In our workshops, in our email, and on the phone, we have been hearing the same complaint over and over and over: "I can't scream loud enough and long enough to control my class." In the nearly 20 years that Youth Change has been a national resource for teachers and counselors with troubled students, we have never been so inundated with inquiries about how to scream louder and longer to get back in control.

What would you think if your son or daughter's teacher managed by screaming? You would be appalled and demand the screaming stop. If you are one of the professionals who is screaming at kids, you need to remember that you are screaming at someone's son, someone's daughter. If you wouldn't want your offspring to be yelled at, then you shouldn't be yelling at someone else's children.

My name is Ruth Wells, and I am the author of this magazine. When my daughter Meagan was told by her middle school music teacher that Meg was "a loser" and would be "a failure in high school," I confronted the teacher. The teacher replied "Meagan can take it." It doesn't matter if students "can take it." Screaming at students is abuse, and abuse can cost you your job, your self-respect, and your career. Even more importantly, no student should have to "take it." Think about this next sentence: You have no way of knowing if you are screaming at a child who was beaten or incested last night. Now, how do you feel about the screaming?

Yelling is destructive and always inappropriate-- unless you are yelling "Go Team" at a football game, or screaming "Stop" because a student is about to run in front of a bus. Further, yelling is not acceptable in most work settings, and have you ever noticed that when you yell at students, you are using behaviors that you won't permit them to use? Ultimately, your job is to prepare students for the real work place-- and screaming isn't permitted there. One more point: You have an obligation to report screaming if you hear it. There aren't exceptions given if it will be difficult or uncomfortable to report. Your first obligation is to your students not your comfort. Finally, yelling doesn't work anyway. With that in mind, please consider these alternatives to screaming:

Anticipate and Avoid Predictable Problems
Many of the professionals who have been contacting us to say that screaming isn't working, have noted that they are struggling with the same misbehavior over and over and over. If you know that students predictably struggle in a given area, then use that information to prevent it from repeating endlessly. That is how you would manage a chronic academic concern, and that is how you must manage behavioral problems.

Example Strategy:
Instead of continuing to have problems with inappropriate items coming into your site, train behavior intervention poster your students on what to bring and wear. If you use humor, students may actually absorb far more information. A non-confrontational approach will also result in much more success than an antagonistic one. That is why this type of intervention can succeed when screaming has failed. Here's a very fun intervention to use. Have students name occupations, then list those jobs in a column on the board, Next, have student list items that shouldn't come to work for those particular jobs. Encourage humorous contributions like a chef bringing worms to work at a restaurant. Now that students are relaxed and at ease, discuss silly items not to bring to your site, and the results that can occur. Students can make a master list of Items Not to Bring to School. Our Poster #62, (shown at left, click to enlarge) provides a visual example if you need ideas to get your group started.

Identify, Prioritize Then Teach Missing Skills
You would never yell at a student who lacked math skills. Yelling would not help the youngster gain math skills. Similarly, yelling at students who lack specific classroom behavior skills will not help youngsters gain those missing skills. In place of yelling, consider teaching the missing skills. Where to start? Pick the one problem that interferes the most with your classroom management. Once that skill is mastered, move onto the next missing skill, and so on.

Example Strategy:
Teach students how to properly manage transition times. For example, perhaps students need to rehearse walking into the room without sounding like a herd of buffalo. Once they can enter "quieter than a herd of buffalo," you can tell them that they've mastered the skill. Next, offer occasional rewards for good transitioning, especially for punctuality and quickly quieting down. Teachers can give the first five students who are quiet and ready to work, passes to get out of class a few minutes early. A counselor can bring a pack of gum and give the five sticks out to the first five youngsters who are quiet and ready to work. Be sure to teach the skills before expecting them though, and remember, re-stating the rules isn't teaching skills.

View the complete article at http://www.youthchg.com/education.html

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