About Teaching Positive

The story of Teaching Positive started in 2009 when I was teaching first grade and looking for strategies to help with the challenges with my students and own children. 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 learning prosocial self-advocacy, 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 positiven 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 has a wide range of educational experiencing including the principal of a high performing public school, the founding Head of School at a K-6 graden Positive Discipline Lab School. She has provided consulting services to UCI School of Educatio in the MAT program and was also a lecturer and supervisor in the MAT program. 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.