Help! Our school claims to be a Responsive Classroom school
where the students are suppose to generate their own classroom
rules. I am using WBT in my classroom because it works!

My principal came into my classroom yesterday to check how
I was doing on Procedures and Routines and asked my students
if they made up their own rules, and then, wrote me a note to
asked, why didn't my students make up their own rules?

How can I support the 5 WBT rules that work for me in
my classroom? These are rules the kids can follow and
I can enforce. HELP!!! I feel like after 13 years of
teaching, I have to defend what works!!!
Susan in CT

This can become a little tricky when a campus makes its "own" school rules. Many schools reach out for outside behavior/management systems to keep their students on track. Sometimes even staff trainings may follow to learn the how to incorporate the "school's" techniques in the classroom, which can make anything else a no-no. This can make it difficult to implement our own desired rules/behavior plans. If I absolutely had to stick with the rules of your school, I think I would go ahead and have the students come up with their own rules as a class (to be compliant), and then as a class, you can see what WBT RULE it falls under. I would still hang up WBT's 5 rules, and also hang up the "students made rules" under whatever WBT rule it should go under. Doing this might even make the students realize that somehow, every rule will fall under these 5 rules. It will also give them ideas of what things can cause someone to "break" each one of the rules. In all, I would still make WBT rules the primary rules that students state daily, but also hang up "their" rules under whatever WBT teaching rule it breaks. I would also talk to your principal about how great WBT is, and ask if you can at least add it to the rules that your students make...compromise? Maybe he just doesn't know how awesome WBT is. You can do it...Defend WBT!

Ok...if the classroom gets to make up its own rules...are you not part of the classroom...can you not collaborate with the students on their rule making that eventually gets them around to the WBT rule? Then the kids can honestly say they came up with their own rules...I don't know what grade you teach but the lower grades can be "guided" into choosing the WBT rules.

Farrah Shipley
WBT Intern

The school I work at is a Make Your Day school. With this program we are only allowed to use their one rule. We just started using the program this year. Our principal made it clear that this is to be the only rule used on campus. In the previous year my students and I loved using the five rules, so I knew I wanted to continue using them. With that being said I have changed the five rules, to the five "expectations." Every morning we review our expectations together. They love reviewing the five rules and I'm glad I was able to incorporate them this year as well.

My first year I had a similar situation. So I did exactly what the first response said. I had the students write down their own rules on sentence strips. Then I put up my five rules on sentence strips on the board. The students came up and decided where their rule fit in with the posted rules. So when we rehearsed our rules, I had students say the rule, then we added: What does that mean? They read their rules after that. A funny thing happened. I had about 5 or 6 students who said: "Listen to your teacher" so what I loved was under Rule #1 it had 5 or 6 sentence strips that all said "Listen to your teacher" (because of course we decided that you can't follow directions if you don't listen to your teacher to hear them). So when we recited it sounded kinda like this:
I said: "Rule #1"
They said: "Follow directions quickly"
I said: And what does that mean?
And they said: Listen to your teacher, listen to your teacher, listen to your teacher, listen to your teacher, listen to your teacher!!!! Hilarious!!!

I also liked Toni's idea! If you go with that idea, could you maybe make a T chart and on one side have it titled: Student rules: and on the other side: Teacher expectations: ?????
Just a thought.
!!!