About
NADINE BLOCK has worked as a teacher, school psychologist and consultant to education and mental health organizations. She founded a non-profit organization, the Center for Effective Discipline, in l987 and served as its executive director until she retired in 2010. The organization was taken on at that time by the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University.
The Center for Effective Discipline was dedicated to ending corporal punishment of children through education and legal reform. For three decades, Nadine developed policies and fought for legislation banning corporal punishment of children in schools at state and national levels. In l998, she initiated SpankOut Day April 30th to provide information about the effects of corporal punishment of children and alternatives to its use. The Center for Effective Discipline provided hundreds of small grants to non-profits throughout the U.S. for education programs on that date to create awareness of the effects of corporal punishment of children and to provide discipline alternatives to parents and teachers. It was widely observed for several years in the U.S. and was adopted in other countries, sometimes as “No Hitting Day,” or “No Smacking Day.”
Nadine coordinated a coalition of 50 Ohio organizations which began seeking a ban in the Ohio Legislature in l984. The ban was finally achieved in 2009. Ohio became the 30th state to ban its use in public schools. Her commitment to ending all corporal punishment of children stems from her firm belief that children are entitled to the same freedom that all other citizens enjoy, to be free from physical assault.
Nadine continues to support ending corporal punishment of children though writing and personal contacts. She has since published books, This Hurts Me More Than It Hurts You: In Words and Pictures Children Share How Spanking Hurts and What to Do Instead (2011) and Breaking the Paddle: Ending School Corporal Punishment (2013). Nadine published Remembering Rosie, a memoir of growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm in the 1950’s (Page Publishing), in December 2020. It can be purchased at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Google Play.
Nadine began studying painting in her retirement and has exhibited her acrylic and oil paintings in Central Ohio.