Pennies for Patients Fundraiser

I am so proud of what our school community has done to raise money to help find a cure for leukemia and lymphoma. The picture below is the "Wall of Hope." This is in a prominent area that all students walk by every day on the way to lunch. I am inspired by the pictures that many families have sent in to honor their loved ones who are battling or have battled the courageous fight against cancer.

This fund drive has really given students the opportunity to look beyond themselves and care for the needs and concerns of others. This is truly Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood: walking in someone else's shoes and trying to understand someone else, what they are going through or saying before we speak or act. The Wall of Hope shows just how many of our students have been inspired to care for kids with cancer.

We are entering our 4th week of fundraising, and our grand total raised so far is $5275.72. Way to go Highland Park Elementary!!!

Bullying Lessons 2016

In January all grades received a lesson on Bullying. I was very excited that due to a new assessment called "Poll Everywhere" students in 6th grade were able to take a survey to give their opinion on bullying at HPE. 97% of students believe that bullying does not occur at HPE on a daily basis (in 6th grade). I will go into more detail about their lesson further down in this post.

This year I focused on teaching students the true definition of bullying. Students learned what bullying is not: it is not being mean, it is not being rude, and it is not teasing. Bullying is defined as intentional aggressive behavior that is repeated over time and involves an imbalance of power. These three things must be involved in order for a behavior to be called bullying. Many times students call things bullying that do not meet this criteria. Therefore, it is important to define what it is so that students can correctly identify the behavior.

Kindergartners read the book Hands are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi. We used this book to introduce to bullying behavior and identify bullying. Students learned many ways to use their hands (helping, doing, drawing, building, communicating) to develop healthy relationships but not to use their hands to hit others.

First graders learned about bullying by watching Howard B Wigglebottom learns about bullying. You can see the link and activities here.

In Second grade students learned about how Seek First to Understand and then to be Understood helps develop empathy. Empathy is taking a walk in another person's shoes and seeking to understand how that person feels before making a choice of how to talk to or treat someone. If students develop empathy by using Habit 5 they will likely make the decision not to bully others as well as stand up to bullying when they see it happening to other people. Students read the book The Bully Blocker's Club by Teresa Bateman and identified Habit 5 and Habit 6, Synergize, in the book and discussed how these habits helped the characters stop bulling in their school.

3rd and 4th grade received similar lessons with the word "Empathy." Students are learning what empathy means in much detail and reading a book that helps them identify when empathy was used to stop bullying, or, conversely, when empathy could have been used to stop bullying (a missed opportunity).

3rd Graders are my Leadership Spotlight this month:

In Fifth grade students received a lesson on bullying from Keri Gray with Lee's Summit Cares.

In sixth grade, students learned from an interactive lesson on bullying that included a technology assessment tool called "Poll Everywhere." Students learned the difference between being mean, rude, and bullying. After learning what bullying is students took a poll to vote if they believed that bullying occurred daily at HPE. After the lesson students were asked to give one take-away they learned, and many students identified that they now know what bullying truly is, how to be an Upstander rather than a Bystander, and that bullying has life long effects on both the bullies and the victims being bullied.

November Lessons--Kindness/Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

The month of November I visited classrooms and talked with students about kindness. Kindness is the character trait for December, however with Thanksgiving in November, I like to encourage students to think about what what wonderful things they have in their lives and how they can use that gratefulness to spur them on to show kindness to others.

In most grades I read a story about kindness and did various activities to help students critically think about how to show kindness to others. Many students made the connection to our building-wide service projects we have done recently, including a food drive that we did during Red Ribbon week at the end of October for our business partner Abundant Life's food pantry. Recently our Cafeteria Staff hosted a clothing drive for Hope House, a local Domestic Violence shelter located in Lee's Summit. 3rd grade is my leadership spotlight of the Month. See the pictures below to experience how 3rd grade learned about showing kindness to others.

In the month of December I will be visiting classrooms and talking about Habit 1: Be Proactive. Students will have a plan to keep their bodies safe from wrong or unsafe touches.