The Whale Done School

The Whale Done School, by Cindy Zurchin, James Ballard and Thad Lacinak.

The subtitle of this tremendously impactful little book says it all: Transforming a School’s Culture by Catching Students Doing Things Right.

Like Whale Done did for adults in business, this book applies lessons learned from training killer whales to younger humans in schools. Whale trainers figured out quickly that it was not wise to harshly punish the world’s most fearsome predators and then get into the water with them. The same applies to our students. Here are some gems teachers can get from this book:

• We need to catch students doing things right (or almost right) rather than looking to catch their mistakes. 

• You get what you’re looking for.

• Ignoring what they do wrong and recognizing what they do right works. What we focus on is what we get more of.

• We can build trust by downplaying undesirable behavior and focusing on praising and rewarding students for what they do right.

• Students do not have to show a perfect performance for you to give them recognition.

• Reinforce things that students do that are approximately right.

• Don’t give up on students that are resistant. Resistance is a whole lot better than indifference. At least with resistance there is something to work with. Resistant students can become you biggest fans.

• Challenging our students with small steps is the way to reinforce the behavior we want to see.

These practices will steer students toward wanting us to notice the positive things they are doing. I have seen whole classes switch to competing to being good, trying to please me, and contributing to the class rather than being disruptive and acting dumb.

I have used similar techniques for effective classroom management for years. Here is a blog about a similar idea, using Super Puntos: https://www.brycehedstrom.com/2016/super-puntos/

Catch them being good!

Works for me.  Try this out and let me know how it goes.