Tools Not Rules®

Developing Self-Regulation for Improved Student Behavior in Grades K–8

Engage your students in monitoring, understanding, and improving their behavior using the Tools Not Rules® (TNR) approach. By limiting isolation, shame, and judgment from the choices students make, this approach allows students to honestly assess and effectively regulate their behaviors. With helpful strategies and thoughtful language, teachers using TNR can create a welcoming and encouraging environment for students to learn, improve, and excel.

Benefits

• Promote a healthy educator mindset that recognizes students are more than the choices they make.
• Increase positive connections with students by helping them diminish behaviors getting in the way of academic success.
• Develop an effective and reliable plan for working with behaviors that hinder student learning.
• Encourage honesty to develop students’ accountability regarding their behavior choices.
• Employ diverse strategies to promote students’ behavior awareness and self-regulation.
• Improve the classroom community and learning environment through the use of a novel approach to changing whole-class and individual student behavior.
• Adopt thoughtful language that facilitates constructive self-assessment and improvement.
• Build an empathetic community among students, recognizing that everyone can choose unproductive behaviors and then change to more effective ones.