Conditioning applied to the hormonally challenged

It seems there are limitless ways according to the book to condition students and children to behave and act like human beings. Positive reinforcement, Negative reinforcement, Various types of punishment, and Extinction. Also a few techniques that go hand in hand with these and help ensure the effects are long standing and permanent, such as Spontaneous Recovery, Generalization Discrimination and Shaping.
For me Most of these weren't used, it seems to me Positive and negative reinforcement, and outright punishment were more likely to be used than any of the rest. Extinction certainly never occurred I guess because I was able to push my parents buttons so well, and something that rational was nearly always out of reach. I feel like sports really kept me going and my love for it and the rules about eligibility kept me in my shoes most of the time. This would basically mean the school used negative reinforcement to keep me in line. My positive reinforcement came from parents, teachers and coaches who encouraged me by pointing out the positive things I was able to accomplish through hard work.
I'm using this blog to basically keep track of the things we are covering, since we don't have an actually classroom this helps me "take notes" in an easy way so I can review later on in the semester.
My Edu blog is slacking this week so I read back over some of the things he has put up in the past. Fact is I got part of the headline for this blog from his site. He refers to the middle school kids in his class as "Hormonally Challenged" which I think is very apt and telling.

It was interesting this week in the blogs to see the examples of conditioning people came up with. Because my own conditioning was rather limited in scope, and some of the concepts are confusing, it was great to read the examples and be able to put them in context because I feel like the text was rather lacking in examples this week.

I think I showed how PR and NR were used in my own life already so I'll say this about my own classroom. I plan to coach, hopefully baseball and football. In the event that these things don't happen I hope to have a good relationship with the coaches and other extra-curricular activity coaches/teachers, so that instead of referring to the principal or sending kids to detention, which I feel rarely works, at least it didn't for me. I'll refer behavioral problems or academic problems to these coaches. Most kids have at least one thing they love "outside" of school, For me there was nothing more motivating than having a coach come to me and say we need to talk about your grades. Or for them come to me and say Mr. ****** said you were acting up, we'll make sure you don't have the energy for that tomorrow. I also plan to encourage and reward good behavior and effort, not just grades. Many kids don't get the support they need to reach their full potential, I know it is Utopian to think I can reach every child, but I can hope to help them believe in themselves and encourage them to put in the time and effort, which breeds my my own modus operandi "Personal Responsibility". If I can't teach anything else, this will be the major life lesson I hope to pass on.