Becky A. Bailey

The individual lessons from Dr. Bailey's Conscious Discipline aren't new ideas, far from it, but she brings everything together in a way that feels groundbreaking. And she does it with an empathetic understanding of all the other challenges teachers face every day.

If I were to summarize, Conscious Discipline is a method of helping children navigate the difficult social scenarios they frequently encounter. Typically, but not always, these children are under other stresses due to their environment or just everyday growing up stuff. The concept applies to all kids but it's especially necessary for those whose environments are less stable. As for the method itself, imagine dialing down the immediate right/wrong consequences of an action and instead creating a safe environment for the children to workshop their mistakes. It's like the teacher is given the ability to pause an incident, rewind, and run it again at 50% speed like a tape in order to discuss how and where things went wrong. This is easier said than done of course. It expects extraordinary patience on the part of the educator and clear execution during the most difficult moments.

The only downside for the book itself is its lack of brevity. But that's more of a problem of educational books in general and how they're marketed. Methodologies like Conscious Discipline are designed for conferences and seminars. They tend to be structured as workbooks, contain lots of repetition and are generally wordier. They're also starting points for longer term consultations.… (mer)