Applying Positive Discipline and Creating Connections

By Dwi Utari Tamanbali, Child Protection Officer, UNICEF Papua Field Office

Tagime Village, Papua Province, September 2014 - It was a rainy afternoon when I arrived in Tagime village, Jayawijaya District, to meet with Frater Yakub Yikwa.

As I stand outside of fences that surround his large yard, I can hear laughing and cheering despite the noise of the rain. Inside I meet more than 30  potential village facilitators from Klasis Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia (GKII) Tagime, a Christian Church, who have come together to be trained on the Creating Connection Module which aims to build a safe and strong community.

Ending Violence in School - Positive Discipline training in Papua

By Devi Asmarani

A teacher supporting a student with learning in a classroom in Jayapura, Indonesia. A year after starting the Positive Discipline programme, the atmosphere in the classroom has changed completely. Students are not afraid of their teachers anymore. ©UNICEF Indonesia/2013/Esteve.

Fifth-grade teacher Darius Naki Sogho has been a teacher for 24 years, and for most of those years, he taught with an iron fist—and a rattan rod.

“I used to hit my students when I thought they were being bad, or when they weren’t paying attention,” he says.

Over the last year, however, Mr. Naki Sogho has been learning to contain his anger in class and to teach in a way that neither hurts nor intimidates his students.

He did this by applying the Positive Discipline approach, a method that he and a select group of teachers in the Indonesia province of Papua have been trained to adopt as part of a joint programme managed by UNICEF and the local government that aims to put an end to corporal punishment and other forms of violent behaviour in the classroom.