Tom Horne doubles down on discipline in Arizona classrooms during educator training sessions

Sid Bailey calls the crowning tool of his no-nonsense classroom management approach "the turn."

He stands up straight and points his entire body toward a misbehaving student and stares directly at them, all without making a sound or uttering any verbal reprimand.

On a Tuesday morning smack in the middle of Arizona's summer break, he tested "the turn" during a classroom management workshop for educators put on by the Arizona Department of Education.

One drawn-out second passed. Then two. Then three. Some people squirmed uncomfortably in their seats, while others hurried to take notes. Even in a room of adults who were expecting it, "the turn" was foreboding.

"When that kid walks into your classroom the first day of school, they got one question in their mind: Why should I trade in the joys of goofing off for the rigors of responsibility?" asked Bailey, a longtime school administrator and now associate superintendent of public instruction.

Bailey's boss, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, promised to bring traditional discipline back to classrooms and, in doing so, keep Arizona teachers from leaving their jobs. At the same time, Horne has said he will work to eradicate social and emotional learning, a set of skills that helps students understand their emotions and relationships to others that have become widely accepted and used by educators in recent years.

Bailey's role in the administration, like his part in the educator training, is to put forward the discipline policy that Horne promised will stem the teacher shortage and get students to perform better. Bailey guarantees to help educators redirect student attention, stop back talk in its tracks and demonstrate the consequences of misbehaving.

The training was the third for Bailey since Horne took office in January. Their hard-line approach is being brought to Arizona educators as students, reeling from the stressors and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, are coming to school with historically high rates of mental health problems, as well as the distractions of cellphones and vape pens, all of which make day-to-day learning more challenging.

Sixteen people attended the classroom management workshop earlier this summer.

One of them was Melanie Chapman, a 14-year teaching veteran newly promoted to dean of students at Imagine Schools, a charter network in the Phoenix area. She attended the workshop to learn how to teach classroom management strategies in her new position.

She said she found the training session helpful and a strong addition to the work she was already focused on: building relationships in her classroom.

“It was a really great reminder to be honest, and validating of the things I have done in class,” she said.

Still, she was also supportive of social and emotional learning, despite its rejection by the Horne administration, and didn't see it as separate from efforts to create a classroom environment conducive to learning.

She saw herself using the tools from Bailey's training, alongside her longtime efforts to help students build relationships and emotional awareness. She sees social and emotional learning as crucial to classroom management, she said.

"You can’t really have one without the other," Chapman said.

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Zero tolerance for 'back talk'

The start of the training was led by Kelly McQuaid, a deputy associate superintendent who helps support instructional effectiveness, and a former teacher and principal. She worked with participants to think through what a well-managed classroom looks like, sounds like and feels like in terms of teacher and student behaviors. That includes clear instructions and relationships with students, McQuaid said.

“I can tell when people are starting to feel safe, even in the training, because they start risking, they start volunteering,” she said. Teachers should bring that same awareness to how they assess whether students feel comfortable in their classroom, McQuaid suggested.

Then, Bailey, speaking energetically and with handfuls of rousing anecdotes, put forward his philosophy: Educators should take a no-nonsense approach to any minimal disruptions from students and have clear and escalating consequences to discourage students from speaking out of turn or disrupting the class.

Bailey believes teachers need a clear plan for responding when a student violates the behavioral norms of the classroom so that everyone can get back to work.

When students step out of line, the power battle starts, Bailey said.

“Let the games begin,” he said. “Now I am officially moving from the instructor of this classroom to being the manager of behavior.”

Bailey suggests that teachers use increasingly focused forms of physical attention to stop a student from goofing off in class, from simply swiveling their head to walking over and standing silently over a student.

Speaking to a hypothetical student to illustrate his tone and demeanor, Bailey said one of the tools of last resort he used was instructing a student to sit silently at a desk separate from the rest of the class before considering a letter to their parents or bringing in administrators.

“What I’m going to do is change your assignment to sit here for the rest of the hours and stare at the wall and do absolutely nothing else. ... I’m going to consider it a complete success today if you can do nothing,” Bailey said.

The goal is to make sure that learning can happen, Bailey said, by making sure students are treating each other with respect and giving the teacher room to teach.

“Calm is a skill that can be learned. It's a sign of strength and control,” he told the teachers. “You have to practice if it doesn't come easy.”

Alejandra Villar Gomez, a teacher who moved to Yuma last year from Baja California, found the training helpful for issues she has seen in the classroom: a student who keeps chattering with their neighbor or talks back to the teacher to get laughter from their classmates.

“Kids don’t need you to yell at them,” said Gomez, who now works at a charter school and attended the training with several colleagues. In her experience, she said, misbehavior has often been a sign that a student was confused about what they were learning, but they were embarrassed to tell a teacher.

Professor: Classroom management should include social and emotional learning

Social and emotional learning, the teaching approach that Horne opposes, was not specifically mentioned in the Arizona Department of Education's classroom management training.

According to Horne, the teaching framework, which aims to help young people regulate their emotions, establish and maintain relationships, and show empathy for others, is a "Trojan horse" for critical race theory and pulls educators away from teaching academic subjects.

But ignoring social and emotional learning when teaching classroom management is a mistake, says Carl Hermanns, an education professor at Arizona State University. Previously, Hermanns was a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent in public schools in California and Oregon.

A zero-tolerance approach characterized education in the 1980s and 1990s, Hermanns said. The result of that period was a dramatic rise in suspensions that the education establishment has since recognized as harmful, particularly to students of color. In the post-pandemic landscape, where many students have mental health challenges, a zero-tolerance approach could push students who need help out of the classroom, he said.

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Instead, he suggests that teachers work on investing in their relationships with students through classroom community circles, a teacher-led discussion space for students to express themselves, as well as clarifying classroom norms and showing students they care about them.

Those recommendations are in line with research on the science of learning that says students engage best in environments that consider their emotions, identity and cognition. It is also in line with the practice of social and emotional learning.

“Classrooms of social control is a futile exercise. That just doesn’t work,” Hermanns said. “But if you make it a classroom of social engagement ... that is what you can use to create the kind of disciplined classrooms we are talking about.”

But Bailey said he didn’t see the racially disparate effects of harsh punishment when he used his approach in the classroom.

“I never really saw color,” Bailey said. “I try to focus on what I have control of. And I control the conditions for success.”

Yana Kunichoff is a reporter on The Arizona Republic's K-12 education team. You can join The Republic's Facebook page and reach Yana at ykunichoff@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Tom Horne's AZ classroom management policies advocate zero tolerance