As my now first-grade son makes his way through Rawson Elementary, I’ve been nothing but impressed with the South Milwaukee School District.
Administrators, teachers and staff — I’ve been lucky enough to be exposed to all levels of leadership in the district and am always happy with what I see.
From the commitment to long-range planning (and acting on those plans) to the classroom learning I see my 6-year-old receiving, I feel blessed to live in this city and public school district.
The district’s latest effort around character education is the latest reason to believe.
Simply, the district is now turning its focus to improving the character traits of its students.
Learn more in this Journal Sentinel story. From it:
One of the current participants is the School District of South Milwaukee. Leaders of the district and each of its six schools have been going to the sessions. What is emerging is a districtwide focus on improving relationships within schools.
South Milwaukee had an all-staff professional development session around character education recently. (Disclosure: I spoke briefly as part of the program.) The featured speaker was Adolph Brown, a Virginia-based psychologist who does presentations all over the country.
One of Brown’s themes: “More is caught than is taught.” Students pay attention to and learn a lot from what goes on around them. Not only the way they are treated but the way they see others (including the adults in a school) treat each other shapes their education.
Colin Jacobs, principal of Rawson Elementary School and one of the leaders of the South Milwaukee effort, said the message resonated with staff members. As he put it, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one.”
He said a focus in coming months will be on practices that say to everyone in a school, “This is what we can expect from each other.” One goal is to see if more cases involving problems with specific students can be solved by building relationships rather than by, say, referring the student for a special education evaluation.
After Brown’s presentation, staff members from each of the South Milwaukee schools met to discuss how they might launch into this. One thing they did was vote, from a list of 51 attributes, for what traits they thought should be emphasized. Input from parents and others is also being sought, Jacobs said, with the goal of focusing on nine.
In the overall staff voting, the most votes went to three traits that you would expect to be at the top of the list: Honesty, respect and responsibility. But coming in a close fourth was perseverance.
I’ll keep you posted as this initiative takes flight.
South Milwaukee Blog 