Monday Motivator #9 2017-18

This year Oak Park is implementing the RCD (Responsibility-Centered Discipline) model into school discipline as part of their Positive Behavior Support Framework and Universal Behavior Plan. I asked Chad Valadez to share an update on their work.  See below for more information:

Larry Thompson is partnering with Oak Park as a liaison, and presenter of the Give ‘em five technique.  The Oak Park staff has dove in, and is taking risks with this new way of thinking, and  positive results are surfacing.  Specifically, in the relationships between adults and students.  Listed below are some quotes from Larry on why RCD is needed, as well as a couple testimonials from OP staff. 

"If students are not held responsible to fix the problems they create, they will not see those problems as their own. A student who feels no weight of responsibility to change has no reason to come up with a solution" - Larry Thompson RCD presenter

Give ‘em five conversations:

These conversations are highly personalized, because educators decide what words they will use — and the themes do not need to be addressed in any particular order. The goal of “Give ‘em Five” is to help educators feel comfortable and natural while delivering a message of responsibility. The five themes are:

• Support

– Use supportive statements that connect to your relationship with the student or identify a strength that she possesses.

• Expectation

– Let the student know the expectation you have for him in the class.

• Breakdown

– Communicate where you see the expectation breaking down or failing to be met.

• Benefit

– Tell the student how meeting the expectation benefits her.

• Closure

– Determine whether the situation has been resolved or whether the conversation is at a place where you can feel comfortable moving on.

"The steps in this process can be taught to anyone with any skill level. It can be put into practice immediately, and we as teachers and staff began using it the very next day.  We even had teachers go home after the PD day with Larry and start to use the techniques with their own families.” - Oak Park Teacher

Tardy policy insights from Will Mayle:

We are beginning to see breakthroughs happening with many of our students. Just today alone, we called only 15 kids down to the office for tardiness. This is a low number to begin with. Most days are around 40 plus. In those 15 kids who had detentions scheduled due to being tardy to school or class, four had developed a plan and asked if they could reschedule and they gave reasons for needing the rescheduling. They even went a step further and had dates available that they could make up their detentions.

This is one of the ways that we have been coaching them. We ask them to open up mature dialogue with their teachers to find a solution and not throw up road blocks, such as “I can’t do that”. Own the problem and then develop a plan for changing the behavior. The process is showing gains with students of all ages. The students are beginning to see that adults are here as support, not always disciplinarians. 

By adults offering support and benefit for students during tough situations, and students owning their part of the conflict as well as developing a plan for change, we are starting to see less referrals.  More importantly we are not seeing the repeat offender for the same types of conflicts.

Chad Valadez and his team will be sharing more on this process at the Secondary Universal Behavior Training this week.  For more questions, please feel free to contact him or Dr. Christopher Sartain.

Thank you Oak Park for all your hard work in building this process with students and helping them make respectful and responsible choices!

Monday Motivator #8 2017-18

The Power of Why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb8KpHqU5tg

Monday Motivator #7 2017-18

The Big Fresh September 30, 2017 This Class

Brenda Power

https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view-print.php?id=2877 If you see something beautiful in someone, speak it.                                                           Ruthie Lindsey Before the students even walked through the door of my classroom, I had heard about this class. They were infamously disengaged and challenging learners. Teachers had been feeling it for years. Although I tried not to let what I had heard shade my perception, I have to admit I felt it too. That is why my jaw dropped when I was looking over the results of a statewide survey and noticed there was one area in which our school scored significantly lower than the state average—a difference of 20 points. Grit. The grit category asked students to use a Likert scale to convey how well they felt each statement described them. The statements included sentences such as I am a hard worker and I don’t give up easily. There it was in black and white. The feeling teachers had communicated about this group of students was represented in tidy little bar graphs. The hard data was just the mirror I needed to reflect my own ugly assumptions about this class. I did not like what I was seeing. The reality of this truth walloped me, and I knew I had to face it. The next day I projected the survey results for my eighth graders and explained what they were looking at. Then I had to ask, “So, what do you think? Does this really capture who you are?” “Yeah, that’s pretty much me. I am not really a hard worker.” The quiet voice came from the back of the room. A student who rarely spoke up and had perfected the art of work avoidance mumbled his agreement with the survey results. And all of a sudden, an image came to mind. The same student slumped down in his seat at the back of the room had participated in an open gym the previous week. For over an hour, I had watched this kid take challenging shots at the basketball hoop—shots I was sure he knew he was unlikely to make. Not once did he miss a shot and move into an easier position. He continued to push himself from long distances and tricky angles no matter the result. Giving up did not seem to even cross his mind. That took hard work, determination, and commitment. In other words, it took grit. “That’s not true,” I blurted out. I shared my open gym memory with the student. I explained how I disagreed that he was “not really a hard worker” because I had seen him work hard on the basketball court. A wide grin began to spread across his face. His shoulders straightened up a bit, and he was no longer looking at the floor. I was struck by the power my words had. It was like I was holding up a mirror and for the first time, this student liked what he saw. So did I. I stepped back and looked out at the classroom filled with students who deserved for me to project a more flattering reflection of them than the one I had been carrying. I made a silent pledge to be more careful about the messages I send to students about who they are. The stories we tell ourselves about students become the stories they tell themselves. Join me in honoring students by reflecting back to them all the good we see. This week we tackle a tough subject -- learning from failure. Plus more as always -- enjoy! Christy Rush-Levine Contributor, Choice Literacy Christy Rush-Levine has taught middle school language arts in a Chicago suburb for 14 years.  She blogs about her teaching life at Read Write Inspire and reviews books at Reading Beyond the Middle, a blog for her former students.

Monday Motivator #6

Many of us determined our 'One Word' for the year. Staley HS also did this as part of their Universal Behavior lessons to kick off September.  I know some of you also did this with your staff.
Now that it is almost the end of September, how are you doing with meeting the goal of your One Word?  On my drive home at the end of each week, I try to reflect on what I have accomplished related to my One Word so far.  Respond to this blog with other ideas you have done with staff and/or students!

Mr. Kooi sets the stage for the week of lessons related to their Portrait of a Graduate and One Word:
https://youtu.be/0qzwSqOL4i8

http://getoneword.com/category/success-stories/

Monday Motivator #5

Love the Kid President! You may have seen this before but a great one that shares tips on how to disagree respectfully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghk-nDJB3Tk

Have a wonderful, positive week!

Motivator #4 2017-18

Changing Two Words

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

Teachers can position children as competitors or collaborators, and themselves as referees, resources, or judges, or in many other arrangements. A teacher's choice of words, phrases, metaphors, and interaction sequences invokes and assumes these and other ways of being a self and of being together in the classroom.                                                                                                 Peter Johnston in Choice Words We think the words we choose are critical to creating a collaborative learning culture with students and colleagues. As coaches, we are always mindful of the words we choose and how they affect our colleagues. We find that how we say something is often more important than what we say. Here are two word choices that set us up to be collaborators rather than judges: "We" Versus "I" “I” and “me” statements are encouraged in consultation conversations. They are useful in certain situations to take ownership for our perspectives, feelings, or reflections. At other times, we find it more helpful to use “we” or “us” statements. When we use the collective “we” in reflections, planning, or feedback sessions, we are including ourselves in the conversation. The ideas discussed become valuable feedback for all teachers, not just one teacher. It sets a tone that each of us is learning and growing. When we include ourselves in the conversation, we model that we are all in this together and create a disposition of lifelong learning and striving toward mastery. "And" Versus "But" When as coaches, we share our observations of students and instruction, we can fall into the trap of being negative even when we mean to be positive. When we notice and name what we observe happening and follow it with the word “but,” it negates the recognition of the progress that has been made. When we follow that same information with the word “and,” it first recognizes and celebrates progress that has been made before we shift to next steps. The word “and” connects or includes the first part of the sentence rather than negating it in favor of the second part of the sentence. We find when we use “and” instead of “but,” it has a positive effect on the conversation and leads to a more collaborative, learning stance. These changes may seem small, but our choice of words has made a huge difference in the culture we create for professional learning.

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan have been working in the field of professional development for the past 16 years. They now run a private staff development business, Teachers for Teachers, working with varied school systems to implement best practices in the field of literacy and to engage in institutional change. They are the authors of Assessment in Perspective: Focusing on the Readers Behind the Numbers, available from Stenhouse Publishers.

https://leadliteracy.com/articles/373

Monday Motivator #3 2017-18

As Denee Noble launches her workshops for the beginning of the year, she is building a community of kindness in her class.  She has taught her students the importance of kindness and is helping them notice kindness in others. Each day, she gives out several kindness bracelets.  Students that receive them then notice someone else that was helpful or kind and give their bracelet to that student. She collects them at the end of the day and begins the process all over again the next day.

Xander got a bracelet at the beginning of the day, and then he explains why he gave his to a classmate.  https://youtu.be/BWJ7eIWgwAM

Mrs. Noble teaches second grade at Northview Elementary. Thank you, Mrs. Noble for setting such a positive tone to kick off the school year!  Looking forward to seeing how this evolves throughout the year!