REBTOZ

You can use REBT principles to teach young people in early childhood how to manage their feelings. 'Must' thinking (Brain Bully) makes unhealthy anger and low frustration tolerance. 'Preference' thinking (Brain Friend) makes healthy annoyance and promotes frustration tolerance.  Read this to your students. I'd be interested to know how they respond to 'Julio Keeps Coolio at Schoolio!' Giulio Julio Keeps Coolio at Schoolio! Julio would ‘chuck a wobbly’ every time he didn’t get his own way. When his teacher said ‘time to pack up!’   he would ‘crack a fruity’ because he wanted to play with his lego instead. ‘Whinge, whinge, whinge!' He whinged. If his mum at home asked Julio to help with the dishes he would ‘spit the chewy’ because he was playing with his model car. He stomped his feet! He clenched his fists! He said ‘wha wha wha I want to play with my car! At school he was doing some maths and he ‘spat the dummy’ because it wa...

The purpose of his post is to compare and contrast the contradictory philosophies, which underpin the practices and processes used in schools to address student behaviour. Traditionally we have had a one-size fits all approach where student behaviour is managed and controlled by the adult characterized by language like ‘warnings, steps, detention, suspension and exclusion.’  Using our authority to punish might get students to comply and fear us but it doesn’t help them to gain insight into why they respond as they do emotionally and behaviourally to daily challenges in life. This approach contradicts constructivist theory on which all teachers’ work is based. Why do we base our teaching on constructivist theory for the subjects we teach and then use a system of behaviour management that ignores the developmental needs of the child? Why are we using two models for learning at the same time in the same context, one inclusive an the other not? Enter Rational Emotive Behavio...

Constructivist theory says we learn to behave according to what we observe going on around us. Our models of behaviour show us how to get what we want, how to respond to situations and how we can interact with others. If these models are helpful they will teach us that we can wait for things if we have to, that we can respect others (even when we don’t wish to associate with them) and we can remain confident even when we fail at something or suffer the rejection of others. If we live amongst such role models we will internalize (construct) some very useful ‘rules for living.’ Conversely if those around us show low frustration tolerance, who may get what they want through aggression and who take failure and rejection to heart then we are likely to internalise a different set of ‘rules for living.’ Such habits of thinking and behaving (helpful or unhelpful) will determine how successful or not we may be in achieving our goals in life. According to Dr Albert Ellis we can deconstruct those...