Zero Tolerance

meeting students as they arrive, clear classroom rules such as no shouting out, pupils being assigned roles of responsibility, seating plans or just a change of seat during the lesson, tutor time including time to reflect, uniform policy, reinforce whole school behaviour policy, students are put on task so they are ready to learn immediately they arrive and importantly, teachers being prepared with well planned, differentiated lessons with clear objectives. Teachers are solely responsible for managing behaviour in classrooms and use the whole classroom space to manage the learning environment (Ibid). Praise and reward are encouraged both written and verbal and should include notifying parents. The value of the rewards was not as important as
Sanctions are then imposed according to the tally of points accumulated. There was an opportunity, however, for pupils to reverse their position by collecting reward points for improved behaviour thereby avoiding sanctions. Students are given every opportunity to take responsibility for their actions and manage their own behaviour (Ibid). I experienced the effects of a zero tolerance policy at School A where there was no opportunity for students to avoid sanctions by improving their behaviour. In my practice as a teacher at School A, the impact of isolation as a consequence of this type of policy was a cause of concern for me and is discussed later in the
Contending with the physical and psychological development of adolescence and perhaps with difficulties at home to cope with, teachers need to be conscious of the impact this may have on pupils learning and view their behaviour in context (Brooks, Abbott and Bills, 2007).How pupil behaviour is viewed is also subjective, what one teacher finds disruptive, another may see it as pupils demonstrating engagement. Watkins and Wagner argue that identifying difficult behaviour is not simply a case of defining it, i.e. disruptive, instead it should be viewed as variations in context and in explanation. For example, for a pupil taking a ruler from someone in the same year will be seen differently to the pupil taking it from someone younger. This is complicated further sometimes by explanations given for difficult behaviour, such as “they are just not very bright”, or “they come from a difficult neighbourhood” or even “It is only a tiny minority”.(Watkins and Wagner, 2000). By diverting the reasoning for difficulties away from school, teachers throw away the power to influence change and ignore opportunities for improvement. This does not imply that the blame should merely shift from the pupil to the teacher but instead, if the power to effect change is brought back into the hands of the teacher or school, difficult behaviour can be addressed. The first question many