Blog - Sound Discipline

15Nov 2022 by Mary Power

Educators Need Support to Implement Practices that are Relational, Student Centered, and Culturally Responsive

Mutual Respect, Point of View, Race and Equity, Teachers

“I decided to become a teacher so I could become the adult for students that I needed when I was a kid.” – Sound Discipline educator participant

Educators universally share a sense of purpose and hope for the good they can do in the world. Sometimes, however, they lose sight of that vision. Educators’ jobs are challenging, misunderstood, and burdened with competing demands. As they work with us, educators talk about reconnecting with that sense of purpose and loving their jobs again, even while navigating all these complex challenges. Wanting to be that adult we needed for our students is …

31Oct 2022 by Mary Power

DOOL Youth Inspire Educators to Share Power and Create Equitable Learning Environments

Connection, Inspiring Stories, Race and Equity, Racial Justice, Teachers

DOOL presenters pose in front of the Space Needle after an inspiring session at the TAF Convening!

On October 8th a diverse crowd of educators filed into the Laser Dome at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. However, none of them were there to see a laser show! They had all come to experience an immersive workshop designed and facilitated by youth from Sound Discipline’s DOOL program. DOOL (Designing Our Own Learning) is in its fourth year, bringing together students and educators to share power, develop leadership skills, and reimagine our educational system. The original funding for DOOL came through a grant …

30Sep 2022 by Mary Power

Changing the World, A Classroom at a Time

In the News, Point of View, Racial Justice, School Partners

We’ve been head down, all of us, chipping away at the tough stuff in front of us for the last few years. At Sound Discipline’s board retreat last week, we stepped back and took a look around at the world that is the context for all of our work in schools:

The pandemic
Division and suspicion of “the other”
Climate impacts like wildfires, storms, and floods
Racism
Gun violence

All of this big stuff is overwhelming and bigger than any one of us. But every day, when students show up in classrooms, the moments matter. Subtle changes make profound differences. …

19Aug 2022 by Mary Power

Centered in Belonging: In-Person & Online Professional Development for Teachers

Connection, In the News, School Partners, Teachers

I love owls. I even collect them. Hence, when Sound Discipline launched our hybrid professional development program for educators in August, featuring Rooty Hooty, I got pretty excited.

Our ‘Rooty Hooty’ webcam

What is Rooty Hooty?

Rooty got its name from the first workshop where it was used — Rooted Relationships: Growing Equitable Classroom Communities. It’s a Meeting Owl, aka a fancy web cam made by Owl Labs. With a swivel-head, 360-degree camera and microphone, participants can see, hear, and engage easily with one another, even in group discussion.

Making community and connection accessible for all …

14Jun 2022 by Mary Power

Graduation – Sound Discipline’s Identity and Values

In the News, Resilience, School Partners, Teachers

It’s June – graduation season: These times are so precious and vital. Graduations mark the unfolding of our stories.

What is the story of the 2021/2022 school year? Heads nod when I sum it up this way; This was a year like no other. The return to in-person learning as the pandemic raged on meant doing the best we could under constant stress, strain, and uncertainty. Teachers and administrators worked harder than ever. Community partners showed up in creative and responsive ways. Families leaned in to support their school communities.

Our students showed the effects of isolation and …

20Apr 2022 by Mary Power

Rooted Relationships

Connection, In the News, Relationships, Teachers

Everywhere I turn, now, I see the topics of trauma, restorative practice, and liberatory pedagogy, like mushrooms springing up in the deadwood and the decay of the factory model of education. I also see fear – of culturally responsive teaching, critical race theory, and even social emotional learning. The most neutral way to describe it is as a conversation about values. At Sound Discipline, we are in that conversation, about values, and about how to go deeper and be braver, how to show up with a vision that is big and powerful enough to meet this moment and accelerate change.…

07Apr 2022 by Mary Power

Orcas in the C’s at Lakeridge Elementary

Inspiring Stories, School Partners, Teachers

Lakeridge Elementary 1st grade Orcas who participate in the ‘Orcas in the Cs’ program.

For so many schools, it has been a tumultuous two years from school-on-a-screen to in-person learning. This is definitely the case for Lakeridge Elementary in the Renton (Washington) School District. For new 1st graders, school was in constant transition. Starting kindergarten on Zoom, they learned what it meant to be part of a classroom community through a screen. Later, when welcomed back into the school building as 1st graders for the first time in the fall of 2021, they began learning how to be part of …

17Mar 2022 by Mary Power

The Mindful Mentors Project in Tukwila School District

Community Partnerships, Inspiring Stories

The Mindful Mentors Project, in the Tukwila School District, brings together teens and third graders to connect as mentors and mentees, who engage together in learning about social emotional learning, mindfulness, and movement.

Partnering with the students on this project are Thrive Centered (formerly Thrive Yoga), an organization that centers embodiment and provides somatic-based SEL and restorative practices for youth K-12, Sound Discipline, Tukwila Elementary School, and Foster High School.

Foster High School Mindful Mentor Andy Huynh

In Spring of 2021, Thrive Centered, founded by Damithia Nieves, and Sound Discipline, recruited six high school students to serve as mentors. …

07Mar 2022 by Mary Power

An Interview with Tonya Wilson

In the News, Race and Equity, Racial Justice

Directly impacted by the prison system, today Tonya Wilson is the Reentry Outreach Coordinator of Freedom Project, and a board member of the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (FEPPS) at the University of Puget Sound. A Tacoma native, Tonya is a TEDx speaker and appeared in the documentary “Since I’ve Been Down.”

“It would be easy for someone to have looked at my mom’s life and to look at all effort expended on her behalf as wasted resources.”

– Tonya Wilson, from her 2015 TEDx Talk Cracked Sidewalks

On March 15, 2022, from 12-2pm PST, Sound Discipline is …

16Feb 2022 by Mary Power

Lakeridge Elementary’s Journey

Inspiring Stories, Problem Solving, Race and Equity, Racial Justice, Teachers

What is it like to transform a school into a place where all young people feel they belong, they matter, and they can grow as learners?

Lakeridge Elementary, in the Renton School District, has been on just such a journey. In the spring of 2020, while navigating remote learning during school closures, the skilled Lakeridge data team, supported by Sound Discipline facilitators, decided to focus data collection on identifying patterns of racial disproportionality in discipline and identifying ways to develop a truly inclusive school community.

Analyzing Data and Looking for Patterns

A typical data team is made up of members …