Teachers focus on new skills to combat bad student behavior
COLUMBIA - An annual "Conscious Discipline" workshop comes to Columbia and stresses behavior as focus.
The week long workshop, which hosts teachers of all grades, focuses on finding better ways of parenting, teaching and connecting with students in hopes of creating a safer environment and better communication between them and teachers.
Conscious Discipline instructor Karen Hickman said the event is helping to transform the way parents and teachers are interacting with children when they have challenging behaviors.
She said doing these events will help the teachers model healthy behaviors. Hickman said watching teachers' faces and reactions after seeing changes with children and the aftermath of improved relationships is her favorite part of holding these events.
"They're gonna take the message that they learn here and, even If it's just a small piece, it gets to go with them and they get to pay it froward and share it with somebody else and that's really are long term mission, is we impact as many people as possible," Hickman said.
She said the event is also teaching people how to look at children's behavior, not as a misbehavior but communicating to teachers that students might be missing a skill, lack of focus, self control or memory, that will help teachers spot it and then chose a positive response instead of reacting to the behavior.
Anyone wanting to learn more information or attend a Conscious Discipline workshop should go to the Conscious Discipline website or call 1.800.842.2846.