During my first year of teaching I was teaching a group of students who seemed manageable at first but a few months in was pushing the boundaries of my lack of skill. After one particularly difficult day where few students completed any work and a number of them were quite aggressive toward me, I met with a coworker of mine and we sat down to create a conversation plan that began the next day. Instead of continuing with instruction that was obviously not working, we had the students reflect a bit on what was happening in the classroom and share out with each other and with me. It was a three day process that ended with an honest dialogue and some plans for change. Over the next few weeks we did build some respect and ended the year fairly well. 

I always think of that story whenever I have difficulty in my classroom today. Little did I realize back then but I was beginning to understand the ideas because restorative practices, a method of interaction that has framed who I am as an educator. Instead of simply responding to disrespect or disobedience with punishment or punitive measures, restorative practices calls for building relationships back up and restoring what was lost. 

Recently I had another group of students with similar problems. It is the last class of the day and has the most students of all my classes. My co-teacher and I had planned an interactive lesson that involved movement and measurement but the students were unwilling to even try it out. A few students were attempting to get others in the classroom to stay back so that we could not move forward. In the end, we had one student storm out and a number of them feel aggravated. 

So, our plan was put in place to have conversations in a circle, structured on what it means to building respect and earn trust. Since then our dialogue has focused on those two words, reminding students to get back on track in order to make sure we can work together. While it has not been perfect, we have definitely seen improvement and look forward to more in the future. 

Today after school our staff had a town hall style meeting in which many explained our love (and dismay) for restorative practices. It often takes longer than punitive measures but can yield stellar results. It requires a lot of training and a change of mindset amongst a lot of staff. 

I would argue that methods that work to build up instead of break down are exactly what we need in modern classrooms and is probably one of the reasons why I look to KIPP and similar schools with demerit-based programs as not behaving in the right way for student's needs. I am hoping more schools will be able to experience restorative practices soon.

Today we had another EL Thursday (as described last week here) and I was assigned eight students to take to a policy forum run by the Center for New York City Affairs. The focus of the forum was on a new report released concerning the connection of poverty and its associated risk-factors on attendance and therefore achievement in New York City schools. The report outlines specific recommendations that would help combat these factors and improve schools for all. While I had not known about the report or the meeting I was excited to attend as this topic is close to my heart.

My coworker Christine had orchestrated everything but I was the only chaperone to attend so I connected with Kim Nauer, the Education Project Director, so that she would engage our students after the forum.

Run as a panel discussion with a keynote address from Deputy Mayor Buerry, it was truly interesting and somewhat inspiring to hear what the panelists had to say regarding the recommendations. Of course everyone agreed that poverty was linked to attendance issues but not everyone agreed on the potential solutions therein. The report demonstrated some fascinating issues including the specific risk factors that are associated with these issues as well as a calendar of a year with connection to attendance in low- and high-income neighborhoods. 

It was truly engaging and our students were visibly excited when reading through the report later on. They were supposed to analyze the conversation they heard and connect it to the information they had been studying. Upon return to school I had some of the most high level conversations of education policy in my recent history. I look forward to more of this work in the future!

As happens every year in education institutions across the country, the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies enacted a policy change in an attempt to help connect us closer to our mission statement. We are part of the school network called Expeditionary Learning (EL), a group that believes students should have hands-on, active roles in their educational life. To that purpose, every other Thursday this year has been dedicated to the practices of EL, allowing our students to explore the city, their lives, and their content more in depth.

Practically what that looks like is this: in the month of October there were five Thursdays - two of them were given to specific departments to run activities that would span more than the average class period of 45 minutes. Instead, the English department was allowed to plan a variety of day-long activities on October 9 and the Science department did the same with October 23. 

Since these days are ideally used for deep research and work or connecting with experts in the field, these two departmental EL Thursdays are great examples of how it works. 

For the English day on October 9, I was a part of a the group focusing on 12th grade English Language Arts (ELA) that took our students to view the documentary Underwater Dreams as a part of a unit on designing personal narratives. The students watched the film at a theater in Manhattan and later debriefed its plot and how the stories of the characters can help them craft their own narratives. It was an inspiring conversation, despite taking place in the loud and busy Washington Square Park.

For the Science day on October 23, I was part of the group providing Physics classes time to complete some much needed data collection and analysis. We had a rotation where students were calculating speed in a variety of ways - including using kit-made catapults as well as timing how quickly a ball is thrown through a designated distance. The students also had time to prepare lab reports and get ready for presentations of their work. 

As part of the math department, our EL Thursday is coming up on December 4th. While I had little started for my Algebra 1 students besides the idea of analyzing patterns of art in math, I am trying to connect my Finance class to local banks and an expert in Microsoft Excel so that they can learn the tools of the trade and be better analysts for their own money. It will take a lot of effort, but I'm excited to see the fruits of this labor. Stay tuned for the outcome!