A Warm and Inviting School Climate

A Warm and Inviting School Climate

By Jill Jenkins

            Creating a positive school climate is complex because it involves keeping teachers and staff happy, keeping parents and guardians happy and keeping students both happy and challenged.  The administrators have to juggle all of the groups and maintain fair and reasonable rules of procedure all while appearing to be the as happy and inviting as a used-car salesman.  This is not an easy task. Civility is the first order of business.  Teachers have to model civility to students and parents and administrators need to treat everyone with civility.  The only way students learn good manners and civility is to be treated that way. Equity is the second key to keeping everyone happy.  Procedures and rules need to be administrated consistently.  Finally recognizing quality performance in students, faculty and staff is key to keeping everyone happy.

            Most parents want their child to have every opportunity and to be treated fairly.  They want their child to be held accountable, but not treated too severely. They want their child to perform well academically, but to not be overwhelmed.  These are the good parents who want to be kept abreast of upcoming assignments, skills their child needs help with and get an occasional pat on the back for being a good parent, but they aren’t the only parents you will encounter as a teacher or a principal. When administrators enforce rules consistently, parents and students usually accept the consequences, but if there is even one breach in modus operandi, some parents will begin fishing for that loop hole.

             For example, one set of parents who did just that kind fishing did not want their son sent to in-school suspension regardless of the number of classes in which he was tardy.  It didn’t matter to them what the school policy was; tardiness didn’t matter. One vice principal beaten down by their endless assaults relented  and everyone suffered.  When their son, Bob, was found by the school police officer at the nearby 7-11 when he was assigned to be in my Language Arts class, they were mortified to learn from the vice principal that the school policy required that he serve one day suspension for his Ferris Buehler one period holiday, and that he would not be allowed to make up any tests or assignments he missed during that class period, they assured the vice principal that it was the school officer’s fault that he was absent.  Their son had called his mother from 7-11 and told her that he was only there to pick up a snack before returning to my class to take his test.  Therefore, it was the school officer’s fault that he missed the class.  He would have only been late, but instead he was sent to the vice principal’s office, so it wasn’t his fault.

              When the vice principal, would not accept her explanation, Bob’s mother called me.  It was just as I was leaving school, and I stupidly picked up the telephone.  Bob’s mother began her harangue for about thirty minutes and whenever I tried to intervene, she would ask me to stop interrupting her.  Finally, I was desperate, because I had already spent almost ten hours at school and I had to pick up my husband (teachers have lives too), but she hadn’t let up. It occurred to me that her technique for getting her son excused from in-school suspensions was to simply become so difficult that it was easier to give in to her.  This woman was a bully, but she had just met the immovable force.  Yes, I could have saved time and just let her son take the test.  It probably would have no bearing on his grade since he rarely paid attention or studied, but if Anne Sullivan had given in to Helen Keller and take the easy road as her parents had, Anne would never had become the person she became, so I decided to hold strong and I hoped the principal would back me.  I said, “I’m sorry that you don’t agree with the policy, but I’m only a teacher.  My job is to enforce the policy.  If you want the policy changed, you will have to talk to the principal.  Good bye.”  I hung up the phone and left.

              The next morning the principal thanked me because the mother immediately called her and told her I had hung up on her, but I said goodbye first.  The principal had to stay an extra hour to pacify this parent that had gone from a little heated to irate, even livid.  The principal had not given into her, but she had spent a considerable amount of time placating this parent.  She said the trick was to let parents vent.  Another principal tells me that the trick is to let the calls go to voice mail, listen to their angry tirade, collect all the facts and call them back. Still another principal tells me the trick is to let it go to voice mail, listen to their angry tirade, collect all the facts and call them back when you know they aren’t going to be there and leave a voice message. (If only I had known these tricks before I picked up that phone.)  Regardless of the method a principal chooses to use to deal with difficult parents, please deal with them. As a teacher when you deal with a difficult parent, collect all the facts and give them to the administrators so they aren’t blindsided by an irritated parent with a phone. Parents like this are especially difficult when they appear in your room unannounced just as first period is beginning and your class is looking hopelessly as they parade past the parent's tirade or when they appear at your door while you are teaching and try to wave you into the hallway.   Administrators need to take a firm stand with parents that they are not allowed to interrupt a teacher during class time.

            Keeping the faculty and staff happy is easy.  First, feed them at meetings.  Second, stick to an agenda, keep meetings short and to the point; don’t waste their time.  Third, treat all of the faculty members the same.  If a teacher isn’t doing his/her job, missing meetings, or isn’t working as a team player, don’t hesitate to call him/her in and tell him/her.  If a teacher is doing a great job, don’t hesitate to call him/her in and tell him/her. Fourth, keep organized and communicate all upcoming events to teachers and staff.  No one wants to be surprised with last minute a schedule change.  Everyone is the school is planning lessons and activities, so it is important to give them enough time that if they need to change their classroom schedule, they can.  Fifth and most importantly, handle the difficult parents and students.  No matter how skilled your teaching staff is there are going to be unreasonable parents and destructive students.  Make sure your staff knows that “you’ve got their back.” This also means that when a principal uses a short cut to relieve himself of a teacher he perceives as incompetent, the rest of the faculty becomes very insecure, even when he may be justified.  In most school, there is a long procedure for relieving a school of an incompetent teacher.  Some principals will merely transfer those teachers from one school to another when they become overstaffed. This means they are sharing their grief with another school, not solving the problem. Regardless of how long and cumbersome the process is, the principal should follow it.  When a faculty learns that a principal is placing notes in a teacher’s mail box suggesting they transfer to another school that has an opening or when a principal reduces an experienced teacher’s schedule to part-time while keeping less experienced teacher full time, he is sending a message to his entire faculty that “you could be next.”  Instead of sharpening teacher’s game, it builds mistrust. All teachers need to be treated fairly even if the procedure is time-consuming. Procedures are designed to protect teachers from unfair prejudice of an administrator while still identifying incompetent teachers.  By following those procedures, the faculty feels that treating everyone fairly is a priority of the principal.  Sixth, listen to your teachers. One principal create a board of directors who met with him for lunch once a month.  He was able to keep abreast of the teachers’ frustrations and problems. This allowed him to solve problems and it made the faculty feel like they had a voice.

            Keeping the students happy is not that difficult.  First, most students get bored in school because many classes are not interactive enough.  Look at this research down by a veteran teacher who shadowed two students for a day: “Granted and thoughts on education” by Grant Wiggins.  Encourage your teachers through workshops to make their teaching more interactive.  Second, most students like to hear when they have done something well.  In the 1990’s I presented my principal with the idea of giving students cards when we caught them doing something well.  The program is still in effect today, but it has improved.  When the students receives what we originally called PAWS pass, they take to the office and receive a piece of candy and the put their card with their name on it into a drawing.  At the end of the week, several tickets are selected for larger prizes.  The teacher who gave out the most Paws Passes gets a prize too (usually a $5.00 gift card to a local café.)  Another way, to give students recognition is to encourage them to participate in contests:  PTA Reflections, writing contests, arts contest, school contests like Chalk the Walk and athletic teams. When a team or an individual wins announce it.  Hang the pictures of students in the hall.  For example to encourage reading, I used to take my camera and wander Reading and Language Arts classes to snap pictures of students reading during their Silent Sustained Reading time (S.S.R.), or their Drop Everything and Read Time (D.EA.R.).  We hung these in the hallway.  Everyone likes to feel like a winner.

            Keeping a positive school climate is not easy and it is not accomplished in one step.  It really takes buy-in from your faculty and staff.  Administrators need to go the extra mile to recognize the teachers and students who make a difference.  When everyone works together to make the school a more pleasant place to work, everyone wins. Start by greeting your staff and faculty as they arrive in the morning.  Persuade your staff to stand in the hall and greet their students as they come into class.  Remember encourage them to think positively about their students. Start a campaign to say something positive to each student as they enter a classroom. Send positive postcards home to students. Treat everyone with respect and dignity.  Positive attitudes of administrators and staff can become contagious.  Invite parents to serve on committees, participate in activities, and in the classroom.  The more they feel involved the more they support the school.  Support the teachers for the few parents and students who don’t catch the bug.  Spread good will.

           

Lessons Learned Behind the Curtain

Lessons Learned Behind the Curtain

By Jill Jenkins

            From all of my years directing plays, I learned some lessons that could apply to school administration and leadership because in both stage productions and schools, a group of people with different talents all work together on one creation. If everyone does not work together, expect disasters.  It is from our mistakes, that we learn the art. Regardless, the show must go on. There are three major lessons that apply to both the stage and the school.  First, delegate authority to others, but be careful what you delegate and to whom you delegate it.  Second, work as a team, because one never knows when the worst will happen.  Third, pay attention to the smallest details.  In both venues the play must go on despite whatever complications arise. 

            In both schools and theater, the principal and the director cannot accomplish everything alone.  Both jobs are massive so some jobs must be delegated.  I recall a production of The Wizard of Oz where I delegated the wrong job to the wrong person.  The play required flash pots for the entrance of the Wicked Witch strategically placed in front of a paper mache tree.  Since the actors were my responsibility I had practiced with them for two months.  Everything was going perfectly.  The sound and light crew were the responsibility of a shop teacher who worked in a different building.  His idea of training his staff was to hand them the keys to the auditorium.  They practiced with us for one week.  During that time, I discovered that the young man who was to raise and lower the curtain was a student with special needs.  In those days, there was no electronic button to raise the curtain. The curtain had to be raised and lowered manually with  pulleys. Since this particular student had difficulty with A.D.H.D., he often lost his concentration and wandered away from his job.  He would frequently stop in the middle of raising and lowering the curtain and run off chasing others through the catwalks endangering himself and other students. Since he wasn't my student, I couldn’t just replace him because he was the responsibility of the shop teacher. I didn’t want to fire him because I was worried about his self-esteem, but he couldn’t make a single cue. To solve the problem, I decided that during the play, I would climb into the catwalks with this young man and supervise him so that he wouldn’t lose his concentration.  I delegated the job of filling the flash pot to another stage crew member. Maybe I should have given that responsibility to my stage manager and only give her the amount of powder needed instead of the entire container.  We rehearsed exactly how much power to put into the pot during the scene change and he handled it flawlessly.  The leader of the sound and light crew was going to be working the lights, and he and I were going to be wearing a headset and so was the student stage manager.  I felt everything would work perfectly because the three main players were connected; we had communication with both the light booth and stage. I was wrong. When the time for the flash happened, I checked with the stage manager and the student in the light booth asking them to verify with the young man  that he had put the proper amount of flash in the flash pot, but instead of just checking, they each went to the stage and dumped more explosive material into the flash pot.  When the scene began, the Wicked Witch made her entrance, not with the expected flash, but with something like the blast of an atomic bomb that shook the stage, filled the auditorium with smoke and started the paper tree ablaze.  The Cowardly Lion bravely ran over and put out the flames with his paws, and Dorothy’s eye lashes were singed.  I couldn’t see across the stage because of the smoke. The audience coughed for ten minutes. I climbed higher into the catwalks to verify that the other curtains were not ablaze. They weren't.   I should have chosen to handle the flash pot myself and assigned a student to monitor the incompetent curtain puller. As a principal, if you have a job that could create an explosion, monitor that one yourself and assign a department chair to care for the incompetent teachers.  A principal can’t be everywhere at once, so choose what you delegate carefully. 

            Working as a team is another important lesson from the stage.  On opening night of You Can’t Take It With You the backstage was all rumbling with activities: checking the lights and the sound system, making sure all the props were carefully set out on the stage or on the prop table, greeting the guests, making sure the programs were in place, monitoring the ticket takers and ticket sales and putting on the make-up and costumes of the cast members.  I was running in a hundred directions at once.  Five minutes before we opened, my stage manager approached me looking gloomy.  There was a problem.  The student playing Reba was dressed in her costume and her make-up was complete, but she had been in the bathroom throwing up for thirty minutes. The cast hadn’t told me hoping she would magically recover. She didn’t.  I had to think fast.  Our stage manager had sat through every  rehearsal.  She knew the play and was just about the right size.  I directed her to put on Reba’s costume.  I would feed her the lines and stuff her on stage for each of Reba’s entrances.  The show must go on.  Then, I got on a microphone and asked the parents of the original Reba to come to the back of the stage.  They were mortified when they heard that their daughter was ill, but quietly took her home while we went on with the show. 
      At a school where I used to teach, one of my colleagues had a heart attack during our opening meetings.  The other math teachers took over, setting up his room, writing lesson plans for his substitute and even arranged his substitute so he could concentrate on getting better.  When my husband had a heart attack, my department had collaborated so well, that I was able to call Karen, one of my colleagues, and she took over writing my lesson plans and arranging my substitute.  The truth is on the stage or in the school, the show must go on, so it is important that when something goes wrong (and it will) the school can pick up the pieces and move on.

                        Paying attention to the smallest detail can save you whether you’re directing a play or running a school.  The first play I directed at West High School was Fiddler on the Roof. I didn’t have a background in musical theater, but it was a collaborative effort with the orchestra teacher, the choir teacher, the art teacher, the sewing teacher, the dance teacher and the drama teacher (me).  Everyone worked well together except the dance teacher who refused to participate.  Still, it wasn’t a huge problem because all those years my mother had sent me to dance lessons hoping she would make me less clumsy finally paid off.  The small detail that we had overlooked had to do with wireless microphones.  The school had purchased four of them and no one had any experience with them.  We knew that with only four microphones the students with major roles had to share them.  The woods teacher who taught in a different building was still in charge of the sound and light crew did not give us access to them until opening night. We were not allowed to rehearse with them.  Opening night, the shop teacher arrived and set up the receivers and handed me the microphones.  They had a small clip on microphone wired to box containing batteries.  The cast was in their costumes, so we hooked the microphone to their necklines and ran the batteries down their costumes sticking the battery box into their loose-fitting pants or skirts.  It looked great and the stage manager and I helped them exchange them when they came off stage. The first problem occurred when a doctor in the audience received a page. He was on the same frequency as the microphones and his page was broadcast across the auditorium.   The next problem occurred during the student paying Perchik began to perform his solo.  When he reached a particularly high note, the battery box slipped down his leg.  He grabbed for it, but to the audience, it looked like he was grabbing his. . . (well, you know). The audience roared with laughter. There was no way to communicate to him and if we had he would have been mortified.  This is a detail we should have worked out earlier.  After that, we built little pockets inside of costumes to hold the battery packs.

                         If you are a principal and you are trying a new activity, talk about everything that could go wrong.  For example in my last school, we decided to try a program where students could spend 20 minutes twice a week either catching up on lessons, or going to an enrichment activity.  The first day, the administration told the students to pick any activity they wished.  I was teaching an improvisation theater class. I probably had 50 students in a class designed for 35.  Next door was a ukulele class with 10 students.  About 200 students decided to leave campus and visit the local mini-market for a coke.  It was pandemonium.   Make sure to think of all of the details and brainstorm methods to solve potential problems before trying the activity.

                        Over my years of teaching there have been many disasters that principals’ have had to deal with.  One year, a cluster student took all of his clothing off and held up in the boys’ rest room.  The principal and one of the counselors had to persuade him to put his clothing on and leave the rest room without alarming the other students.  Another time I recall a young man who wanted to destroy another student during a lunch break.  While the principal and the vice principal distracted the angry, young man, I slipped from the teacher’s workroom and removed the subject of his hostility.  With no one to fight, the angry young man attacked the vice principal, but with the principal and the vice principal working together they were able to move him into an office before the other students left the cafeteria.  In another incident, a young lady entered my classroom during a pep-rally so intoxicated that I was afraid to get her down the three flights of steps alone, so I called the vice principal and we got on both sides of her and navigated her down to safety.  Schools and theaters are a lot alike.  There is no telling what is going to happen, but if administrators and teachers work together, something magical happens.

Breaking New Ground

Breaking New Ground

By Jill Jenkins

                The new Common Core Curriculum is designed to make each student college or career ready, but why are so few students from lower social-economic groups whether they live in an inner city or a rural environments choosing to go to college and completing a four year program?  Is it because of  academic deficiencies or is the problem more complex?  To most of us choosing to pursue a college education is easy, but for the student whose family has never experienced a college education, it is much more complicated.  Students in lower social economic groups have a bigger fish to fry than just being academically prepared.  Why is pursuing a college education so difficult for them?  First, human beings are herding animals living in families first and communities.  Students who venture beyond their families’ experience are like explorers in a world.  It is both exciting and terrifying because they feel they are leaving the world of their parents and friends to explore an alien world.  Second, they do not share the same values and culture of most of the people in college so they become “a stranger in a strange land.”  Third, if they are not only social-economically deprived, but also of a different ethnic minority, they will look and speak differently from most of the natives of this new land and that can alienate them even further.  The journey into this strange world could lift them and their decedents to new heights.   This is journey worth taking.

                Most of us belong first to a family who in essence is our tribe.  From our family we learn our values, our expectations and goals. If the parents of children have had a negative experience in school or have no experience with school, they may be reluctant to instill a desire to continue down that road for their children.  In many lower-social economic groups, children are expected to graduate from high school get a job, get married and produce children.  That was the pathway my parents mapped out for me.  Four of their five children chose to take that path. I choose to go to college.  My father scoffed at the idea saying I’d be pregnant before I finished.  College is only for men, not women.  My mother seemed disappointed that she wanted more grandchildren and she felt that it would change me and I would not fit into the family. She also expressed to me that she didn’t think I was smart enough to succeed and she worried that failure would be devastating.  She was right about educations changing me. It did.  I remember visiting them some years later and realizing that I felt like Buddy in Eugenia Collier’s story, “Sweet Potato Pie.”  I could appreciate “the potato pie,” but I didn’t really feel like a member of that community.  A friend once told me that a person can’t live successfully in two worlds and he was right.  Eventually I lost my membership in my original tribe which is a difficult loss. My mother was wrong about being smart enough to succeed.  I really resented her lack of confidence in my ability, but later when I was a parent I understood her fear.  She wanted to protect me from failure, but no one can protect a child from everything.  To succeed means taking risks.  When my own daughter moved to New York to pursue her Master’s Degree in journalism and later her career in journalism, I felt that fear, but I realized it is  a fear any mother has in watching her child grow up and soar away.  I had to let her go to achieve her dreams.  My mother had to let me go too.

                It is a difficult transition when the student from a lower social economic group goes to college.  The first year is going to be lonely which is why so many choose to end their academic career there.  These students don’t share the same values and culture of many of the students from higher social economic groups and don’t have the resources to join many of the social activities.  One of the reasons that I sent my daughter to private and parochial schools was that by interacting with friends whose families expected their children to continue their education and have high goals, she had a better chance of developing their values and expectation during her post-high school education.  Thus, she would have an easier transition than I did.   As another one of my friends once said, “If you want to help these kids get out of the ghetto, you need to take them out of the ghetto, so they know that there is another world out there.”  As a single mother earning a teaching salary, I wanted my daughter to see how the other world lived.

                Ethnic minority students from lower social economic groups have even a larger hurdle to overcome.  I never really thought about how difficult their transition was until I was teaching in an inner-city school. The school was made up of about 70% ethnic minorities and 30% Caucasian, but the honors classes and the extra-curriculum activities were about 90% Caucasian and Asian and about 10% Hispanic and Blacks. As a school, we decided to make an effort to individually invite students from these non-represented groups to join activities.  I was the drama teacher and because of the personal invitation I improved the percentage of non-white students in the plays.  As a result, the NAACP invited me to a meeting to help with an activity they were presenting at the Arts Festival.  Even though I knew many members at the meeting, being the only Caucasian person there was a little uncomfortable.  I was angry with myself for feeling uncomfortable, but it made me realize that if a liberal minded adult felt uncomfortable, how does an adolescent with poor self-images feel being the only Black of Hispanic student auditioning for a part in a play?  To solve this problem I began inviting students in pairs to audition for the play.  Everyone feels better with a friend there.  What I learned from this experience is many of these students were working to help their families financially or caring for children while both their parents worked two jobs or in the case of single-parent families they were both working and helping care for younger siblings.   To help them participate in extra-curricular activities I changed the rehearsal schedule to meet more of their needs.  In another school where I taught, the school had a similar problem.  The school had a disproportional number of Caucasian and Asian students enrolled in honors classes, but few minority students enrolled in them even though the school was comprised of more than 90% ethnic minorities. To remedy this situation, the school identified students from these non-represented populations who were bright, but not pursuing honors and A.P. classes and gave them a study skills class which later became an A.V.I.D. class to support them.   As the teacher, I needed to supply all of the emotional support and study skills techniques to help them become successful.  All of these efforts were successful.

                As teachers we need to recognize the problems students face who are the first person in their family to attend college.  My salvation was good teachers and counselors in my high school.  My debate teacher, Ellen Wixom, taught me how to organize an argument and the debate program gave me confidence that I could be successful.  Gary Walton’s drama classes and his ability to give me clear, positive feedback reinforced that confidence.  Maurine Haltiner’s A.P. English class forced me to read more difficult pieces of literature and analyze them.  Mr. Dee Anderson, my school counselor, helped me complete financial aid forms and college applications.  When I got to college, Mr. Jay W. Lees, my mentor and favorite college professor, told me his life story about how he grew up in my old neighborhood and became friends with my uncle.  He took me under his wing and even let me share dinner with his wonderful family.  Educators were my salvation.

                Leading a student from the safety of their childhood home to pursue the higher expectations of academia is not only the job of dedicated educator, but that educator may be the only person in that student’s life who can lead him.  His parents may come from a foreign country and are still learning the language; his parents may have had a negative experience in education and do not support it; his parents may be high school drop outs who work two minimum wage jobs to put food on the table; or his parents may not feel a good education is a valuable commodity.   These are not the parents who will attend a meeting about how to prepare their child for college.  The educators must provide information about the application process, the financial aid process, a quality education, and serve as the child’s personal cheerleader as he travels this new roadway.  Dedicated educators are the ones who can help a child make that transition into a successful academic career.  Breaking new ground is never easy, but the benefits outweigh the sacrifices.