District Administration - January 2010 - (Page 27)

Gets the Boot circumstances that can lead to bad student behavior, as well as interventions to prevent it, and with Restorative Justice (RJ), a more recent approach to discipline that offers a more flexible and creative way of dealing with behavioral incidents. Both methods emphasize that the offenders understand the impact of their actions and make appropriate amends. Author and educator Ross Greene, who believes zero-tolerance policies are ineffective, also created the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) approach, which has helped schools to respond to behaviorally challenging students more effectively, www.DistrictAdministration.com and which has dramatically reduced rates of detention, suspension and expulsion. In his guidelines Bill of Rights for Kids with Social, Emotional and Behavioral Challenges, Greene, an associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, strives to ensure students with challenges are understood and treated compassionately. The End of Zero Tolerance Denver Public Schools officially changed its discipline policy in August 2008, after years of discussions with school and community stakeholders, including the police department and district attorney’s office. “We had extremely high numbers of school suspensions compared to the other districts in the state,” recalls Cheryl Karstaedt, executive director of the district’s Division of Student Services. “And those suspensions were being disproportionately meted out to minorities. That really was the impetus for us to look at doing something different.” The new discipline policy embraced PBS and RJ practices, which had already been used for several years at seven pilot schools. Each school has its own RJ coordinator, who mediates conflicts between students or between a student and teacher; works with students, parents, teachers and administrators to devise alternative punishments to suspension; and monitors the aftermath of behavioral incidents. “Restorative Justice creates an environment in which students take more responsibility,” observes Nicole Veltzé, principal of Skinner Middle School, one of seven with an RJ coordinator. “Today when I reinstated one student, I said, ‘Did you think when you cussed out your teacher the effect it would have on the teacher?’ We walk them through the [feelings of] other people it affects.” The teacher met with the student and the RJ coordinator to mediate how to restore the classroom environment, and the student wrote a speech to the class about how his poor choice affected that environment, she says. Personnel from 70 other schools around Denver have since received PBS and RJ training. “The policy really emphasizes trying to prevent certain behaviors before they occur, analyzing behavior antecedents and focusing on age-appropriate discipline techniques to keep students in school,” says Karstaedt. The number of out-of-school suspensions, which spiked in 2002-2003 at 14,000, decreased to about 8,000 last year. The Teacher’s Role Such disciplinary transformation has January 2010 27 http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - January 2010

District Administration - January 2010
Table of Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Health Update
Curriculum Update
District Profile
The Feud Over Food
Discipline Gets the Boot
Cutting Technology Costs with Refurbished Computers
Will Pensions Bankrupt Your District?
Tech Disruptions
Crisis Response
Supervisor’s Opinion
Product Focus
New Products
Online Edge

District Administration - January 2010