Principal's Place:

 

In some ways, I now look forward to frigid, snowy or rainy days. On those days, when kids cannot gather outside waiting for the bell to ring, I read to them in the auditorium. It’s amazing how children of all ages love to be read to. We are currently working our way through George Selden’s A Cricket in Times Square, our sixth or seventh book. Occasionally, I have to call out to one of the students to stop talking to his neighbor, or to turn around in his seat, but those are the exceptions. Without fail, the simple exercise of reading aloud brings the school day to a calm and orderly start. And that is a beautiful, magical thing.

Any parent who has ever chaperoned a birthday party knows that chaos loves a group of children. Finding ways to keep a school free of that chaos is a constant challenge; it is also one of the most important things I do. The educational process cannot be interrupted by a lack of order.

When I came to Seth Boyden I felt strongly that the school was too boisterous. Before I arrived, I was told how kids ran through the halls; how they wandered to their classrooms long after the bell had rung; how they yelled up the stairwells to friends above. That kind of environment is detrimental to all children, but it can be especially harmful to children who struggle with self-control, or need clear boundaries.

We made great progress at Seth Boyden last year, but the need to raise our expectations for proper behavior and to ensure that children understood there were consequences to their misbehavior resulted in more suspensions than I wanted. However, every year brings a renewed desire for continued growth both academically and behaviorally. We all are learning, including me. And as my wise assistant Tina Lehn notes, changing the culture of anything does not happen over night.

I devised a group of teachers, staff and parents that met over the summer to come up with ways to help children behave better without having to be sent home to think about it. When school began last fall, I carved out 20 minutes at the beginning of the day to give kids time to share, and to be listened to in their classrooms; we instituted a character education program that models good behavior and gives teachers a place to start when they talk about behaving well; we brought back peer mediators, a group of fourth and fifth grade kids who went through two days of intensive training and are now on call to try to broker peace between school mates before any misunderstanding turns into a discipline issue. And I started to read when inclement weather brought students into the auditorium at the start of the day.

We are not yet a perfectly behaved place—no school is— but I’m happy to say the number of suspensions has dropped. I’m even happier to say that the culture of our school has changed, and changed for the better. Our students are more respectful. Our halls are quieter. There is a sense of peace and harmony that allows our children to feel safe and nurtured, as every child should.

Sincerely,
Mark J. Quiles
Principal
Seth Boyden Demonstration School

November 2007