About Teaching Positive

The story of Teaching Positive started in 2009 when I was teaching first grade. Before the start of the school year I received a two day Positive Discipline training from Dr. Jody McVittie. I had never heard of the approach before then and when I left the training I believed that it was a highly idealistic and rather unrealistic way of thinking about teaching, learning, and parenting and was convinced that the approach simply wouldn't work with students. Due to my desire to respectfully "prove others wrong" I implemented Positive Discipline with complete fidelity. I was pleasantly surprised that after a few short weeks I saw a transformation in the culture of my classroom and then within three months I saw the significant impact the approach had on the students and myself. Since then the theory of Positive Discipline has come to life in hundreds of classrooms, school communities, homes and even in businesses. What we are noticing is that children are more intrinsically motivated, they are solving problems with their peers and nurturing deeper connections with their parents, and children, parents and teachers are using more effective and respectful communication. We are seeing teachers and parents embodying the very life skills and coping mechanisms they are desperately to teach children. 

Teaching Positive means no longer needing to use rewards or behavior charts to manipulate child behavior,  or use fear, shame or threats to get children to behave. In fact, we see that children, and adults, are showing their best selves when employing this approach. We are observing a higher level of self awareness and this has led to people thriving emotionally, socially and even spiritually on a new level. More so, we are seeing that when there is a partnership between the home and the school is in place an entirely new level of Teaching Positive comes to light. It is in the environment that is Teaching Positive where we begin to see the possibilities where we live in a world without that which ails our communities: racism, bigotry, social inequities, sexism, etc.  Teaching Positive is built on the foundation of Positive Discipline, where self advocacy means mutual respect. 

This approach  requires a complete paradigm shift that can take time to evolve. Teaching Positive and Living Positive requires a new way of thinking about everything we do as educators and parents: the curriculum we choose, the role we play in our children's lives as encouragement coaches, the choices we make with our free time, how we listen and speak to each other and the words we choose, the conversations we have with people struggling and how we "help" them to "help themselves", how we respond to people who are bullying or "acting out". It makes us rethink every decision we make and whether or not we are truly empowering and supporting a child's growth or are looking at our interactions with a new lens to see if we are in fact enabling someone because our lack of faith in them. Teaching Positive requires a person to reflect on their own coping strategies and revisit our interactions in a deep and meaningful way. Teaching Positive requires us to take responsibility for our mistakes and repair hurt with others. It also requires us to determine how we see ourselves in the world and to assess value we have in creating a community and a world built around empathy, compassion and creative solutions.

The Teaching Positive approach now embodies the philosophy, neuroscience, and education theories of Dr. Alfred Adler, Dr. Jane Nelsen, Dr. Daniel Siegel, John Dewey, Dr. Debra Stipek, Dr. Carol Dweck, and Dr. Daniel Goleman. Combined the approach strives to build the capacity of each individual to lead a path of individual authenticity with a social context of celebrating democratic values and multicultural diversity. 

Educational Background: 

Dr. Tammy Keces was the founding Head of School at Irvine Hebrew Day School, a Positive Discipline Lab School. IHDS is a high-achieving K-8 WASC accredited school, grounded in Positive Discipline. 

Tammy holds a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA, a M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction and a Clear California Multiple Subject Teaching Credential and Administrative Services Credential. Tammy received her doctorate in Educational Leadership from California State University, Fullerton. 

Tammy's dissertation titled "TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL COMPETENCIES AND SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING PRACTICES"  can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/5118036#.YtrrU-zMK8U

The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the perspectives of teachers' social-emotional competencies, the development of social-emotional competencies, and the practice and implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL). Structured interviews were conducted with ten teachers and four administrators at four different schools (public, private and charter). The teacher participants completed a social-emotional self-reflection tool in order to triangulate the data. The study findings suggested that teachers received insufficient SEL training and limited SEL modeling in their preservice program. Recommendations were made to enable teachers at various stages throughout their career to build social emotional competencies, such as self-regulation and modeling of SEL skills, so that they may teach them to their students. 

Tammy’s language arts curriculum is featured in “Positive Discipline in the School and Classroom” (4th edition) by Jane Nelsen and the “Problem Solving Wheel of Choice Program” also by Nelsen. Tammy was honored to write the forward to Positive Discipline Tools for Teachers. She is on the Advisory Board of the Orange County Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has presented Positive Discipline workshops at the California Charter School Association, Orange County Private School Association, New Mom School, Mom's of Multiples Group, Stowell Learning Center, Jewish Community Center and more. 

Tammy enjoys spending her free time with her family in her organic vegetable garden, cooking, playing board games or hanging out the beach with her husband Matthew and her three children Maya, Natasha and Colby (all proudly raised in a Positive Discipline home).