From Behaving to Belonging by Julie Causton

Author:Julie Causton [Causton, Julie, MacLeod, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781416629320
Publisher: ASCD
Published: 2020-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Cultivating Love and Reliance Within the Community for Teachers in Training

Two fabulous learning coaches we know, Jackie and Marissa, started a Teachers-in-Training (TinT) program in their Pennsylvania school district to support community building for students who had challenging behavior. Initially, their program focused on 4th–6th grade students who were communicating through challenging behavior that they needed social, behavioral, emotional, or academic support. Rather than discipline these students for their challenging behaviors, thereby reinforcing a negative cycle of failure and disconnection, Jackie and Marissa knew the students would benefit more from an opportunity to grow positive relationships and leadership skills with their peers and school community. Therefore, they invited several challenging students to participate in an official—but fun—TinT program in which these students would mentor younger students.

During the initial training, Jackie and Marissa emphasized that teachers in training were selected by their teachers for being responsible, hardworking, and kind. They said to the selected students, "You have all the characteristics that our kindergartners need modeled for them." After completing training, which consisted of learning how to support kindergartners in reading, writing, and other academic tasks, students received formal ID badges and certificates and were tasked with helping kindergarten teachers implement cooperative learning stations in their classrooms once a week. When they were in the kindergarten classrooms, the students were called by their official teacher in training names: Mr. or Miss and their last names.

Jackie and Marissa knew that even if it wasn't always going to be smooth sailing, the TinT program was an important responsibility for students and would not be taken away from them due to any continued challenging behavior in their grade-level classrooms. Jackie and Marissa explained it to us this way:

For some flawed reason, in education, our first response to misbehavior is often to take away the things that matter most to students. So when one student asked us during training, "What happens if I get ISS [in school suspension]?," we knew our belief that TinT participation could not be taken away. We decided then and there that ISS or not, TinTs would help in their kindergarten classrooms. (personal communication, June 24, 2019)

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