(14) Fighting a bully by wearing the same outfit every day (a lesson from a teacher in Rotterdam, N.Y.)

Updated 05/06/2013 07:40 PM

Teacher wears one outfit the entire year to fight bullying

By: Innae Park

READING

ROTTERDAM, N.Y. -- Faith Perry is an Alternative Education and ESL teacher at Mohonasen High. Her fashion choices over the past two years have also been considered alternative.

“I'm wearing the same outfit that I've worn since the first day of school,” she told YNN.

Since last spring, Perry has worn just two outfits to school.

“Last year, there was a young man in here who couldn't afford to buy a lot of clothes, so he would wear the same things often and one day, he was called a scumbag for wearing the same clothes two days in a row,” she explained. “And then I said, ‘Well, I'll wear this outfit for two weeks!’”

Two weeks turned into the rest of the school year or four months. The decision then carried into the 2012-2013 school year.

Perry calls it her ‘outfit against bullying.’

She said, “As a society, we judge people, whether it's what we wear, our race, our sexual orientation, any of those things, and there's no reason to be bullied for those things.”

Senior Nicholas Rapp laughed as he said, “I never even noticed about her clothes, to be honest.”

Perry has been teaching him for all four years of high school.

Rapp added, “I see a wonderful person. She's definitely wonderful no matter what she's wearing or how she looks.”

If you start seeing repeat outfits across the district, that’s because Perry’s initiative is moving beyond Room 36 and into other schools, including Pinewood Intermediate. Principal Deborah Kavanaugh heard of Perry’s decision.

“That's infectious for us. We want to follow that,” she exclaimed.

As a result, this week, she and several other faculty members will also be wearing the same outfit every single day. It’s all in an effort to keep sharing that same message of respect.

“We are who we are every day,” said Kavanaugh. “Even if we show up in the same outfit, that we're still the same people, we're hoping that kids will get that message too.”

As for whether other students would get on board, Rapp answered, “I would. I mean, maybe not as long as she [Perry] would.”

And that’s going to be for some time.

“I'm going to do it for the rest of my career,” Perry said. “Every year, I'm going to pick an outfit and that will be my stance for every year until bullying stops.”

SOURCE:  Your News Now

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DISCUSS

1) what procedure could you bring into your classroom to deal with bullies?

2)  How could you use this story in your classroom?

http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_stories/662886/teacher-wears-one-outfit-the-entire-year-to-fight-bullying/

White Session (10) What is in your principal's mind?

The reading for this week comes from one of your Principal's books.

Procedure
(1) Ask to borrow a book
(2) Ask your principal to suggest a chapter or a page to focus on.

Questions for discussion
What questions do you think your principal will ask you about the reading?
What questions are raised in the reading?

Red Session (9) Using Twitter in projects

How can we use social media in a project?

How can we meet the kids where they are?

How can we use what your students are using daily?


Here are two projects using Twitter.

READ and then CALL

Twitter Feed

Sample feed (actual feed of Navy Seal raid that killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1^st, 2011)ⁱ:

@ReallyVirtual

Sohaib Athar

Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

19 hours ago

Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/

19 hours ago

A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty:-S

19 hours ago

@mohcin all silent after the blast, but a friend heart it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too.

19 hours ago

Since taliban (probably) don’t have helicopters, and since they’re saying it was not “ours”, so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad

19 hours ago

and now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets :-/

17 hours ago

RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/

12 hours ago

I need to sleep, but Osama had to pick this day to die :-/

12 hours ago

Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.

11 hours ago

Synopsis

Sample Speech:

Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

@POTUS

Abraham Lincoln

4 scor & 7 yrs ago: nu nation,

all men =! Now civil war .

But! Not die in vain.

Gr8 task b4 us: Gvt of-by4-ppl

not perish frm earth!ⁱⁱ

Questions
1. What would have been the instructions that you could have used to guide students toward these results?
2.  What program or toy or TV show do your students watch or use?  How could you modify a lesson to include something from their lives in the lesson?

Yellow Session (8): Narratives (in addition to Grades)

Narratives (in addition to Grades)

When we teachers think about school and our responsibilities as teachers, we often look back at our experiences as studnets.   Teachers told us what they expected to see and they told us that they would grade our work.   In Germany the highest mark is "1" -- in some countries, the highest mark is a percent -- so 95 to 100 is the higher range ... 

In his chapter about assessment, Dennis Littky quotes a student:

"I am more than a letter in the alphabet."  

One way to build a conversation into the grading process is to use narratives.   In Littky's school, the teacher writes a two page letter for each student every 8 weeks.   In the letter, the teacher talks about the goals that the student had established, the progress that the student made and where the student might want to think about work in the next 8 weeks.   

after looking at the reading, please look at the questions and then contact the trainer.

The reading from Big Picture: p. 158

Evaluating students through narratives is very hard to do. And it’s very time-consuming. Narratives are hard because they force the teacher to understand a kid’s life. He or she has to think about how to describe the way the kid gets along with adults, the kid’s attitude toward learning, his work habits, and the gaps in skills and knowledge he needs to fill. Those are really hard things to describe. It’s also true that when you’re writing narratives every quarter, it can be tough to say something new about each kid every time. For example, you don’t want to say for 16 narratives in a row that the kid’s grown and she’s got “a great attitude.”

Narrative format is important here, because if it’s designed right, it forces the teacher to go deeper: for example, to define growth and describe what he or she means by “a great attitude.” Part of our Met narratives describes what the kid has actually done in terms of work, but the rest analyzes this work in terms of the school’s learning goals (see Chapter 5, page 103), the teacher’s individualized goals for the kid, the kid’s goals for himself or herself, and the family’s goals for the kid.

For Discussion

1.  What advantages would there be to you if you could give narratives in addition to a letter grade on student papers and other work by students?

2. How do teachers evaluate growth?

3. Do you remember a particular grade you received on a school assignment? Why do you remember it? What significance did it hold?

Purple Session (4): Projects and Portfolios

Projects and Portfolios.

In a simple definition, a project is work that the student chooses to do.  A collection of projects could form a portfolio that shows the work of the student.

The reading from Big Picture:  p. 114

 I started noticing how these kinds of real projects got kids engaged and really got them to learn the same stuff we were trying to teach them by locking them up inside a classroom. Have you ever watched kids work on planning and organizing a prom? Oh my gosh. At Thayer, the biggest “problem kids” in the school would work until midnight helping everybody, putting stuff up, and just getting things done. Intellectual kids or not-so-intellectual kids, they were there, and they were working harder than most of us had ever seen them work. It shows you that when some- thing is real and has meaning to people—wow! Think about driver’s ed., too. In school after school, I’ve seen kids who would regularly miss days and days of school somehow manage to make it in on days when there was driver training. The kind of learning going on in driver’s ed. or when plan- ning the prom is real, and it has consequences kids can feel.

For Discussion

1.  Why do so many students describe their educational experiences as boring?

2.  What advantages would there be to you if you could ask students to do a project instead of taking a test that you (the teacher) created?

Auburn Session (3) Personal Learning Plans

Session (3)

Personal Learning Plans

What is a Personal Learning Plan?

It is not an Individual Education Plan.  IEPs are generally for "exceptional students" who don't fit the "standard" program.  At least 80% of kids are in the standard program.  

The personal learning plan is more work initially for a teacher but saves time in the long run because students often end up doing work that interests them.   People who do interesting work are generally not behavior problems....

The reading from Big Picture:

when a teacher reads a student’s paper, she is not reading it to mark the student’s progress in relation to a predetermined set of activities and goals, but to actually figure out what those activities and goals should be for that student. When you say you want to get rid of grades, some people think you want to get rid of standards altogether. It’s the exact opposite. Using narratives really forces schools to look more closely at each student’s accomplishments and gaps. The standards are determined in a really personalized way by developing an individualized learning plan, with goals and indicators of achievement for each student. Then it’s a matter of evaluating that student in a real-world way: assessing the stu- dent’s progress as it compares to what he or she will need in order to succeed in college and in life. When you think about it, you can’t hold students to any standard higher than that.

For Discussion

1. Are there any situations in life where “one size fits all”?

2. Tell about a time where something you learned motivated you to learn more. What implications does this have for education?

3.  Tell about a time when you were in school and your learning matched your interests. How was that experience different from times when your learning didn’t match what you were interested in?

4. What do we have to unlearn about traditional schooling so that we can educate one student at a time?

5. What changes would have to happen to make a truly personalized school possible? Where would you begin?

Orange Session (2) Advisories

Session (2)
Advisories

People who use the advisory system believe that a school is more than just academics.  

An advisory is defined in Dennis Littky's book as follows:  "the entire school is divided into advisories of small groups of kids (I like 14) and one adult who stay together much of the day through all four years."

What happens in an advisory?

Dennis Littky says, "Spending my mornings with those kids just talking about their lives and their learning was the best part of my day. It was the most significant way I was able to use my time to get at the heart of what my role as principal was and how I could best support my staff and students."

1. an advisory system increases the range and kinds of communication among students and staff, and by spreading out the counseling function, makes problems more manageable and better solu- tions easier to come by. 

2.  an advisory system includes an adult advisor who becomes that one true advocate every student (and every student’s family) deserves.  There is one adult in the school who really knows the kid as a person and as a learner.  The advisor can make sure that all the other school structures are meeting that kid’s personal and educational needs. 

3.  With an advisory system, parents know exactly who can tell them how their kid is doing; they don’t have to chase down six or eight different teachers, each of whom only knows a small part of the big picture of their child’s education. 

What are objections to the advisory system?

Some teachers see a zero-sum situation.  Time spent in advisories takes away from academic time.

Here's a response by a student at Littky's school:  “No time to talk with kids!? Isn’t that the main thing about being a teacher?”

Please read the excerpt from Big Picture and think about the questions.

The reading from Big Picture:

page 61-62

The Advisory System

I used to think that creating an advisory system was the core of my vision for changing the way schools are structured. I now see there are a number of critical things that must be in place if we’re really committed to creating effective learning environments for kids (see this entire book). But I am still committed to the idea that an advisory system is the best structure to improve a school’s atmosphere and culture and make an already small school feel even smaller and more personalized.

George Wood talked about advisories in his piece on Thayer in Schools That Work. Here’s an excerpt I love:

Don Weisberger, a special education teacher at Thayer, describes the system’s effect this way: “Advisory in one word is communication. It makes the school smaller. . . . [Students] know someone’s there for them, they are not getting lost among all the other students. . . . In advisory we don’t talk at kids, we talk with kids.”

There are many variations on the advisory system, from the way we did it at Shoreham-Wading River, where kids met with the same small group of students and adult every morning to “check in,” to the way we do it at The Met, where the entire school is divided into advisories of small groups of kids (I like 14) and one adult who stay together much of the day through all four years. I know that the way we do things at The Met is unique and may not be possible in all schools. But I also know that setting up a system where students have a consistent environment where they are able to truly connect with a small group of kids and one adult can radically change their entire schooling experience. It was a shy and awkward but very bright kid who told a visitor to The Met, “I have 14 friends here. At my old school I wouldn’t have had any.” That was his advisory. An incredibly strong community of 15.

For Discussion

1.  What advantages would there be to you if you could work as a teacher who has an advisory?

Introduction: Professional Development for Teachers

Let's start with these observations:

(1) Many teachers don't appear to have time for training during a busy week.

(2)  Training sessions in many schoools are usually given every 90 days.

(3)  Don't we learn better "a little each day"? 

(4)  Many teachers go to a training session and receive a large 3-ring binder.  That binder remains unopened on a shelf ... six, ten, even 12 months later.

(5)  We tend to learn what we want to learn.  
Procedure:  Select a reading that you want to read.  You don't need to complete the sessions in order.  There is no need to study these questions in the order set up.  That's why each session has a color as well as a number.


This blog is a place to find items for on-going professional development.  "Take the session when you are ready."
Please add to the collection by suggesting topics that you want to talk about or articles that you want to discuss.

Procedures:  Read and Call

1.  teacher reads a short article

2.  teacher thinks about "How could I change my procedures in my class to apply this information?"

"What will students do differently if I apply this new information?"

3.  teacher calls me and tells me what was learned and discusses how to apply the information.

4.  I listen and ask some questions and we agree on a time when the teacher will take photos or videos before and after (showing with and without the new procedure).

5.  I follow up with the teacher 2, 7, 14, 30 and 90 days to check to see how the new procedure is being used. ... 

This series of training sessions is 
a) free:  volunteers designed these materials.
b) available with videos with feedback 
c) flexible:  you can read the article and make your comments when you want to.


Send your comments and questions to:  TheEbookman@gmail.com
(954) 646 8246 mobile

Professional Development  one person at a time...  

on the side

one on one

how to change the behavior

getting into intuitive beliefs

...creating lifelong learners..

This series of sessions is dedicated to the parents and children of River Cities Charter School.

The time spent by the trainers and the teachers will benefit them, but ultimately, the benefits will come to your children.