The Center for Empowered Teaching recognizes the influence of norms in student behavior and the need for today's child to make a contribution to his or her world. Empowered Teaching® is a body of user-friendly strategies which can be used in both regular and special education environments.
The goal of Empowered Teaching is to shift the paradigm of classroom discipline from external student motivation to internal motivation.
The results of this training produce a learning environment that can actualize the potential of each teacher and each student; teachers produce high achievement, maximizing their ability to teach, and by increasing on-task behavior, reduces stress within the learning environment. It enables a teacher or parent to reclaim even the worst situation.
Marilyn Dikeos, M. Ed established The Center for Empowered Teaching in 1988 while teaching special education in the California Bay area. It became clear to her that the usual ways of working with problem students were breaking down. The peer group was generating the code of conduct and teachers were finding that no amount of discipline, suspensions, detentions, etc. were going to work. She saw the need to establish CET based on the number of teachers she saw who had similar issues relating to classroom management.
DEVELOPMENT
Empowered Teaching was developed in the classroom- not a laboratory. It draws upon the philosophy of leaders such as Alfie Kohn, Rudolph Dreikurs, William Glasser, and the model of family systems theory and general systems theory. Marilyn began experimenting, and after one school year the students had improved dramatically. Through the course of that year she used techniques and principals learned in business, social work and education. The combination of the three fields of expertise (and in-classroom trial) had the answer she needed.
EFFECTIVENESS
Center for Empowered Teaching has been sponsoring training and Inservice in Empowered Discipline since its inception in 1988. During this time, studies have proven it to be very effective. Because it changes the behavior of target students, but also the entire class behavior as well. On task behavior and talk out behavior has shown improvement of up to 80% after as little as 6 weeks of implementation.
NORMS BASED
Empowered Teaching works because it is based on the fact that all students are primarily interested in making and having friends at the end of the day. Therefore they will do whatever behaviors are necessary to have friends. Those behaviors are the group norms. These norms drive the vast majority of student behavior from a much earlier grade level than ever before. Conversely, other "problem" children are acting out as a result of their not fitting into the group, or being isolated from it.
