Love and Logic

How many of you have heard of Love and Logic?

Love and Logic^® is a method of working with students which was developed by educational expert Jim Fay, child psychiatrist Foster W. Cline, M.D. and Charles Fay, Ph.D. Love and Logic has many tools for educators, principals and districts that promote healthy parent/teacher and teacher/student relationships and positive school wide discipline. And yes, Love and Logic works along with all other school discipline programs. It actually makes them work better!

Love and Logic allows the teacher to take emotion out of discipline. It suggests one-liners to disengage with an upset student - like, "What a bummer," "Dude!," etc. This one is big for me. The students try to engage me and argue with me. I have to recognize that and not allow them to bring me down to their level. The one-liners allow that separation to happen.

It also suggests having a time-out spot in your room that is behind and away from the other students so that if a student needs to cool off or take a minute, they are not disturbing other students and being the center of attention which is what many times they are after. This has been great as well. I have placed four desks around the perimeter of the room with a Time-Out essay to write taped to them. If students cannot make the appropriate choices to be productive members of band rehearsal, they have to sit at one of the desks and copy the essay onto another sheet of paper. This allows the student to chill and think about their actions. I have had students decide to rejoin the class after copying it one time - with their attitudes much better. I have also had students have to copy it multiple times because they were not ready to join the class again.

It suggests taking the students out of the room to talk with them - again taking away the opportunity for them to be the center of attention. I used this with a handful of Symphonic Band students on Friday. I was able to find out what their problems were and can now work to fix them. It also gave me a chance to point out to them how their behavior was affecting the rest of the class - and that their behavior was disrespectful to me and was leading the other students to disrespect me as well. They all apologized and said they'd do better. I think they all appreciated the short little pow wow away from the other students. And, they were better behaved when they came back to the classroom. One student even really made an effort to get another student sitting next to him to make better choices. 

My favorite tool learned from Love and Logic is called "Delayed Consequence." When a student does something pretty majorly bad and you are tempted to just rip into them, you tell the student (not showing any emotion), "I need some time to think on this. I'll deal with this later. Try not to worry though." The student knows that they are going to receive a substantial consequence and they can't stand not knowing what that will be. They practically make themselves sick worrying about it. When they ask you what you've decided, you tell them not to worry about it - that they'll know when you've decided what punishment to give. Delayed consequence gives you time to assign a punishment when you're not angry with the student and also gives you time to assign a punishment that "matches the crime." When it's major enough, you need the time to set up a parent-teacher conference as well. I used this on a smaller scale last week with a student. He was getting on my every last nerve. I had tried many of the above techniques, but they were not working. I finally just said, "[Student name], I need to see you after class." and then continued teaching. He then became the perfect student in class and I didn't need to worry about him anymore. He was so worried about what I was going to do. He knew he was in trouble - I mean he had received all of the other punishments already. I actually had kind of forgotten that I had said I needed to see him after class, but he had not forgotten. He came up to me right after class and just stood in front of me staring at me with puppy dog eyes. I then remembered and took a minute to talk to him. He asked me if he needed to stay for detention. He has served detention almost weekly since school started. I told him no - that he would have detention next week if he didn't change his behavior for the better.