The Nature of Community

I have recently been reading a very interesting book -- Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam.  In this book, Putnam chronicles the decline of participation in community organizations during the past decades and raises the question of the impact of these changes on our society.  Reading this book makes me care even more strongly about the development and maintenance of community and the importance of placing community goals first in many instances.  This conflict frequently appears in schools, as, for example, in making placement decisions for students, when the best interests of the students as a whole may require a different decision that a parent would prefer for his/her child.  It also appears in discussions of budget, at all levels -- local, state, national -- when individual interests (for example, in lower taxes) may conflict with the needs of the community (for safety, for example).

As we all know, our country has a long tradition of individualism and a strong emphasis on individual freedom.  However, along with the emphasis on everyone's right to pursue happiness in his/her own way there has also been an equally strong tradition of cooperation and community.  (Think, for example, of the individual freedom of the "Wild West" coexisting with the cooperation and community of barn raisings, quilting bees, and sharing resources to survive a difficult winter.)  I think there is an important balance here, and I think that we need to consider that balance very carefully in making decisions.  Take, for example, charter schools.  Charter schools are very popular with many people, and many parents prize their ability to send their children to schools that they choose.  However, when charter schools, particularly in urban areas, end up enrolling primarily the children whose parents are motivated and involved, do not have learning disabilities, and whose first language is English, and when they eliminate from their student bodies students who have behavioral difficulties or who are unable to keep up with the pace, the children who are still enrolled in those charters may benefit from attending school with other motivated students without disabilities, but the public schools in those communities end up having the most difficult students to educate with fewer funds available to do it with.  Is that what's best for all of us, as a community?  Or is it an example of some people profiting at the expense of others? 

As everyone knows who knows me, I am a passionate advocate for public schools, for the American common school described in the works of Lawrence Cremin, and for the philosophy expressed so well by John Dewey, when he said, "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.  Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy."  I am currently very worried about the future of American public schools; I see our excellent public schools (which, in Massachusetts, lead the nation and compare favorably in international comparisons) in danger of being destroyed by short-sighted policies unsupported by evidence (for example, those required by the so-called "Race to the Top", and the increased emphasis on standardized testing to the exclusion of other measures of student achievement).

Getting back to Bowling Alone, I also think that we may need in general to think about moving our current individualism-community balance back a bit in favor of community in all areas, and to remember that we are all in this together.  If you read it, and/or if you read Diane Ravitch's recent book on the American school system, let me know what you think!

School Climate Update

At this point, we are moving into the third month of the school year, and I am happy to report that we seem to be making progress toward developing the kind of safe and accepting school climate that we want to have for our students.  We are using a multi-faceted approach, including work in Open Circle sessions, weekly school meetings, integration into curriculum, lunch and social group meetings, work with individual students, and work in partnership with parents.  Our weekly school meetings, first thing on Monday mornings, help to set the tone, and are designed to provide a positive beginning to the week.  (This coming Monday morning's meeting will feature a patriotic skit written and performed by three 5th grade girls -- it's wonderful, and I'm excited about including more student performances at school meeting!)

As you also know, we are working with students on specific ways of stopping teasing and bullying.  One approach is one which we refer to as "Step 1, Step 2."  Step 1 is a difficult, but very important, life skill -- being able to assertively and politely ask another person to change their behavior when their behavior is hurtful to you.  Doing this is even difficult for us as adults, but I am hopeful that if we work on it with our students they will be able to develop their communication skills in a way that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.  If Step 1 doesn't work, or if a student is unable to do it, we ask them to do Step 2, report the problem to an adult and ask for help -- again, I believe this is an important life skill.  Finally, along these lines, we are also talking with students about what they can do to help when they are bystanders, when they see someone doing something mean or hurtful to another person.  We have suggested three different actions that students can take in this situation: (1) tell the person to stop ("Step 1" for a bystander); (2) take the target out of the situation (for example, inviting the target to come with them to do something); and (3) report the situation to an adult (the bystander's "Step 2").  We are asking students not to simply watch and do nothing, but to take one of these three actions.

We are hopeful that parents will help and support us in this important work so that our school community will be safe and comfortable for every one of our students.  There are two essential ways that parents can help -- first, by modeling kind, courteous behavior themselves, and, second, by talking with their children when they see bullying by others (for example, in the media).  Children learn powerfully from their parents, particularly by watching parents' actions and behavior.  If parents consistently treat others kindly and comment negatively on examples of unkind behavior, children will learn kind behavior.  If, on the other hand, parents treat others unkindly, children will learn that behavior, or if children are continually exposed to the many examples of bullying behavior demonstrated by too many adults in our society (e.g., politicians, sports figures) without parents explaining why that behavior is not acceptable they will come to regard it as acceptable.

Thank you to all the many wonderful parents who are working with us to eliminate the problem of teasing and bullying and to create a community in which everyone is accepted and valued -- I believe that helping children grow into good, caring people is the most important work there is and I appreciate working with everyone in our community toward that goal.

School Opening Plans

Welcome back to a new school year!  I don't know about everyone else, but for me the beginning of the school year is the time for hopes, dreams, resolutions, and new beginnings.  It's a time to start afresh, with goals and plans.

At Neary, we have many new initiatives and plan for this year, and we hope it will be the best year yet for our students.  We will begin the year next Wednesday, September 1st, with a whole-school assembly, with music provided by the 5th grade band (!!! -- I know they'll be great!) and a welcome for all of our students.  On the first day, there will also be another assembly for each grade, as well as time for reminders of playground rules and time to play.

During the first week, our students should be coming away with two primary messages -- one about developing and implementing goals and plans, and another about treating each other respectfully -- and I'm hoping that parents will work with us as partners in helping students achieve both of these goals.

On the first day, our grade-level assemblies will feature Margot Rutledge, of KidsWin, speaking to students about goals and planning, and helping them to think about their own goals and how to "Make it happen!" Thinking about who they are, writing about their dreams and goals, and making plans to move forward toward those dreams and goals, can be wonderful for kids!  As they develop a sense of purpose, they also accomplish things, and then feel competent and proud of themselves.  This is the beginning of a solid sense of self and of purpose that will provide the foundation for our students to achieve.

On our second goal, helping students learn to treat each other respectfully, we will be emphasizing with students a two-step process, politely but assertively asking someone to stop a hurtful behavior, and telling an adult if the person does not stop.  This plan is intended to help students learn how to effectively assert themselves, provide feedback to those who need it on their behavior, and develop and maintain a safe, respectful atmosphere in our school.  Parents will be receiving a letter with more information during the first week of school, and we hope that you will join us in this work.

I am excited about these plans and about beginning a new year!  Here's to a great one for all of our students! 

Most People Do Include Others

I have written and spoken a fair amount this year about bullying -- as we all know, bullying is an important topic these days. I wanted to share with you, though, a letter I recently received from a student describing the ways in which most students work to be kind and to include others, as I think it gives us a good perspective and speaks well for what kids are learning. In the note, this student says:

"I know how you have been talking about including everyone and if you see someone bullying or excluding you should tell a teacher. I have seen the opposite. I am writing this note to tell you that I have seen kids including everyone and being nice to everyone. The other day I sat down at a table with only one of my other friends. My friend had to get her water bottle so I was sitting alone at a table while she went to go get her water bottle. When some people saw me sitting alone, they invited me to their table. There were around 5 people, both boys and girls, who invited me. I felt happy that people noticed that I was sitting by myself. Also the other day at recess I noticed a girl sitting alone on a bench. Then I saw a group of friends invite the girl to play with them. The girl smiled and told them that she was just waiting for her friend. I just wanted to tell you that I have seen kids being very friendly and including each other. Thank you for taking time to read my note and I hope you realized that most people do include.

As is often said, we all need to work together to make things work for everyone, and I am glad to share the positive side of things that can sometimes get missed in all the concerns -- as this student notes, most people do include others.

School Improvement Plan

This past week, the Neary School Council presented accomplishments from this school year, as well as our School Improvement Plan for next year, to the Southborough School Committee meeting. To present our plan, we used a glog, which is an interesting multimedia presentation tool. There are two websites for creating glogs -- the one for use by educators, which includes management tools for teachers such as the ability to create templates for use by their students and the ability to keep the glogs private, is found at www.edu.glogster.com. The following is a link to the glog that was used in last week's School Committee presentation: http://wordsmith23.edu.glogster.com/neary-sip1/

It was fun working on the glog, and I am very excited about all the wonderful things happening at Neary this year!

Bullying 24/7 (Cyberbullying)

I was thinking about kids and cyberbullying this afternoon. I had spent all day at a conference, and thus had not checked my email since early morning. As I was sitting down to log onto my email, I realized that I was feeling somewhat tense, because I was thinking about a couple of emails I had recently written where I was not sure how the recipient would react, and I was worried about that. This train of thought led me to thinking about kids and online activity, why cyberbullying is such a huge change for children, and why it can be so destructive for kids.

Models of Bullying?

Bullying, obviously, is a hot topic these days, and it certainly should be. No child should feel sad, afraid or unable to learn because of bullying behavior by others. Unfortunately, though, I think some of the proposed solutions are too simplistic, and I'm feeling discouraged about current efforts to solve the problem. In my view, bullying is a complex problem, and one that will take all of us working together to solve. Let's begin with models of bullying -- as a society, we provide kids with models of bullying 24/7. As Derrick Jackson noted in his Boston Globe column on February 2nd, 2010, with the trash talk by professional athletes, "we adults have made it almost impossible for adolescents to know when they cross the line." He points out, "We glorify loud athletes, handsomely pay barking talk show hosts and accepted Presidents Bush and Clinton taunting military, political, and media enemies." Talk shows, blogs, and commentary on newspaper websites are rife with personal attacks and put-downs. (I'm feeling discouraged about those conversations, too, these days. Reasonable people can certainly disagree, for example, on whether a new police car is needed, but I'd love to see everyone treat others with respect, avoiding personal attacks and expressing disagreement in a manner that demonstrates respect for the other person and for his/her opinions.) Advertising, both print and media, frequently contains some sort of put-down or meanness played for shock value or for laughs. Then, let's look at television shows and movies, which, again, use disrespect, put-downs, and meanness for shock value and for laughs. Finally, if one reads the news, much of it is reporting who said what about whom, and much of that is "mud-slinging" or blaming someone for something -- again, disrespect and put-downs. All in all, kids are provided daily with a wide variety of models of bullying.

Bread Baking!

This past week, we had what I thought was a wonderful event at Neary -- our 4th and 5th graders participated in the life skills bread baking program sponsored by King Arthur Flour. This past Thursday, King Arthur sent a representative to Neary, along with 700+ bags of flour, packages of yeast, dough scrapers, recipe books. . . all the materials the kids will need to bake two loaves of bread. During the assembly, the students learned how to make bread from scratch, as well as how to use bread dough to make breadsticks, pretzels, braided loaves, cinnamon rolls, and pizza crusts. The students were wonderful -- they listened attentively, and seemed to enjoy the program. Each student went home with a bag containing two 2-pound bags of flour, a package of yeast, a dough scraper, a recipe book, and a plastic bag, so that each student can make a loaf to share with his/her family, as well as a loaf to bring back to school and donate to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. What a wonderful project! I think this connects well with both the 5th grade study of colonial America and our whole-school commitment to community service and this year's partnership with the Southborough Food Pantry. I hope that students will not only learn something about the art of bread baking, but also enjoy sharing their new skills with their families and feel good about being able to donate something they made to help others. Thank you to 5th grade teacher Mr. Stubbart for organizing this program and making it happen for Neary students!

Race to Where?

By next week -- January 13th -- every school district in Massachusetts is being asked to sign and agree to a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the state pursuant to which each district promises to take certain actions, including, among other things, tying teachers' compensation to student performance on standardized testing. This project is part of Massachusetts' proposal to the federal government to obtain part of the federal funding for what is being called the "Race to the Top." (See the Massachusetts DESE website for more information -- www.doe.mass.edu)

In my view, the "Race to the Top" epitomizes everything that is wrong with the current wave of mandated "education reform." Now, please don't misunderstand me -- I am passionate about continuous improvement, and convinced that we can make all of our schools wonderful places of excellence and growth for our students. But I think there are two fundamental things wrong with current legislation relating to education -- the goals, and the methods for reaching those goals.