Teaching Kids to Give Themselves a Timeout

When Cara Bernal read a story to her kindergarten class on a recent winter day, she ignored a crying girl, another one wandering around the room and a boy laying his head down on his desk. Instead, she called attention to the one student who was on task, as she has been trained to do by psychologists. "Randy is looking at the story," said Ms. Bernal, a longtime teacher at the League School in Brooklyn.

When the other students behave as she wants, she praises their conduct as well. "Good raising your hand," she said when one boy stopped tapping her on the shoulder and instead returned to his chair to get her attention. Such "active ignoring" and other techniques Ms. Bernal uses are part of a treatment known as teacher-child interaction therapy. Its goal is to improve educators' ability to reduce disruptive classroom behaviors so that they can focus on teaching. more