As most teachers do, I always look at what I am doing and analyze the success of my work.  I want to make sure I am doing the best I can and if I am not, I want to figure out what can I do to improve my product.  The work ethic, drive, passion, effort, and academic achievement of my students are the means to my analysis.  The revision policy, as well as our goal system, has allowed many of my students to achieve success more aligned with their actual ability (and beyond in some cases).  This has been a true joy to personally witness.

 An area I have struggled with since my first year teaching, is motivating the kids that seem to not care.  Every year I have a group of kids who refuse to work for me, accept failure, and seem rather apathetic towards turning this vicious cycle around.  And every year I bust my tail trying to motivate these kids.  I contact their parents, I offer help, I give second and third chances, but by the second semester I am ready to give up.  Have you been here before?  Can you relate?  We don’t want to give up, but we feel as if we have given so much and received little effort in return.  It is frustrating.  We begin to worry about the other 110 kids in the classroom who ARE willing to work.  Have we now neglected them?

 I have tried everything!  Have you ever said that?  Did you ever think that?  For a moment, reflect and consider this thought:  This is the same feeling the parents of these kids probably feel, though my guess is much more desperately.  Maybe these kids feel the same way.  My guess is the kids feel as if they can’t do the work, regardless of their effort.  Failure is much easier to deal with when it is self-inflicted.  When you choose to fail, you have some control.  I can’t imagine the level of frustration the kids feel from trying their best and not seeing much success.  Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Edison

 What can we do about this?  How can we stop the cycle?  I think I have stumbled upon a solution, though it does take some work and a lot of perseverance and patience.

 Up until this year, I have always made revisions an option.  I wanted the kids to make the personal choice to better their work.  I wanted this choice to have intrinsic value to the kids.  I have discovered that the kids who tend to be my higher level thinkers usually revise most of their work with little prompting from me.  The kids, who would most benefit from the revision policy, typically avoid revising their work.  I decided that I needed to intervene.

 What did I do?  I used an idea I heard from Matt Davidson this past October and applied it to my classes.  The idea I secured is called “F or D and You See Me”.  The premise of this idea is that I will no longer accept F’s and D’s from any of my students.  The kids no longer have the choice to revise assignments of this quality.

 F or D and You See Me:

  If you earn a D or an F on any assignment, you have five days to revise it at your pace.

 After the 5th day, you will be invited to join me for lunch to revise said assignment(s).

 You will be asked for the revision the following day; if you still don’t have it revised you will join me for lunch again.

 We continue this process until the assignment has been revised to a C or better quality.  The student still receives the grade change in the grade book (at this point).

 If the assignment was an incomplete, I will simply check it off in my grade book once it is revised to a C or better quality, though the grade will remain a zero.  The understanding of the material is the goal – not the actual grade.

 Once we come to the end of the chapter, revisions can no longer be submitted for grade changes.  Students that still have D or F papers must still revise their work though.  The only change is that I will enter a check in my grade book once the revision is to a C or better quality.

 This new process is a true testament of perseverance and endurance.  Many of my kids didn’t really think I would go through with this process.  I did.  I do.  I will.  I have made laminated passes for the kids to help reduce my time involvement in this process.  I hand out the passes before lunch each day.  If the said students have the revisions prior to lunch, they can turn them in to me and return the pass.  Is this a lot of work?  You bet it is!  Has it made a difference?  Absolutely!  The vast majority of my students figured out that I won’t quit.  My hope is that my students will learn how to “not quit”.  Most of my kids now revise the D and F papers prior to the 5th day.  I do still have a few that fight me on this, though my team and I are trying to come up with new strategies with them.  It is an ongoing effort!

**  Mark will be speaking at the 18th National Forum on Character Education to be held October 19-22 in San Francisco.  Register now at www.character.org and make sure you get to hear him!

I was happy to see that McLean High School (where I taught before retiring from teaching and coming to work for CEP) was ranked 13^th on the list of schools in the Washington, DC area. It was the highest ranked school in Fairfax County Public School District, a fact that I’m sure made the folks on the McLean faculty proud—especially since they were also ranked high in the national list of the top 200 high schools.  I’m sure there is lots of celebrating going on in schools all over who consider themselves to be among the best high schools in America because they made the list.

But is that legitimate? I agree with Mathews on the need to offer challenging courses to anyone who wants to try. As a former Advanced Placement English teacher, I’ve seen kids who had never taken an advanced class before rise to the challenge in my class. Even if they didn’t pass the test, the introduction to the advanced curriculum and the struggle to learn pays dividends in college, which is what Mathews has found through his research. But being a good school requires so much more than that.

CEP recently released its own list of outstanding schools, the 2011 National Schools of Character. Here are 44 schools that are giving their best efforts to develop caring learning communities where students are engaged, motivated, and succeeding. Each and every one of these schools is a beacon of light showing what good things happen when schools move past the test and embrace all aspects of child development. But the process to evaluate these schools is based on much more than test scores and requires an in-depth analysis of each school’s individual culture, rather than a comparison against other schools. Each of these schools has documented its success in meeting the guidelines of CEP’s 11 Principles of Effective Character Education.

I’d like these schools to get even a fraction of the coverage Mathew’s Challenge Index gets, and I’d like to see more schools want to achieve school of character status rather than worry about a numbered ranking. It’s the overall focus on the student’s well being and not just test rankings that will make a difference.

For this reason, it is always heart-warming to hear about schools or programs that have taken it on themselves to make prom night an option for all who want to attend by alleviating some of the financial considerations surrounding the event. Earlier this month, NBC’s Washington, D.C.-affiliate reported on one such program initiated by a marketing teacher at a local high school. The class gets hands-on experience with marketing by promoting a prom shop opened in a local mall that provides free dresses, shoes, jewelry, and handbags to any student that wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to go to the prom. The shop is staffed by adult volunteers and every item is donated to the group.

Even here at CEP, we recognized a Promising Practice in 2009 from Paul M. Dorman High School that runs a similar program called “Operation Fairytale.” By receiving donations from local employees and businesses, the program is able to provide dresses, shoes, accessories, and restaurant gift cards to help those students whose families would not be able to afford to expenses. Participants in the program complete several requirements, including an essay and community service project, which keep them invested in working towards their goals.

Does your school face similar difficulties? What ways have you found to make prom be more accessible to your students?

Just take a look at the takeaways:

Participants will learn how to help secondary students…

• Develop skills in perspective taking and empathy that lead to respectful and compassionate behavior.
• Appreciate diversity and work collaboratively with their peers.
• Build safe and respectful environments in their classrooms and school.
• Develop positive relationships with their teachers.
• Address underlying thoughts and emotions that interfere with learning.
• Become self-motivated and engaged learners.
• Identify their strengths, set goals, and prepare for their future.

Special emphasis will be given to student transition into ninth grade. I know from my 32 years as a high school and middle school teacher that those transition years are the most challenging and most important. My school set up a mentoring program for seniors to mentor the freshmen and offered welcoming opportunities and workshops. But still, many of the discipline problems and academic challenges came from the ninth grade class. How I wish I could have taken a workshop like this one.

The presenters’ credentials are impressive. Kathy Beland was the lead writer for CEP’s Eleven Principles Sourcebook (2003), a compendium of resources for character education. She is also the lead author of “School-Connect, Optimizing the High School Experience,” a curriculum designed to boost social, emotional and academic skills, and the original author of “Second Step, A Violence-Prevention Curriculum” (grades K-9). In 2009 she received the Sanford N. McDonnell Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education.

Co-presenter Julea Douglass also has outstanding credentials. She is associate director of School-Connect and co-author of “School-Connect: Optimizing the High School Experience.”  She served as research associate and program coordinator at CEP and is lead author of the CEP Character Education Evaluation Toolkit. Julea received her M.Ed. specializing in human development and psychology from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia’s Curry Programs in Clinical and School Psychology.