No Name-Calling Week at TBS

The following letter just went out to our K-8 families from Kate Klaire, Social/Emotional Learning Coordinator.

Dear K-8 Families,

As you may have already read in this week’s Newsnotes, TBS is participating in No Name Calling Week, January 21st-25th. This is a national effort sponsored by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to end name calling, teasing, and bullying of all kinds.  Though we work with students throughout the year to cultivate kindness and generous hearts towards others, we will spend the next few weeks explicitly addressing what teasing and bullying look and feel like in our community, and ways to help one another in our K-8 classrooms.

Our instructional focus during this time will be how to be respectful of others, understanding the difference between bullying and gateway behaviors, and why it’s important not to be a bystander to aggression. We will be using curriculum from Responsive Classroom, Teaching Tolerance, and other bullying-prevention resources, as well as lessons that we develop ourselves. We will also be showing select video clips from the anti-bullying educational film Let’s Get Real as well as from the It Gets Better Project, when and where it is age-appropriate to do so.

Be sure to look for posts about this work on your classroom’s blog. Classrooms will be doing varied activities and these posts will show you what we are doing at each grade level. We’ll be sharing age-targeted resources through the blogs as well; here are some resources to get you started, including links on how to talk with your child about bullying or bully prevention.

No Name-Calling Week from GLSEN
Let’s Get Real at Groundspark.org
“Bullyproof your Classroom” from Responsive Classroom
Teaching Tolerance from the Southern Poverty Law Center

We invite you to join us in this work at home.  We encourage you to share with your child about the acts of kindness and respect that you notice; let them know when you witness something that shows she/he is growing up to be genuinely caring of others. Practice together as a family what it means to be thoughtful with each other, and what it means to notice kind acts and offer appreciations. Celebrate the goodness in our community.

We are so fortunate that our students are not faced with the types of blatant and overt bullying that occurs in some schools, and we also know that we need to help them understand how to navigate experiences of unkindness and conflict with peers. One Middle School student has come up with a phrase for us as we think about this at TBS: “Words Can Hurt, People Can Help.” It’s our hope that through this work, all students feel empowered to help themselves and all members of our community. If you have any questions or resources, please contact me.

Be well,

Kate Klaire
Social/Emotional Learning Coordinator

kklaire@theberkeleyschool.org

The Winter Sing cometh!

Math club post

Here's what Sima passed on about today's Math Club:

Our focus in Math Club was on geometry today.  Students used tangram puzzles to do the Tangram Polygon Super Challenge, making 5 different polygons from 1-7 tangram shapes.  They also did different levels of the Polly Gone problem, building the biggest pen possible from 40 cubes, or figuring out the area of polygons and creating different parallelograms from them.  Other students spent time figuring out an Alphametrics problem (substituting letters for numbers) to do some algebraic thinking in our Math Club Puzzles.  No math club next Tuesday because I will be out for Professional Development.

5th Grade writing contest announcement

Free parent ed event on psychological testing!

Great free upcoming parent ed event in San Francisco - click here to go to the PEN website.

Images from the K-5 classrooms

In Cerrito Creek (4/5), students brainstormed "writing territories", or topics that they might want to write about for their next piece of short fiction.

In Sweet Briar Creek (2/3), students turned their recently finished poems into holiday gifts by adding them to hand-painted canvases.

In Temescal Creek (2/3), students used a work period to paint holiday gifts...

...work on addition and geometry...

...and build models of molecules.

In Laurel Creek (K/1), students used a literacy workshop period for projects related to their study of author Jan Brett, including writing and illustrating stories...

...contributing to a class mural of events in Trouble with Trolls...

...and sewing giant mittens as in The Mitten.

Finally, in Strawberry Creek (4/5), students worked in small groups to read the Declaration of Independence and come up with laws that they felt would directly arise from that text.

Letter from Mitch about tragedy in CT

Dear TBS Families,

As most of you will have heard by the time you read this email, a tragic and awful shooting took place today at an elementary school in Connecticut.  News like this stops all of us -- families, teachers, staff, and administrators -- in our tracks, and calls forth a range of powerful (and often surprising) emotional responses from us.  When that tide recedes, we all begin to move into "action mode," as we try to reassert some degree of certainty into our lives and into our hopes and dreams for the children whom we love.

Accordingly, we want to give you information about our own actions (ongoing, present, and future), and also share resources and ideas with you that may inform your own course of action with your children over the weekend.

First, I want to assure all families that we have thought a great deal about preventing such events from occurring on either of our campuses.  That starts at a fundamental level -- we work hard to create physical and social campus environments that model respect, emphasize inclusion and peacemaking, and help build and maintain community connection. Beyond that, both our campuses have key-code, locked entry gates that are visible from multiple windows, and security cameras on our larger University campus show live feeds of every exterior part of the campus on a screen visible to our receptionist and also via a secure internet link.  Finally, all our staff are trained to approach unfamiliar visitors with a cheerful and proactive greeting.  If you step onto our campuses, we'll know who you are and why you're with us very quickly.

We also engage in regular "Stay in Place" drills at the University campus:  drills designed to provide maximum safety in an "intruder on campus" situation.  Doors are locked, curtains and blinds lowered, and children are taught to shelter out of sight:  communications protocols also are enacted to keep communication flowing.  We just completed our most recent drill last month, and while we wish that the need for these drills didn't exist, we will continue to do them as a regular part of our emergency readiness plan.  We consult with the Berkeley Police Department and other authorities to ensure that our practices are appropriate and effective.

In my experience, many of us will want to know how to talk about these events with children.  Here are some guidelines and suggestions to keep in mind.

Should you bring this up with your child(ren), or should you wait?  

In general, we think this depends on the degree to which information about world events flows into your child's environment at home or in the transition from school to home.  Our sense today is that none of our children have heard about the shooting, and we've worked hard to limit their access to that information.  In general, we think limiting their access to this information in developmentally appropriate ways is key for families as well.  However, going into the weekend, match what you know about your child(ren) with what you know about your child's weekend social environment and cohort, and let that process be a guide.  If you think it's likely that your child will hear about this news or see it, you may want to bring it up first so that you can give it appropriate context.  

Will teachers be discussing this event with children on Monday?

This is a level-dependent question.  In general, the younger the children, the less likely that teachers will bring things up proactively -- but our faculty know our children well and will rely on that knowledge, their own deep knowledge of child development, and any information that you share with them to make their plans.  Your child's teachers will let you know before Monday if they see a need to take proactive action -- and if so, they'll let you know what they will say and follow up with information about how things went.  

What should we keep in mind if (or when) we talk to our children about this event?

Often, younger children may believe that events like this happened nearby, are continuing to happen, and/or are happening in multiple schools.  Consequently, it's crucial to establish concrete details and take nothing for granted.  Showing a child a map that includes Connecticut and California can be helpful.  Being very clear about time frames is helpful.  And giving them information about resolution (i.e. the shooter is no longer alive) can help as well.

Be careful to answer any questions that you are asked appropriately:  it's very easy to give children information that doesn't match what they wanted to know.  Listen carefully to their questions and, if you're not sure what they want to know, ask them directly:  too much detail may be overwhelming or frightening to children who (fortunately) lack a frame of reference for such an event.

Offer a great deal of reassurance.  Make sure they understand that families, schools, and people in the wider community all work together to make sure that events like this do not happen.  If your children need it, make more time to be with them physically and mentally.  

Remind them that the school practices drills for emergency situations, and that they know what to do if when unexpected emergencies happen.  Praise your children for always taking our practice drills seriously and tell them that as parents you too have copies of our school plans, and know what good care the teachers and administrators will take in keeping them safe while at school.

Are there any other resources that we can access?

Here are four links that CAIS schools are recommending:

http://www.childrenscolorado.org/news/inthenews/2012-news/talking-to-kids-about-school-shootings.aspx

http://www.apa.org/topics/violence/school-shooting.aspx
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15109195/ns/health-childrens_health/t/how-talk-your-kids-about-shootings/#.UMt_9qUWHzI

http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/terror_general.aspx 

Thanks for your ongoing support and for partnering with us in helping children navigate through these troubled, but teachable, times -- and best wishes for a good weekend.

Take care,

Mitch