Reflection

Good afternoon.

My name is Tawanda High, and I'm here to talk

to you about my presentation of my discipline matters Change

Project. I presented my change project to my foot great

team as well as Principal Susie Brown.

She is not the current principal at the Holly Springs

Intermediate School, but she is the previous principal.

Before we received the current principal, I also invited the

current principal to view the project.

But unfortunately, she was unable to join us.

But I'm hoping that she will be able to view

the project.

So I started my presentation off with my abstract, which

explained what my project goals were.

And I wanted them to understand that this project is

going to examine the discipline gaps between our discipline policies.

I also wanted to help them understand that this change

project will help reduce our disproportionate discipline gap and also

come up with alternative punishments for our students, then suspensions

and, um, expulsions.

The first thing I did was to also introduce to

them our school data are school discipline datum.

The discipline data says that 92% of our black students

were suspended in 2018 and 24% of our suspensions were

for students with I E.

P's, and only 6% of our suspensions were four white

students, so they were able to understand that there is

a need for a change.

I also identified the RUC houses off this gap and

those root causes or bias professional development and school policies.

I also talked about, um, the state legislation law every

child's every student succeeds at and how it affects my

change project.

This X says that all schools have to report their

discipline rates on their school report cards, and to do

that is to help them encourage them to come up

with alternatives to help students engage and alternative discipline so

that students won't be getting suspended and to help reduce

the gap.

I also gave my ration ale four the change that

I'm going to make.

I explained that a lot of our new teachers are

not equipped to deal with our students who have adverse

childhood experiences.

I explained that also, some of them don't know how

to deal with disappoint problems in their classroom other than

suspending stone.

It's also discussed our school policies, such as our ability

grouping which causes most of the discipline students or, as

as they're known, the behaviour Children.

So I'll be in two particular classrooms throughout the school.

And when I say throughout the school, I mean we

ability group from fourth through sixth grade, which our groups

have labels, it's, um, ABC, Andy and usually seeing the

other behavior classes, though there the students with the most

disciplined problems I usually put in there because those are

the students who have the Lord test scores.

The I E P students are usually in those classrooms

as well.

Um, every now and then, you might have an I.

P student that has scored high enough not to be

in those classes, but most of the time, your I

P students will be in those two classes as well.

The other two classes are A and B, and, um,

the A class is what we call usually the top

class and be classes, the ones that were slightly behind.

We use the column rt 50 and, um, a lot

of our discipline problems come from that grouping because a

lot of these Children have been grouped in these groups

from kindergarten and a lot of them was staying those

groups until they get to high school.

And by the time they get to us in the

fourth grade, they have really developed some love hate relationships,

and it doesn't usually work out so good.

And a lot of the extreme discipline problems are usually

in the declasse.

And those students are usually sometimes, it seems to be,

um, trying to outdo each other, so the grouping that

we have them in is not the best.

We also have school uniform policies and for us to

be a title one school.

We have a lot of students that they're just they

from. Some of them don't have the things that they

need to be in uniform and in my great level.

Actually, we buy uniforms and things toe help with the

ones that we need help with and try to keep

the number of uniform infractions down.

But overall for the school, everyone doesn't do that.

And so some of the suspension rates four uniform policies

are high because the Children just don't have what they're

supposed to have.

Some of them are not keeping up with it once

you give it to them, so I think it we

weren't some change.

Some of these policies it would also reduce the discipline

rate. The other thing I discussed with them waas the

biases. Now, um, one of the value since I discussed

in my project was the attribution Bias attribution Bias is

when teachers perceive a student's behavior.

Toby um, incorrect or inappropriate.

And therefore they punish the student without actually investigating because

the child is perceived as a behavior child.

I think that if we took more time out to

investigate, to dig into, to make sure that we're making

the appropriate punishments without just assuming that this child is

the one is they're always acting out.

They're just doing it again that that will reduce some

of the suspense.

Isas Well, and I know that this plays a role

because last year we actually had several suspensions overturned by

the board.

Parents were bringing students back, um, because someone didn't take

the time to listen to the story completely or do

a complete investigation as of what happened.

And when the parents started to ask questions, they actually

went to the board and had suspensions older timed.

So I knew that this had to be one of

the issues we were having with our suspension rights, man

extremely high.

Another thing that I noticed was implicit bias.

I would have never thought of implicit bias is being

one of the factors.

But after I took the implicit bias test myself, I

realised that, yeah, it could play a role as well.

We don't have very many, um, teachers.

That would probably have implicit biases, but we do have

enough where it would have an effect.

So I do think that that was also one of

the contributors to our extreme discipline policies.

I also explained the system, thinking We have to.

When we first started this project, I think we all

believed that there had to be some mistake.

This can't be our data on suspension rates Can't be

this high.

Um, I realized that they were, and I realized that

the first step in fixing this problem is going to

be accepting the data, figuring out how we can change

the data and being comfortable enough with each other to

talk when there's a problem and come up with the

solution. This goes along with my change project as far

as PLC s they'll be very important to systems thinking

when one thing doesn't work that has normally worked.

The teacher needs to be able to come.

So the team discussed was going on and get some

new strategies.

And some changes are just some things to fix the

problem. There shouldn't be so much judgmental.

Nous um, the teachers should feel intimidated to come together

and help the culture between the teachers should be opening

up. What we can talk about our problems, use the

data and find solutions.

This is the only way we'll have a continuous improvement

plan going.

This is the only way I can see us becoming

a competent system is to acknowledge the problem, figure out

what needs to be changed and a justice necessary.

The next thing I discussed with them was my theory

of change, which explained what things I wanted the principle

to do and what outcome that would have for the

teachers and the students.

Kind of like a chain reaction.

The principles actions would affect the teacher's actions and therefore

overall affect.

The student outcomes also gave them my projected outcomes evidence,

and the evidence is going to show that my project

is working is that we're gonna have reduced disruptions in

classrooms. We're gonna have increased intention, attendance and achievement.

We're gonna have reduced suspension rights and discipline referrals.

We're gonna have a more past of school culture.

We're gonna have greater school safety and prove step perceptions

of students behaviors, increased teacher knowledge and attitudes about behavior

towards restorative justice.

And we're going to reduce our disproportionality also gave them

a copy off the logic model.

And I'm sorry I gave them a copy of my

My theory of change is well, so that they can

look over it.

As I was going through the project, I also gave

them ah, copy of my intro ends my abstract so

that they could view those is well, also gave them

a copy of our school improvement plan.

Great goals.

And we went over the great those and how they

affect my change project and making sure that my change

project is able to end so until the school improvement

plan and is aligned with the school improvement plan, my

project actually aligns to gold number one of our improvement

plan which was to graduate 5% more students annually and

it actually fit into their area into different places.

As you can see, the second part of my project

also finance ago three, was to ensure safe, orderly and

nurturing environment as measured by safety surveys.

And this is where it's been in the improvement plan.

I also gave everyone a copy of the entire improvement

plan focused.

Three is well attracting and retaining quality step by increasing

the retention rate by 2%.

This is where the professional development comes in, helping teachers

to be able to relate to students more positively.

This is actually affected into areas of the improvement plan.

And that was all of the information that I presented

to them doing my questions portion.

Principal Brown actually brought up some very interesting points that

I love.

I love inviting her to listen and participate in my

projects because she always has some great ideas.

She's a very inspirational role model for me.

Um, she brought forth the idea of also, um, incorporating

more hands on activities into the curriculum, so help with

the students that are not audits or with the students

that are more kinesthetic.

I also discussed with the team there we were going

to try to incorporate a culturally responsive curriculum scorecard because

so it is usually, um, stone is usually performed better

when they can relate to the information that's being presented

to them.

I also Miss Brown also add it there.

It would be a good idea to add professional development

on adverse childhood experiences.

She had a training that she had coming up, that

she had invited me to join to see if it

might be a professional development that I would like to

bring to the intermediate school.

It's whale.

We also talked about how to incorporate the more hands

on activities.

We'd help the bow, how this is all going toe

work with Colbert coming up.

And I wasn't sure about that yet.

But that was all that me and the team discussed.

Thank you.

I have a wonderful evening.

Reflection

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