Giving Compass' Take:

• Proactive discipline in schools can come in the form of modeling good behavior, rewarding growth, and using restorative justice practices to handle classroom issues. 

• Experts find that proactive discipline can help reduce poor behavior in schools and that suspensions and zero-tolerance policies contribute to adverse outcomes like the school-to-prison pipeline. Will more schools adapt their discipline policies because of this research?

• Read more about the effectiveness of restorative justice practices. 

At their root, restorative discipline approaches encourage teachers to approach issues proactively and supportively, creating classroom conditions where problems are less likely to arise and easier to resolve if they do, Edutopia reports.

Some key steps to achieving proactive discipline in the classroom involve relationship-building with students, developing classroom norms with student input, and making classroom expectations clear.

Supportive and responsive discipline involves modeling good behavior, reminding students of expectations, using positive language, rewarding effort and growth, using non-verbal signals as much as possible, and connecting with students to offer support or having a one-on-one “restorative chat” with a student when problematic behavior arises.

Bullying can harm students and affect their academic performance and attendance rates, and school leaders bear some legal responsibilities regarding in addressing and preventing this from taking place.However, the problems created by bullying and other troubled school behavior are not easy to solve. A recent study indicated that many anti-bullying measures schools are using are ineffective, and, in some cases, are counter-productive.

In addition, solutions such as zero-tolerance policies and out-of-school suspensions are often blamed for phenomena like the school-to-prison pipeline.

However, many schools are rethinking discipline and looking at alternatives to suspensions, including more positive approaches like restorative practices.

Read the full article about proactive discipline by Amelia Harper at Education Dive