worthy of a discipline action became a target...