Teaching Responsibility

So often I hear principals or counselors make the comment... "You really clarified the concept of responsibility today...but how do I reinforce those ideas after you are gone?" The answer: "Repetition is the mother of skill!" If I have been to your school you have seen the "Responsibilty Model." If you have forgotten what the model looks like or I have never been to your school then I would suggest emailing me at bill@billcordes.com I would be happy to send you the model. Make a big one and put it in your office, up in your classroom, or in the hallways of your school. Then when you have a teachable moment. That is, someone messes up, they get busted, they blow an opportunity then take them a side...have them study the poster and use the questioning piece. The questioning piece is using questions so they can come to a conclusion on thier own. The key to the questioning piece is that you want to be like Colombo...If you don't know who Colombo is...well your young. Colombo was this detective that never made accusations, he was curious rather than accusitory. He would simply ask questions about the situations and then allow them to make their own very obvious conclusions. "So what happened?" "What did you notice?" "What were your thoughts?" "How did it escalate from there?" Once they have given you plenty of information show them the poster. "Look at this Responsibility is our ability to respond to the situation. You and I can't change the past we can only decide about what to do next. So, where do you think you are right now?" "Shame?" "Blame?" "Deny?" "or "Do you feel like just giving up?" "Since we can't change the past we can either continue to live in this and be a victim or we can focus on what we can do right now so we are not a victim. The bottom line...this is a learning opportunity...If you stay stuck in shame, blame, deny or quit...those make you a victim and everyone else owns you and your feelings." "Which would you rather do?" The other option is to ask the question...What did I learn and then move forward?" I can't make the choice for you so if you did learn something what would it be?" Open it up so they can talk about it, and by them coming up with a conclusion on their own all will be better off."