Week 5

Happy National Coloring Day

September 18 - 6th grade staff meeting
September 19 - 5th grade staff meeting
September 19 - PLC Team Meetings
September 20 - 4th grade staff meeting
September 20 - Air Evac Sign Ups
September 21 - Staff Tailgate Party @ Fellowship Christian Church

September 24 - Collaboration Day
September 27 - STUCO Trip to Potosi

October 2 - Math Counts begins for 4th grade
October 3 - PLC Team Meetings

October 12 - End of First Quarter

October 15-23 - Book Fair
October 16 - Begin Balanced Literacy Training

October 23 - Parent-Teacher Conferences
October 24 - PBS Site Visit
October 25 - Collaboration Day
October 26 - No School

September 24 is our next Collaboration Day. This time around, we will be doing some vertical teaming with our friend at Junior High. The day will start with a hot breakfast provided by Chartwells in the Junior High cafeteria. Breakfast will begin around 7:00. Meetings will begin around 8:00 and we will probably start with one of those super fun ice breaker activities that I know you all secretly love, but publicly complain about.

Candace will let us know the location of each meeting and we are sharing a folder with documents/agendas for you to add things to for discussion. The folder can be found here. Feel free to add items to the agendas or drop things into the folder to discuss.

As always, lunch will be at 11:00 and we will meet back in our building for the afternoon session. The afternoon starts at 12:00 and we will go straight to our team meetings. Agendas for our team meetings will be forthcoming after we meet next Wednesday.

We will not need paras for this day. If you have a para that wants to work, they can work in your classroom that day

Don't forget to schedule a time to meet with me about your growth plan. These are all due by October 1 and between getting in classrooms and PLC meetings, it will be hard for me to squeeze you in if you wait too long.

I get an email every week called the Marshall Memo. It is filled with snippets from articles on various subjects. I thought this article on discipline was interesting;

Common Problems with Discipline Consequences

(Originally titled “Getting Consistent with Consequences”)

            “Few topics cause as much angst in schools as consequences for problematic behavior,” says teacher/author/consultant Mike Anderson in this Educational Leadership article. Anderson believes these are the reasons:

            • “Consequences” having different meanings. There are three types: (a) natural consequences – a student doesn’t wear a coat outside for recess and gets cold; (b) logical consequences – a student is getting silly working with a friend and is asked to work alone (ideally, logical consequences are related to the behavior, respectful of the student, reasonable, and not a surprise because the policy was clear in advance); and (c) punishments – a student is playing with base-10 blocks instead of solving math problems and is told by the teacher to move her clip down on the behavior chart (punishments are often harsh, involve shaming students, and do not have a good track record for improving behavior). Anderson believes natural and logical consequences are far more effective than punishments, and suggests that educators generate a list of unwise choices students make and think through what kinds of consequences are most effective, while working to avoid the use of punishments.

            • Differing belief systems – A teacher sends a misbehaving student to the office and the student is returned a while later, calm and smiling. The teacher, who wanted the student to be punished and shamed, feels unsupported: “I send them out of the room and nothing happens!” The principal, seeing her job as calming the student down so he can reengage with learning, feels unappreciated: “I helped get an out-of-control kid back in control, and the teacher isn’t satisfied!”

            Anderson says school staffs need to agree on a few shared positive beliefs about children and discipline – for example, All students need caring adults in their lives. All students want to be a positive member of a community. All kids want to do well. Staff members might privately brainstorm their own list of positive values, then talk in pairs and come to consensus, then repeat the process in groups of four, again in larger groups, until the whole staff has a common set of shared positive beliefs. When discipline problems arise, they could always ask, “Are we acting in ways that are consistent with our positive beliefs?”

            • Wanting consequences to “work” but being unclear about what that means – Stopping misbehavior in the moment? Getting students back on track? Teaching students a lesson (if you drop your pretzels on the floor, you have to clean up the mess)? Teaching students missing skills (like how to calm oneself after a meltdown)? Anderson suggests that educators create and post a list of consequences that help manage student behavior in the moment (like having a student who is running in the hall go back and walk) and interventions that teach positive behavior and support long-term skill growth (like collaboratively creating rules and norms).

            • Missing the sweet spot – Adults who don’t set clear limits make students feel unsafe, inviting some to push the limits. But overly harsh, punitive adults spark fear, resentment, and acting out. “Both permissive and punishment-heavy cultures put students, especially those already on the edge, in a place where it’s almost impossible for them to learn well,” says Anderson. He suggests that faculties brainstorm scenarios that feel permissive and those that feel too harsh and work to define the Goldilocks level where students “aren’t necessarily happy when they experience consequences, but they aren’t devastated.”

            • Losing control – There are plenty of times when educators experience frustration, anger, fear, even want revenge. But the last thing students need is adults blowing their tops, especially kids who have experienced trauma outside school. “Our students need us to be strong enough to react with reason, not emotion,” says Anderson. “They need to see what it looks like when mature adults respond to frustration in calm, respectful ways. And they need to be treated with dignity and respect, especially when they’re in a crisis.” Role-playing discipline scenarios is helpful; so is compiling a personal list of self-calming strategies.

            • Not seeing the big picture – “Without relationships, everything else falls apart,” says Anderson. Relationships should be at the center of discipline, with all other strategies seen as tangents. Rather than asking, “What’s the consequence that will fix this problem?” better to ask, “Is there a consequence that might be part of how we help this student?” This approach is especially important for the most vulnerable students; students with the most chaos and trauma in their lives – those who make us angriest – are the least likely to benefit from harsh punishments. Anderson suggests making a visual map with relationships at the center and other strategies and consequences radiating outward.

“Getting Consistent with Consequences” by Mike Anderson in Educational Leadership, September 2018 (Vol. 76, #1, p. 26-33), https://bit.ly/2O4Wqmb; Anderson can be reached at mike@leadinggreatlearning.com.