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"Many educators are acutely aware that punishment and threats are counterproductive. Making children suffer in order to alter their future behavior can often elicit temporary compliance, but this strategy is unlikely to help children become ethical, compassionate decision makers. Punishment, even if referred to euphemistically as "consequences," tends to generate anger, defiance, and a desire for revenge. Moreover, it models the use of power rather than reason and ruptures the important relationship between adult and child."

The Teaching Council (Ireland) has published a Draft Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers - I have examined it under four headings in the context of eLearning,

when it comes to preparing students for success in the 21st century you not only have to think outside the ban, sometimes you have to dive in head first and break it. The following is a collection of ideas each teacher implemented to successfully break and/or work within the ban where they teach in an effort to empower students with the freedom to use their cell phones as personal learning devices.

"Executive function stimulation: include questions in homework and tests that require mathematics communication. In addition to showing the steps used to solve a problem, when students are asked to explain their thinking and why they selected a procedure or what similar mathematics they related to when solving the problem, they are using more executive function. "

To punish kids, very simply, is to make something unpleasant happen to them -- or prevent them from experiencing something pleasant - usually with the goal of changing their future behavior.  The punisher makes them suffer, in other words, to teach them a lesson

I define a rule as what you enforce every time it's broken. Platitudes cannot be enforced because there is no line to cross, there's nothing predictable for students to understand, and they're too vague to be useful. In essence, these clumps allow teachers to enforce anything whenever they want under any conditions they chose. It's a get into jail free card. Rules aren't reduced by clumping them -- they are only hidden from students. Often, the only way students can find the real lines is by crossing them. This encourages rule breaking rather than stopping it.

I find, however, that if you inundate students with rules and consequences, especially when they are the same rules every time, students view these as your expectations of their behavior. When they believe you expect the worst from them, they will rise to that expectation. Many rules teachers make are actually procedures, as defined by Henry Wong. If we teach procedures instead, and simply reteach the procedure every time it is not followed, they eventually get tired of being retaught the procedure and just do it. I think what some in education forget is that students, no matter what age, expect and deserve respect, too. If we consistently offer respect and dignity, even when we aren't receiving it in return, the rest of the class notices and responds in return. There need to be some rules that are clearly stated with real enforceable consequences. They need to be only a few and very important. Every professional work place has a few. But we also need to send the clear message that school, as preparing them for the workplace that will not have a100 page rule book, is where we are showing them a model of behavior that is *implicitly* expected in every segment of society.

"Because so many educators have come to believe the myth of "the fewer rules, the better" (which I was taught in my teacher training program), they have developed what I call deception clumps. They throw as many rules as possible into a respectably titled non-communicative clump: "

"From September 2019, Ofsted will refocus inspections of schools in England, early years settings and further education and skills providers, to make sure that learners are receiving a high-quality education that puts them on a path to future success. Ofsted inspectors will spend less time looking at exam results and test data, and more time considering how a nursery, school, college or other education provider has achieved their results. That is, whether they are the outcome of a broad, rich curriculum and real learning, or of teaching to the test and exam cramming."

"Inspired and performed by students at three Catholic primary and secondary schools in the Diocese of Wollongong, this innovative video production uses their voice and experience to focus on the impact of bullying and provides practical strategies for youth to deal with this important issue. It is an engaging visual stimulus which challenges students to think positively, respond compassionately and act with courage when they are confronted with future incidents of bullying."

The January issue of the ICTmagic Show online magazine is out, full of my favourite recent finds and how you can use them in your class. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/%2AICTmagic+Show

"Classroom management is a whole process. Being a teacher, you have to keep an eye on a number of factors to make your class organized, disciplined and managed. You have to deal with noisy students, disruptive students and late students."

Article that mentions teacher's frustrations with laptops and various coping strategies.