Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [530]
The Branch, like the Cloud, can also be applied by children with diverse problems and in developmentally appropriate ways as a methodology to improve their relationships with others and by that improve their everyday lives. One of the first teachers taking a TOC seminar was Florida English teacher Belinda Small, who discovered that the Branch could very simply enable students to self-regulate their behaviors. She demonstrated that, when children can identify for themselves the cause-and-effect relationships between actions and consequences that affect them negatively, they are much more likely to take corrective actions on their own and even to establish different behavior patterns that lead to positive, rather than negative, outcomes.
FIGURE 26-8 Differentiating instruction with the Logic Branch. (Source: Marilyn Garcia, used with permission.)
Small writes, “Shortly after I was trained in TOC, I began to adapt one of the thinking methods (the negative branch) to get students to write down for themselves the consequences of their actions. The application was so effective with my 7th grade that soon all the teachers on my team began to send their disruptive students to me rather than the office because the process I was using is so effective! The amazing thing is that the students actually fix their own problems. All I do is get them to use the process. I think the students can write this so easily because they have experienced the chain of events. In this way, they are also developing a skill—cause and effect—which is sometimes otherwise difficult to teach. Using this method they can develop the skill by building—“scaffolding”—on prior knowledge rather than having to learn it as an independent skill.”
In describing the circumstances of a case study depicted in Fig. 26-9, Small writes, “In one situation, when a student had been making disruptive noises in another teacher’s class, she asked for my help. The TOC Thinking Processes enabled this problematic student to think for himself the cause and effect outcomes of his actions. Although I did the initial writing of his words, at one point I had to leave to attend to my own class (obvious in the graphic). Nevertheless, this normally very disruptive student picked up the pencil—and the responsibility—and continued in his own words and graphics. We discussed what he could do to prevent the final outcomes and he wrote down some suggestions that were not new ideas. What was new in this case was that this time they were his ideas.”
FIGURE 26-9 Using the Logic Branch with disruptive students. (Source: Belinda Small and TOCfE, used with permission.)
“The results? Although this student had been sent to the principal’s office 40 times in the previous 6 weeks, after this experience with TOC, he completed the rest of the school year (6 months) without a repeat offense with this teacher.”19
Holly Hoover of Virginia similarly quantified outcomes. “Of all my students who completed their negative [logic] branches on being tardy to class, none have been late again. 100% success! I like those odds! Not only do they see the consequences of their behavior from all angles (and where the behavior can lead to down the road) they also actually seem to like the assignment. Because of this, and the fact that it is not ‘writing sentences,’ the traditional assignment, the negative branches are always a ‘positive’ experience.”20 Indeed, many teachers have students write the positive results of desirable actions, such as doing homework, so that they can identify and take ownership of responsible choices that lead to positive outcomes