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time," when referring to removal that will O Robertson's Creative Photography searchers often hear that timeouts do not help children's development or learning. Less often they are given reasons why. Less often still do teachers receive specific information about what works instead. This article explains "what the fuss is about" concerning time-outs and why it is important to replace time-outs with guidance that builds an encouraging classroom.

Confusion about time-out is understandable, as experts still disagree about its use (Gucci 1998; Scriber 1999). Time-out probably was first used as a classroom alternative to embarrassment, scolding, and corporal teachers wanted other means for dealing with classroom conflicts, and time-out became the commonly used alternative. There has always been ambiguity about the use of this technique. When a teacher removes a child from a situation and helps the child Part One -? Using Guidance to Build an Encouraging Classroom Young Children ; November 2001 help a child calm down so a conflict can be resolved (Gartered 1998).

What the fuss is about O Subjects & Predicates When used as discipline, the time-out is one of a group of techniques-?including the name-on-outboard, an assigned yellow or red "light," and the disciplinary y referral slip-? that still rely on blame and shame to bring a child's behavior "back into line.

" (Perhaps the most odious is putting a child on specially made green, yellow, and red steps, depending on frequency of the conflicts. This is the modern equivalent of the dunce stool. One of the problems with these techniques, seen by some adults as "logical consequences," is that generally they are more logical to the adult than to the child.

Although the adult's intent is to discipline rather than punish, children tend to perceive these traditional discipline techniques as "the infliction of pain and suffering," which is, in fact, a fairly standard Going back to the nineteenth century, early childhood writers have criticized discipline techniques that punish children rather than positively teach them (Gartered 1998).

Forbore went so far s to say that through punishment, adults can make a child "bad" (in Lilly 1967).

Interiors ([1912] 1964) decried traditional systems that reward and punish rather than teach children how to discipline themselves. More recently, Katz (1984) has argued that punishments such as time-outs confuse young children because they cannot easily understand the sequence of behaviors during and after a conflict nor what removal to a chair has to do with them. Collect (1988) has pointed out that such punishments discourage the individual child and dampen the spirit of all children in the class.

Marion (1999) explains that he time-out is "punishment by loss," meaning that the adult temporarily deprives the child of membership in the group and, as a punishment, "does not teach. " Referring especially to toddlers, Scriber offers five reasons why the time-out is an undesirable practice: 1 .

The imposed external control of the time-out inhibits a child's ability to build internal controls and may cause a child lasting feelings of "being ineffectual. " 2. The child placed on a time-out chair does not have personal needs met, including the need to develop alternative strategies. 3.

The time-out diminishes the hill's developing self-worth and self-confidence; it may cause others to view the child as a troublemaker. Understanding the relation of actions to consequences and

may feel bewildered by the time-out experience.

5. Opportunities for learning valuable lessons in social relations are lost during the period of isolation, [and humiliation from the time-out may diminish the value of adult follow-up] (1999, 22-23). In my view, these considerations apply to older children as well. Collect (1988) points out that an air of discouragement pervades a classroom in which a time-out chair is prominent.

Teachers n such classrooms have institutionalized conditional acceptance, with adult rejection an ever-lingering threat if rules are disobeyed. A child placed on the chair experiences public, if temporary, loss of group membership.

Other children become apprehensive that they may be the next to be excluded from the group. When conditional acceptance becomes the routine, ingenious and out-groups often form. Too often, institutions perpetuate this undesirable social dynamic, to the loss of all and the considerable detriment of some. In addition to the writers cited above, the NANCY Code of Ethical conduct (NANCY 1998) and the

NANCY publication Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs (Brakeman & Couple 1997) advocate use of positive discipline or guidance.

The difference between guidance and traditional discipline can be summarized this way: too easily slides into punishment; it punishes children for making mistakes in their behavior. Guidance rejects the pain and suffering involved in punishment. Guidance teaches children to solve their problems, rather than punishing them for having problems they cannot solve. Guidance teaches children to learn from their mistakes rather than "disciplining" children for the stakes they make. Gartered 1997) In addition to replacing time-out, we need to replace all discipline 9 techniques that impose pain and suffering.

Instead, teachers can focus on three positive and

instructive practices: being a guidance professional, teaching democratic life skills, and building an encouraging classroom. Being a guidance professional Time-outs often provide noticeable short-term benefits, which can be more obvious than the negative side effects. It takes commitment, time, and effort to learn guidance alternatives and, until a teacher masters them, they may seem less effective (Ad Ross & Jehovah 1998).

To learn and use effective alternatives, teachers must be guidance professionals.

It is never too late to become a guidance professional. (A model teacher, in her late forties, once told me it took five years before she felt her guidance responses had become automatic. ) In my experience, after learning to use guidance effectively, even veteran teachers wonder how they ever managed before. This anecdote illustrates how one kindergarten teacher moved toward professionalism. Happened, how Kamala saw the problem, what alternatives he might learn for next time, and how he might make amends for his actions and rejoin the group.

Instead, she reacted to a hard-and-fast rule-? zero tolerance for aggression-?with the established response: time-out and a stern lecture. The teacher's own sense of ethics prompted her to move toward professionalism. When the second incident occurred, she realized that punishment was having a negative effect on Jamb's self-concept. In a meeting with staff who knew Kamala, she learned that after living in foster homes, he and his siblings had O Elisabeth Nichols Early in the year, Kamala got upset with another child and punched her in the stomach.

The teacher became furious and marched him to the time-out chair.

Later in the day the principal gave Kamala a stern lecture. Two days later, Kamala got into

another argument and hit again. As the teacher came toward him, Kamala walked to the time-out chair by himself and said, "l know. I'm going 'cause I'm no good.

" The teacher knelt beside him, put her arm around his shoulders, and explained that he did not upset her but that his behavior did. Afterward, she worked to improve their relationship. Gartered 1998, 62) Punishments such as time-outs confuse young children because they cannot easily understand the sequence of behaviors during and after a conflict nor what removal AAA chair has to do with them. 10 care. The mother had been working hard to overcome chemical dependency. The teacher began getting to know Kamala so she could better understand him and his behavior.

She changed her morning routine to share 10 minutes alone with him eve- ere day. Her assistant helped make it possible to dedicate this time to Kamala, and both teachers became more encouraging of Jamb's everyday activities.

They also helped Kamala develop and use a strategy that allowed him to sense when he was losing control and remove himself from conflicts. One day, Kamala walked way from a conflict and, very upset, approached the teacher.

She suggested he go into the bathroom, shut the door, and spit in the sink for as long as he wanted. I arrived to see a thirsty little boy come out of the bathroom and head straight for the water fountain! After the teacher quickly washed out the sink, she had a quiet talk with him about the conflict. Teacher-child attachments are necessary if a child is to trust enough to learn to manage classroom conflicts (Bet 1994).

In conflict

situations the guidance professional acts as a mediator, seeking to understand the situation and lead children award peaceable resolution.

This use of conflict management teaches children important life skills. When teachers use timeout, they often think they are shaming the child into "being good. " The truth is that young children have not yet mastered the complex life skills of expressing strong emotions, resolving social problems peaceably, and getting along. The teacher may think that the child knows better and has only to be reminded.

But the child November 2001 Teacher-child attachments are necessary if a child is to trust enough to learn to manage classroom conflicts techniques that, in fact, some adults ever learn, and most of us learn only imperfectly (Gartered 1995). While shame may cause the child to halt (or at least be more careful about) the immediate behavior, it does nothing to teach positive alternative behaviors. Shaming also has psychological side effects. The child feels like a failure because he does not know something the teacher expects him to know (Collect 1988; Scriber 1999).

And shame reinforces a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. This likely was happening for Kamala, who already saw himself as "no good. " If a child internalizes a negative label, precociously he is going to ask a natural follow-up question, "How do bad kids act? " In answering this question, children like Kamala often have more conflicts than before the traditional discipline was applied-?and the negative self-label introduced (Gartered 1995). These reasons account at least in part for the fact that for many children, time-out does not work (Collect 1988; Bet 1994).

Think about it: a pattern of "l do

something bad; therefore I am punished; therefore I am bad; therefore I do something bad" is not a life pattern we want to reinforce! Educating for Democracy Pluralistic democracy is a desirable ideal.

America's founding fathers voiced this incept and more or less set it up, although their idea of pluralism was effectively limited to male Europeans. Although to every new manifestation of diversity, reactions, some vicious, have been expressed along the way, immigration has been and continues to be more open in North America than in many older nations.

Diversity creates conflict. In a democracy, respectful conflict is desirable; it enriches is the outcome of disequilibrium, the surprise that one's way is not the only way and the only investment of effort in reconciling different perspectives.

Community-? mutual caring and collaborative action-?is essential to human living. Civilization is not easily accomplished. It requires a long process of education of the young, shaping dispositions to care and learn as well as practicing all the skills-?physical, intellectual, and social-?that a complex society demands.

Civilizing goes on continuously; it is never finished, but it is easily lost. Democratic behaviors and critical thinking are well learned only through practice.

Educational systems, then, must create democratic learning communities where thinking is encouraged and communication is active. The human child, fortunately, is an enthusiastic learner. Source: Reprinted from E. Jones, "Emergent Teaching," The Lively Kindergarten: Emergent Curriculum in Action by E. Jones, K.

Evans, and K. S. Ranked (Washington, DC: NANCY, 2001), 9. 2 Teaching democratic life skills These days, most things educational are expected to have goals, standards, and outcomes.

With traditional discipline, the goal is obvious: an orderly classroom with children literally and

figuratively kept in line (as the saying goes, "The teacher teaches and the students learn"). The expectation is that from compliance in childhood comes character in adulthood. The problem with this goal is that it reflects a time in our society when hillier were "seen and not heard. " In years past (before Dry.

Spook and Beaverton, among others) most families tended to have authoritarian parenting styles, with parents in charge and the "goodness" of children evaluated by how well they obeyed. But today's children come more often from families with different values and interaction patterns.

More so than in the past, even very young children make real choices and express thoughts freely. For many families parent-driven rules and punishments are reserved for a relatively small number of situations. Practices like parent-child "chats" and family