Pluses and Minuses as Commodity in Developing Self-Discipline
The beauty of subtracting minuses from pluses is that students are penalizing themselves by taking away something that is intrinsically theirs.
They earn those pluses, they weren't gimmies.
When a teacher takes away recess time, they're taking away something that is baked into the schedule, something that kids know is going to be there whether they do well or not.
When their pluses are erased for the board to pay for the minuses, you have to remind them that those pluses were theirs come, something they earned and sadly squandered. I would often remind them that the richest people aren't the ones who make the most money, they are the ones who keep the most money.
The Question
I'm going to end this last post about self-discipline with a several questions I’ve considered for a long time.
Why do kids go to elementary school or junior high?
The obvious answer is because their parents make them.
But look a little closer.
Why do kids actually want to go to school?
There are some basic motivations.
It gives him a break from their parents.
It gets them out of their house.
It's different scenery.
There's often free food, like subsidized breakfast lunches and snacks.
They get to go somewhere where it's warm in the winter time and hopefully cool in the springtime and fall.
Most of all, they get to see their friends and socialize.
But do they come to school for the education?
For isosceles triangles, musical modes, the Treaty of Versailles, or the stages of meiosis?
Let me be blunt.
Is one of the reasons they come to school is to see you?
Only you can answer that question.
Do they want to spend time you?
Do they look forward to making music you?
Let's face it.
Kids don't have to go to school to learn stuff these days.
The YouTube University for Advanced Studies has resolved that pesky problem.
Covid taught us that the Internet was both an infinite source of knowledge as well as sinkhole of brain candy.
You can download just about any book or media from a library.
What would kids do if they arrived at school and there were no classes?
They would socialize, play, eat when food was available, and utilize as much technology and Wi-Fi bandwidth as they could.
If teachers walked around like vendors at ballpark, trying to sell social studies, music, art, theater arts, calculus, would there be any takers?
Sure. The kids who came to school with an appetite for intellectual stimulation would sign up. They would dabble and some small percentage would become deeply enmeshed with the subject matter and only come up for air and chicken nuggets every few hours or so.
Would they develop self-discipline?
Maybe.
We've all read about the marshmallow and cookie experiments.
I know that some kids have an overriding compulsion to delay gratification while some others are impulsive in the extreme.
Unfortunately, there comes a point in time in education where, as my uncle would say, then note comes due.
Nurture is more necessary to promote than nature.
And that's where we as teachers have the greatest gift to give our students: our love for our subject matter as well as the self-discipline that was required to attain that knowledge and skill base.
Do you still have that over-riding self-disciple you had when you fell in love with what you do?
And if that never happened, can you generate it at your late age and pass it on to your students?
I believe the answer is yes.
Not everybody thinks about self-discipline as they go through their development in their field.
It’s a given.
Ask musicians.
The Musical Experience
We are tethered to the reality that if we don't discipline ourselves within our art, we will make no progress and actually backslide.
By introducing self-discipline habits, techniques, and tendencies that are grounded in our love for the subject matter to children, we plant a seed that has the potential to grow into a sturdy intellectual curiosity oak that years from now will withstand the winds of temptation.
As Betty Davis once said, “Getting old ain't for sissies”.
For a kid in third grade, old is being in 7th grade.
Many a time I used Betty’s line with kids, reminding them that as they grew older, their self-discipline would have to be what they relied upon to achieve a goal.
Another way I framed it was “Would you rather tell yourself what you need to do or have someone else stand over you and demand that you do something?”
Life is a heck of a lot easier when you make up your mind to do something on your own rather than have someone over you tell you what you need to do.
I would often reflect on the bedrock of their time with me, namely their listening, receptive language, and observational skills, to give me the answer to this question:
“Look around in your own life, the people you know, the people you see.
What do you observe?
What do you hear?
How happy are those who have to be told what to do all the time?
Compare them to the people that just do the right thing at the right time without having anyone tell them what to do.
Which group of people are more happy?”
Inevitably, kids would say the people that just do the right thing on their own.
I would tell them, “Those people have self-discipline and so do you”.
Self-Disipline and Motivation
Often, the people who don’t do things on their own are motivated by one of two things: fear or happiness (shades of the market: fear or greed).
Those that do things motivated by self-discipline do them not because of fear or happiness but rather because they have learned that life works better because they have developed a habit that moves their life forward.
There was a time when I was younger when fear motivated me, knowing that I might get in trouble if I didn't do something that was supposed to.
As I got older, I was able to see how much easier things were when I just did the right thing at the right time and kept moving forward.
Initial sting – but long-term satisfaction.
There was no fear, just ‘chill’ and I learned that I was okay with that.
Try to do things for the right reason: to reap th rewards, to be happy and successful, not to be fearful because a life lived in fear is a life looking for peace and not finding it.
Eventually we figure out that the things we do on our own not only make us happier but it also adds to the happiness of those in our life, like our family, friends, and co-workers.
While money doesn't bring happiness, the two do share one quality, namely, there’s always room for more, especially if your kind and know how to share!
Self-discipline is not the willingness to put someone or something ahead of your own once and needs on an autopilot basis but rather knowing that those habits dependably add value to your life.
Self-discipline is also understanding the tricky balance of when we submit to self-gratification or take a break.
Goals, especially large goals, cannot be consumed and achieved in one sitting.
That’s why where is a “stop” and “go” on the chalkboard.
We have to learn when to walk away from the table and say that we’ve done what we needed to do today plus a little bit more, that we’ll come back to this tomorrow, that we’re not giving up but pacing ourselves.
It's this point of view, this mindset, that we stack on top of our listening and receptive language skills as well as our self-discipline abilities, namely a proactive mindset. That'll be the topic for “Stacking Skills for Success: Proactive Mindset.”
RSS Feed