It’s our job to teach children positive lessons from their mistakes—and to make sure we don’t hold their mistakes against them.
Positive Guidance in the Classroom
We believe that the foundations for all healthy social-emotional development in the classroom include:
- Nurturing, trusting relationships
- A safe, peaceful environment
- Effective positive guidance teaching and practices
Teachers have to:
- Spend quality time every day talking and listening to each child.
- Give children the same respect given to adults.
- Set realistic expectations for children. Unrealistic expectations set children up for failure and often lead to frustration and behavioral issues.
- Create classroom environments that promote independence and engagement. Materials should be organized so children can easily access and use them. The classroom should have both noisy and quiet areas, and plenty of soft spaces.
- Observe children to understand the causes of behavioral challenges, such as fatigue, confusion, or frustration. Help children solve problems and find solutions.
- Model positive communication and social interactions. Teach social skills directly when needed.
- All problem-solving skills will be taught in conjunction with reflective thinking skills based on open-ended questions.
- All guidance techniques and measures will focus on teaching children to see others as equally important to themselves, regardless of who they are, what others may be or what others look like.
We do not use name-calling, belittling, comparing, shaming, threatening, accusing, or purposely humiliating a child as positive guidance techniques. NO CORPORAL PUNISHMENT will be used (spanking, slapping, hitting, jerking or tugging at children) to get a child to cooperate.
Corporal punishment is prohibited at all times by staff, parent/guardians, visitors etc. while on DLEC premises.
Conscious Discipline
Conscious Discipline is a comprehensive self-regulation program that integrates social-emotional learning, school culture, and discipline. It provides adults and children the skills to be disciplined enough to set and achieve goals, conscious enough to know we are off track, and connected enough to others so we are willing to persevere. Conscious Discipline is an adult-first model where the adult becomes the intervention strategy.
Second Step
Second Step is a social-emotional curriculum that utilizes puppets, description of pictures, and skill practice to help children develop skills of empathy, self-regulation, and problem-solving.
Handle with Care DLEC Education Staff uses Handle With Care, to ensure that children whose actions may be harmful to themselves and/or others are assisted in regaining self-control in a manner that is safe and respectful to the child. HWC’s young children’s program balances appropriate protection, containment and limit-setting with the child’s development of self-sufficiency and independence. If verbal intervention is not sufficient to contain the behavior, HWC also offers a physical program designed specifically for young children. HWC centerpiece proprietary child holding method is the “Modified PRT (Primary Restraint Technique) for Smaller Children™.” Handle With Care training and program is a federally approved vendor and is in full compliance with Children’s Healthcare Act of 2000;Health and Human Services Departmental Appeals Board rulings; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulations; Federal case law; Americans With Disabilities Act; No Child Left Behind Act; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973;Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, and, including various other federal and state laws. If HWC is used, the Education staff will work with parents to create a plan, which will outline the process for support the child in the classroom and at home, describe the situations in which Handle with Care may be implemented and provide HWC training for parents interested in being trained.
We also discuss and provide some Positive Guidance techniques at home for parents:
Positive Guidance at Home
Parenting can be profoundly rewarding, but it can also be challenging. Every child and every family is different. Parenting styles and attitudes vary, and there is no one “right” way to parent. However, many parents have found that children respond well to a combination of:
- Nurturing, loving relationships
- Clear expectations and structure while allowing for adaptations and change
- Opportunities to make choices
- Natural and logical consequences
- Parental modeling of appropriate behaviors
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