Boys Town is an organisation with over 40 years experience of caring for youngsters hellbent on bucking the system. Male schoolgoers with a history of behavioural problems are committed to their care by the courts, and it is there that they are given another chance to reach their potential.
But in recognition of the widespread difficulty of schools in dealing with problem children, Boys Town launched their Well Managed Classroom Programme in September last year. The aim is to try to ensure that teachers are equipped with the skills to support children who present with a variety of stresses in the classroom that manifest as unruly behaviour and discipline problems.
Lee Loynes, national childcare manager for Boys Town, says the programme has been six years in the making with groundwork, research and capacity building starting back in 1996. The programme is an attempt to blunt the negative impact of modern society on the holistic development of children.
It’s also designed to help keep learners in mainstream schools instead of simply sending so-called ‘problem” children to more restrictive schools.
‘The reality is that classrooms are bigger and educators are less able to give individual attention to learners. We also have a situation where in most homes both parents work and they seldom have the time to pick up on behavioural problems that the children may have,” Loynes says.
The difficulty schools are experiencing in dealing with problem children is clear: ‘We are getting reports from schools and the Department of Education showing that there is a definite escalation of expulsions as a result of behavioural problems in children and this trend is very concerning,” says Loynes.
The programme’s pilot project was launched in the Western Cape and three schools from previously disadvantaged areas were chosen.
‘We chose schools where there was high absenteeism, low payments of school fees and where there was a record of disruptive classes and problems with things such as gangs,” says Loynes.
The two-day pilot course was given to 42 teachers from three primary schools who collectively oversee about 1 000 children. The Well Managed Classroom Programme gives educators the skills to instill a culture of learning and also a system of using encouraging language and communication techniques to reinforce positive behaviour, give motivation and give balanced feedback to learners.
‘Rather than being punished, a child should experience the consequences of what they’ve done to understand the lesson that should be learnt,” says Loynes.
Loynes says that, although the techniques of the programme sound simple, these skills are often absent in the day-to-day interaction between educators and learners.
The Well Managed Classroom is based on research conducted by the United States’ Boys Town of which the South African organisation is an affiliate.
‘We have used the basis of the research that takes into account the holistic development and needs of a child and adapted it to our own indigenous needs,” she says.
Early impressions of the programme are that it has given teachers better ways of coping with stress and helped them be more effective. In turn, learners have been given a clearer framework that helps them integrate better in mainstream schooling systems.
Bayar Laattoe, principal of Dryden Street Primary in Salt River in Cape Town, says, ‘We had taken a lot for granted, not realising that many children have no role models and that they don’t know social skills like greeting people or saying ‘thank you’.”
Laattoe says that since the school’s teachers went through the programme in September they have already benefited.
‘It’s quite a simple programme but it has been effective in bringing down the stress levels of our teachers and giving us a reminder on how to set the ground rules, introduce low tolerance of bad behaviour in the classroom and teaching children the consequences of their actions,” says Laattoe.
The programme has gained the support of education officials in the Western Cape who have now approached Boys Town to train a further 105 teachers in the next few months. The Gauteng Department of Education has also agreed to have Boys Town train teachers throughout 2003.
They also offer a three-day training course for principals and guidance teachers and a maintenance programme to ensure that the principles of the programme are effectively implemented.
For more information contact: Lee Loynes at
Tel: (021) 555 4270 or
(021) 689 5636