https://www.bullyproofclassroom.com
About James H Burns
Since 1977 Jim Burns has been working with students who have learning disabilities and behavioral problems. He has almost 40 years of experience working as an administrator, teacher, college instructor, and seminar leader. He is committed to helping administrators, parents, and teachers establish standards of excellence and help them build successful relationships with their staff, students, and children. He has written and designed The Bully Proof Classroom, a graduate course that is now offered at The College of New Jersey, and La Salle University in Pennsylvania in partnership with The Regional Training Center. This course has been endorsed by the NJEA. He has also written “Anti Bullying 101.” A book that provides teachers, administrators, support staff and parent’s 101 tips on how to achieve permanent help in dealing with unruly behavior and can be used as part of any anti-bullying program. In May of 2015 Jim was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Gratz College in recognition of his almost forty years of work in student behavior management and anti bullying. He is available for on sight in-services and keynotes.
How do you feel when you’ve accomplished something? Better yet how do you feel when
you’ve accomplished something and you’ve worked long and hard at it? Whether it’s losing
weight, finishing college at 40 years old, quitting smoking. or solving a problem that you’ve
encountered for the first time it feels great when you look back and can say it didn’t beat me, I
got it done. The relief of knowing that the task is complete lifts a tremendous amount of
emotional weight off your shoulders. It’s not just how you feel about getting the job done, and
putting a check mark next to the task on the to – do list that makes you feel good, It’s how you
feel about yourself and what it does to your own level of self esteem that really makes the
difference. You begin to feel more confident in other areas of life and are not so resistant to try
something new again for fear of failure. Kids are no different, once they experience success they
are more open to trying new things and are not as resistant to instruction because in their mind
they know that they have had past successes. Those past successes though have to be true
successes, kids can’t be given a false sense of their abilities in grade one by being given good
grades for their work because by the time they reach the second or third grade they will discover
just how much they don’t know leading to low self esteem and ultimately fear of failure.
The only way to avoid this potential problem from occurring is to consistently hold students
accountable for their work, have high academic expectations, and to work students until you are
convinced that they have mastered the material that was taught them. Once students are
convinced that you will not accept shoddy work and they will have to do work over and over
again until their grade is acceptable they will work to get the assignment right the first time.
After the student puts the work in and achieves success, and really know the concept being
taught he/she to will look back and say to him or herself that this assignment didn’t beat me.
Giving poor grades doesn’t lower student self esteem. Low self esteem comes when the student
doesn’t understand the concepts and is not given the opportunity to improve. Tougher grading
practices hold students accountable for an acceptable grade, and provides additional instruction
to ensure that the student has the opportunity to master the material. Students need opportunities
to succeed but, they also need opportunities to fail. It is those failures that should be the red flag
for the teacher as to what the student doesn’t know. Once those failures are overcome, a sense of
success will encourage the student to be more diligent in his efforts and improve how he or she
feels about themselves academically.
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