102 Review, Issue 2017-2-12: Respect for All (and Making Sure It Happens)
FEBRUARY 12, 2017 BY PGEBHARDT
“Ultimately, this report concludes that Wisconsin must honor its commitment to make a public education available to all of its students, but must not do so at the expense of the vast majority of pupils who do not engage in disruptive behaviors. Similarly, teachers must be supported and allowed to teach in an environment where their focus can be on student learning, not discipline.”
-Mike Ford, The Impact of Disruptive Students in Wisconsin Public Schools
There was a fantastic study two weeks ago I could no longer find, but the gist of it is simple: children learn how to behave mostly from the way their peers do, and not how the teachers and parents teach them.
When the majority of their classmates respect one another, children reliably learn how to do so. Conversely, when they observe classmates exhibiting disrespectful behaviors, the likelihood of them misbehaving increases.
Unfortunately, children who misbehave draw them most attention, and thus have the most impact. That’s why one hardworking student can never improve the behavior of 29 other students, but one unchecked misbehaving student can absolutely torpedo his/her entire grade.
The solution, obviously, is for educators to check their idealism and pragmatically remove the persistently misbehaving student from the general population. (This is all researched-based, by the way.) So this Respect for All week (thank you for planning, Ms. Babakitis!), I urge all of us to identify the most-pressing behavior issues still persisting in each grade and let your APs know. The School Climate Team will have a mid-year review of our most critical “cases” this Friday and we’ll escalate our responses accordingly.
HIGHLIGHTS
Ms. Meenan, Ms. Danielski, Ms. Wyckoff, Ms. Monteleone, Ms. Listl, and Ms. Mercado, and Ms. Lee. To watch you expertly attend to explosive misbehaviors as you teach brings back memories of my mother wrangling with her own Hurricane William. Thank you, and your persistence is absolutely vital to the ones who need it most.
THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
INQUIRY SHOWCASE
AIS, School Events, and TechFlex: You’re Up. All staff please be ready to learn in the auditorium by 3PM.
OPERATION THANK YOU: I’ve heard that the Chancellor’s office were delighted by our Operation Thank You videos. Please upload them here; I’m creating a web gallery and we would like to share all of our photos and videos.
6TH GRADE TEACHERS: Effectively immediately, please direct all 6th grade students to use only the stairway by Ms. Mulé and Ms. Mintien’s office to and from lunch.
DISCRETIONARY SPENDING SEASON: I’ve been meeting with grade teams to determine how best to spend some of our discretionary budget. Instead of allocating funds to each teacher to make little purchases here and there, we’re aiming to be more intentional this time around with our Spring spending. Whether it’s furniture for the School Climate Team, per-session for planning, Whatever the Cohen’s need, TC books, chromebooks, or the Zecca’s Wish(es) foundation, we will take care of it because we are committed to removing as many obstacles from your work as possible. Help me help you. Go ahead, say, “Show me the_________” and I’ll do my best to oblige.
mrkobot.com 