Making Our Schools Peaceful, Positive Places

Midway through our first year at Seth Boyden, the school lost its principal, the second or third turnover at the top in several years.

The general feeling then was that the school was in crisis: several classrooms
were so unruly substitutes refused to teach in them. At the end of the year,
many families who were able to pulled their children from the school; after some
soul-searching and some conversations with parents who were staying, we decided to stick it out.

And we are so happy we did.

That September, Seth Boyden got a new principal; he had the kids practice walking silently through the halls; he had music piped in there as well, a reminder that halls are for walking and listening, not talking.

The school instituted a program that awarded the class that moved through the halls with the least amount of bother and fuss. The principal laid down clear standards of behavior. A few years later, he instituted ICARE (integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, empathy), a program that builds positive behavior into the curriculum. There’s even a fifth grade class that does an entire play about good behavior.

That is not to say there are no discipline problems at Seth Boyden, nor that it is perfect. It is full of exuberant children after all. But it is a wonderful school to visit. The halls are quiet; classrooms are too. Students are almost unfailingly polite. They open doors, hold them and greet you, often by name. Kids are taught right away that they are responsible for their behavior; and it can’t be allowed to interfere with the class or their classmates.

In my son’s kindergarten class, if a child misbehaves, he is told to take his frog from the pond and pin it on the back of his chair, a calamitous event, since, if he ends the day with his frog out of the pond, he doesn’t get a stamp and he needs stamps to get surprises from the teacher’s box of toys.

And as far as I can tell, this focus on responsibility takes place across the school. It’s not a coincidence. The teachers are tight. There’s a great deal of cooperation between teachers and within grades. On the 100^th day of school, my son trouped from kindergarten class to kindergarten class, through a series of special activities coordinated by all of those teachers. This sense of community, of collegiality, not only improves the atmosphere, it improves the teaching.  Teachers learn from each other and lean on each other; they discuss what works and what doesn’t.

I know there are other schools in the district with similar philosophies and approaches. But peaceful, responsible behavior doesn’t happen every day, in every school. And parents and teachers worry about it. One of the things I’ve heard the most as I’ve talked with parents during the election season, is their concern that heterogeneously grouping students at the middle school will lead to more disruptive classrooms. I don’t happen to agree, and the information the district has amassed doesn’t support that theory. As I’ve said, good behavior is really about expectation and responsibility, and those will be enhanced with the middle school transformation. After all, all of our elementary schools, including Seth Boyden, have heterogeneous classrooms.

But the more important point is that making schools peaceful, positive places is not about academic groupings at all; it’s about the structure and culture in place there. My sense of it is that discipline is a problem in some schools because we need to work more on making both the teachers and the students feel respected and valued.

So how do we get there?

Well, first we have to get all of our principals to become the learning leaders they are supposed to be. They set the tone of collegiality and camaraderie. They have to encourage teachers to lean on them, and on each other, to trade ideas; and teachers need to feel that principals have their backs.  Principals need to take ownership of the hallways, and make them the peaceful, respectful, quiet places they should be. This is especially true at Columbia, where we need more respect all around.

And more teachers need more strategies for controlling their classrooms. There are lots of solid, research-based programs out there, for middle and high schools as well as elementary schools. They may not have the neat slogans, but they have plenty of value. We need to make sure our schools, especially our middle and high schools, make good use of the research that’s been done and the programs that are available. Teachers should never feel alone in this struggle.

Next week, I’ll talk about excellence. Until then, I hope you’ll visit our websites,  http://payne-parrishandswanson.org
and http://amyhiger.org for more information on these topics. Don’t forget, the
school election is April 17 when polls are open from 2-9 p.m. If you have
questions, please e-mail me at tiaswanson9@hotmail.com;
I’ll try to answer!