Area educators and would-be teachers learned a lesson this weekend when dealing with discipline problems in the classroom.

Ohio University education majors, professors, local teachers and community members had the opportunity Friday and Saturday to participate in the Institute for Democracy in Education's annual conference, "Transforming Ourselves and Our Classrooms for the 21st Century," held in McCracken Hall.

The conference was organized by Jaylynne Hutchinson, assistant professor of cultural studies in education and co-director of the Democracy in Education Institute.

Keynote speaker Ron Butchart, teacher-educator at the University of Washington, Tacoma, spoke Saturday about the importance of classroom discipline in a democratic setting.

Butchart said there is no "best way" to achieving classroom discipline because all communities are different.

Three reasons motivated him to pursue his study of classroom discipline, he said.

Having taught high school without any discipline problems in his classroom, Butchart said he realized how few teacher-educators actually think about classroom discipline.

A second reason for his interest arose when Butchart began working with teacher interns and seeing their fear of classroom discipline problems, he said.

"I saw increasing anxiety with interns coming to me, not asking 'how do I teach, but how do I keep the kids from tearing the classroom and each other to pieces,'" he said.

Butchart said his third reason was an interest in the history of classroom practices. He said teachers in the past did not talk or write about discipline.

"We need to teach rather than punish, and we moved beyond that," he said. "We no longer let teachers hit physically, but we hit in other ways."

Teachers should rethink their definition of discipline as punishment, he said.

According to Butchart, some progressive educators live by the philosophy that teaching well will resolve any problems, and therefore pay no attention to discipline.

Schools also have been using bribery to keep behavioral problems under control and focusing on an academic curriculum instead of a disciplined one, Butchart said.

Travis Abbott, a junior education major, said Butchart brought up many good points throughout his speech.

"It is something we really don't hear about how to do," Abbott said. "We hear a lot of philosophy but nothing is really set in stone."