Where goodness has its own reward

FOR every rebuke in the classroom or the yard at Manor Lakes College in Melbourne's western suburbs, a teacher aims to praise.

Jason Smallwood

FOR every rebuke uttered in the classroom or the yard at Manor Lakes College in Melbourne's western suburbs, a teacher aims to praise six times.

Principal Jason Smallwood said it was a simple but effective rule that changed the culture of a school from one focused on punishing bad behaviour to catching students doing the right thing.

"We continue to support kids to learn to read or count regardless of what age or stage they're at. We continue to teach those skills but at a certain point, some schools believe kids know how to behave, how to interact with others, how to co-operate and they stop teaching what's expected in terms of behaviour."

Mr Smallwood said unwanted behaviour was then labelled naughty and students were given detention rather than the scholl looking at reasons for the behaviour and how to prevent it.

"We still have consequences for kids doing inappropriate things but we also make sure it's a teachable moment," he said.

Established four years ago, Manor Lakes is one of 20 schools in Victoria that participated in a three-year pilot study of School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support, an approach to managing student behaviour that places the onus on the school and the teachers rather than making it the child's problem.

Leading teacher of student well-being Cheryl Graham said the approach looked at the factors underlying a child's behaviour and intervened to prevent it occurring again, whether providing activities at lunchtime or allowing a group of students to go to a park at lunchtime instead of clashing with others in the playground, or teaching the child strategies to control their own behaviour.

"You redesign the environment rather then redesign the child," Ms Graham said. "You look at how the child interacts with the environment, what's working and not working, and that includes teaching strategies as well as the physical and social environment."

The school has four expectations of behaviour that guide its approach to everything from playing in the yard to strategies teachers use in the classroom: stay safe, stay respectful, value our community, aim high.

Ms Graham said the key was recognising and rewarding behaviour, so that it became a habit and influenced others.

"We're acknowledging kids so the behaviour becomes intrinsic. They do it for intrinsic reward. The more you acknowledge it, the more the group learns the behaviour, and they do it because it's the right thing to do," she said.

Students earn yellow tokens for doing the right thing and the tokens can be exchanged for rewards. Special incidents of good behaviour are noted in postcards mailed home.

Similar programs have been running for some years in Queensland and Tasmania and the Victorian study aimed to improve students' learning and results as well their behaviour.

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