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Research

The Research Behind the Smiles
Hey, we all got into teaching to make a positive difference in the lives of our students. Unfortunately, very often the culture of our classrooms gets in the way. Using your ideas and the best in classroom management research as its foundation, FISH! For Schools was designed to help you create safe, effective and refreshingly enjoyable learning environments.

How will this help my students?
What’s in it for me?
Does it work?

How will this help my students?

“Children who are excited about what they are doing tend to acquire the skills they need to do it well, even if the process takes a while. When interest is lacking, however, learning tends to be less permanent, less deeply rooted, less successful. Performance, we might say, is a by-product of motivation.”
Kohn, Alfie. (1997). “The Limits of Teaching Skills.” Reaching Today’s Youth (No. 4). Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.

“Healthy and sound school cultures correlate strongly with increased student achievement and motivation, and with teacher productivity and satisfaction.”
Stolp, Stephen. (1994) Leadership for School Culture. ERIC Digest, Number 91.

“Facilitating student learning is not simply a matter of placing young people in educative environments—teachers must also motivate them, capturing their minds and hearts and engaging them actively in learning.”
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (2002). What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do. Arlington, VA: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

“Students will do things for a teacher they care for that they would not consider doing for a teacher they did not care for.”
Glasser, M.D., William. The Quality School, Managing Students without Coercion. (New York: Harper Perennial 1998)

 What’s in it for me?

“Teachers who had high-quality relationships with their students had 31 percent fewer discipline problems, rule violations and related problems over a year’s time than did teachers who did not have high-quality relationships with their students…”

“Teacher-student relationships provide an essential foundation for effective classroom management—and classroom management is key to high student achievement.”
Marzano, R.J. and Marzano, J.S. 2003. “The Key to Classroom Management.” Educational Leadership 21 (no. 38): 6-13. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Does it work?

“Being fully engaged in what we are doing—being playful and lighthearted even when the activity is hard and the challenge great—fosters the joy of learning. And when our classrooms don’t provide constructive ways to meet our students’ universal need for fun, students will devise their own, often not-so-constructive ways.”
Kriete, R. (2003). “Start the Day with Community.” Educational Leadership 61 (No. 1): 68-70. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

“High levels of respect and rapport are sometimes characterized by friendliness and openness, and frequently by humor, but never by a teacher forgetting her role as an adult.”
Danielson, C. (1996). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.