Predictability and Consistency Are Critical in School Discipline

Consistency is incredibly important in school discipline.

It doesn't matter all that much what your exact policies are, what your exact rules and consequences are, what your discipline matrix says, but it does matter a great deal that you follow them consistently because that's what's going to create predictability for teachers, for students, for parents, and that's going to maximize your credibility in enforcing the system.

And I think right now, a lot of schools are trying to kind of customize or personalize or differentiate their approach to discipline for each individual student.

And what that ends up doing is creating this kind of ad hoc approach that everybody recognizes is an ad hoc approach that has no consistency.

And what we didn't anticipate in some of the kind of incremental changes that have sounded good individually, like personalizing or adjusting for the individual student, what we didn't anticipate is just how badly that would harm our credibility with everybody.

That when we tweak the consequences, not based on mitigating circumstances, but just, you know, I feel sorry for this kid.

So that kind of thing really, really undermines credibility and trust.

We've got to regain this ground of lost trust and lost credibility by being consistent.

So chances are good that you have good policies in place.

Maybe some policies need to be revised, but stick with the policies you have for now and just try enforcing them and see what happens.

with the climate in your school, with the discipline in your school.

So we've had a lot of questions about like, where can I learn more about progressive discipline?

And I've found people have told me that my website, the Principal Center website is now like the top result on Google, which I did not, like, this is not what I teach about.

This is not my main thing.

and i don't really want it to be but if you google progressive discipline you get you get my article on progressive discipline so i've been asked a lot for resources and for something that people can share with administrators so if you want something you can share with administrators here it is i'm doing a webinar called progressive discipline and you can find that at principalcenter.com progressive it is a free webinar nothing is for sale i do have what ultimately will be a more in-depth course on progressive discipline but that will also be free so i'm not trying to sell anything on this but i do want to get the word out about the importance of consistent predictable systems for just maintaining safety and order in your school if you have an ad hoc approach if you just kind of make it up as you go along Everybody is incentivized to take their chances with behavior, right?

And teachers are frustrated and feel like they have no recourse when the same things keep happening over and over again.

There's no kind of predictable series of consequences or steps that are taken.

It's just, hey, you know...

just kind of see how it goes.

When a kid gets sent to the office, maybe they'll get sent right back.

This is so aggravating and frustrating, not only to teachers, but also to parents, because when their kids get in trouble, it wasn't foreseeable.

It wasn't predictable.

So we can fix this.

It's not that hard.

Go to principalcenter.com slash progressive to register for the webinar, and I will see you there.

And send me any questions you have about progressive discipline.