February 2, 2024
Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. Congrats to Crimson and Black for their division 1 rating at state. Our girls wrestling team is also at day 2 of the state wrestling meet, Keira and Des are still wrestling. Also good luck the large group speech performers on Saturday.
Earlier in the week I shared the Honors Program guidelines with you. I have received feedback from a couple so far. If you have strong feelings one way or the other, please let me know. I plan on setting an informational meeting for the parents soon.
Judd and Melissa are starting the registration process for next school year. Once the students have all been registered, I'll have department meetings to go over numbers and sections. Then the fun begins creating the master schedule.
Midterm for third quarter is coming up next week on Feb. 8. Please make sure you have entered in all grades and have added comments under quarter 3. Amy will run the midterms after 1st period that morning for distribution in your 8th period class.
Have a great weekend,
Mark
Assistant Principal's Happenings
Announcements:
As of Wednesday evening, I’ve spoken with 70 of the 92 freshmen that had a D or F in Q3 so far. I hope to have the rest done by Friday afternoon.
Midterm is next week. If you haven’t talked with all your classes about this and the importance of getting off to a good start, please do so.
Thought(s) of the Week:
January was a short month due to all the snow days, but it was probably my toughest month so far. I know it was for some of you, too. Back in October, I started reporting on the book, “Onward”, and cultivating resilience in teachers. The first two chapters are “Know Yourself” and “Understand Emotions”.
I thought the chapter on “Understand Emotions” was especially interesting. The author describes emotion as a series of events: a prompting event, interpretation, physical response, an urge to act, action, and after effects. Emotions are temporary but how we think about emotions affects how we experience them. Her conclusion:
“.... a key to cultivating resilience: Learn to recognize your emotions as messengers, as potential sources of energy, and as a fact of human existence. This allows you to pause when emotions come barreling in and to understand what they want to tell you. Change how you think about emotions and you’ll change how you experience them.” (Aguilar, p. 50)
Last week I wrote about the Boys Town “Conflict Cycle”. This week in cabinet we were presented with CPI’s Crisis Development Model, which is similar. CPI says that all outbursts of behavior start with Anxiety, leading to Defensive Behavior, leading to Risk Behavior, leading to Tension Reduction.
Anxiety → Defensive Behavior → Risk Behavior → Tension Reduction
What caught my attention here was the idea that all problems start with a student’s Anxiety -- they are nervous or worried about something. A recent experience for you: a student refused to change out of a shirt that had offensive messaging. I called their parent, who brought another article of clothing for the student to wear -- problem solved. Or at least I thought. Except that they refused that as well. They were especially Defensive, then escalated it to Risk Behavior -- calling me crude names full of cuss words. Later I learned that the offensive article of clothing in question was a gift from this student’s deceased relative. They were not inclined to part with it -- BINGO -- the Anxiety that started the whole thing.
Now, I still consider this student responsible for their actions and worthy of the consequences they incurred. But this revelation of Anxiety now has me asking a new question when a student has an outburst -- What are they so anxious/nervous about?
Thanks for working so hard for all our kids .
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