Students at the High School of Language and Innovation collaborating in science class.
The first week of school, I learned that most of my students didn’t know the word “integrity.”
As a tone setter, my assistant principals and I visited classes and did a presentation around our core values: integrity, perseverance, respect, and responsibility. We’re using a new approach, Responsibility Centered Discipline (RCD). In RCD, we coach kids to make choices that embody these core values, rather than simply reminding them of rules. An RCD conversation would go like this: “Jaime, I love when you participate in this class because you have a great sense of humor. Your participation makes a difference. When you stopped doing your work and put your head down, you weren’t showing perseverance. If you can keep showing perseverance and never give up, you’ll not only learn, but you’ll be a role model and leader for your classmates. What can you do when you get frustrated with the work and want to put your head down?” Continue reading
I cannot imagine a quiet high school cafeteria. Our cafeteria is noisy and chatty. We’ve managed to (generally) keep kids in their cafeteria seats, but we do not even attempt to contain their enthusiasm, their loud conversations, laughter, exuberant calls to each other, the release of seeing each other socially for 45 minutes a day.
I walked into a 9th grade art class the other day simply because it looked beautiful. Little tangles of red, teal, yellow, orange, and blue fibers covered each table and the students were gluing the fibers to paper to create a design. I asked one group of students who looked particularly engaged, “Are you enjoying this project?”
Luciana is a 9th grader who arrived in the U.S. in 2016 from the Dominican Republic. She wears a sparkly pink headband, has perfect attendance, and occasionally causes mischief.
Three times a year, our classrooms transform: round tables are replaced with rows of tablet-armed desks during the state testing weeks of January, June, and August. We call these desks one-armed bandits.
I started my teaching career in September 2000 at Intermediate School 33 in Brooklyn, a school that has since closed. I was hired to teach 8th grade English at the same time as Sara Milstein, both of us recent college graduates who quickly became friends.
