Blog - Page 2 of 24 - Sound Discipline

10Dec 2020 by Pase Garrett

Strengthening Student Skills for Classroom Connection

We are inspired this month by a team of 6 educators, counselors, and school psychologists who are collaborating with Sound Discipline to create social emotional learning lessons for small groups. This project is funded by a Renton Early Learning Support Grant through the Center for Community Education Results (CCER).

Stacy Lappin, Director of Program at Sound Discipline, Jody McVittie, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Sound Discipline, Khristian Palmer, 2nd Grade Teacher, Sartori Elementary School, Julietta Skoog, School Psychologist, Kayla Root, Kindergarten Teacher, Sartori Elementary School, Rebekah Appleton, Counselor, Highlands Elementary School, Meg Herlofsky, School Psychologist, Lakeridge and Campbell Hill Elementary Schools,…

10Dec 2020 by Pase Garrett

Resilience through Transition – An Art Activity for Classrooms or Families

Parents, Teachers, Tips & Tools

This activity is designed to support students (and adults too!) with all the changes in our world. The external changes are happening fast, and this is an opportunity to slow down and emotionally process the changes internally. William Bridges (author of Managing Transitions) calls this internal process a “transition.” As we navigate the change, the transition starts with the feelings associated with losing something familiar, something we thought of as normal, or something we cared about. The activity can be adapted for your family or classroom, as you see fit.

All of us have experienced loss. Being able to …

10Dec 2020 by Pase Garrett

Rethinking Rewards: Alternatives to Offering Incentives

Teachers, Tips & Tools

Teachers, you have been accomplishing incredible feats this year! It is mind-boggling how your job has changed because of the pandemic and online teaching. Though some of your students are thriving, you may be worried about many who do not seem engaged and who aren’t completing assignments. It is easy to think that rewards may be the answer that you just need to provide the right incentives to get your students to be engaged and completing their work. Despite solid research showing that rewards decrease internal motivation, passion, and interest, the draw to use rewards and incentives is strong. They …

02Dec 2020 by Pase Garrett

Designing Our Own Learning Team

Inspiring Stories

Evergreen High School and Dimmitt Middle School Students and Educators

**The Designing Our Own Learning Team**

This August Sound Discipline hosted our second annual “Designing Our Own Learning” (DOOL) intensive summer program. For two weeks, diverse students and teachers from Evergreen High School and Dimmitt Middle School joined together online with Sound Discipline facilitators to build authentic community, develop youth leadership and advocate for anti-racist practices within schools.

Within the DOOL community, we split into 3 “solidarity groups”, smaller intergenerational and intersectional teams whose purpose was to explore and embody anti-racist practices, while also developing projects that could …

09Nov 2020 by Allison Carney

Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity

Connection and love, Featured, Feelings and emotions, Point of View

“Inclusion is not an intellectual thing. It has to be visceral. Words like diversity, equity, inclusion have no meaning at all unless we make it personal, unless we connect these themes to our life story and operationalize them in the actions of our daily lives.” – Jonathan Joseph, Sound Discipline Board of Directors.

In July, Sound Discipline Board Members Jonathan Joseph and Debbie Symonds worked together to design an equity curriculum for the Sound Discipline Board around a year-long study of the book Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity: The Keys to Successful Equity Implementation by Floyd Cobb and John …

05Nov 2020 by Pase Garrett

November Tips & Tools – Holding on to Hope (For Teachers)

Tips & Tools

This year has been rough. An undeniable understatement. Hope seems hard to reach, especially when our resilience has been tested these in these long challenging months since last spring. Yet hope is an antidote to despair. And while acknowledging the emotional toll of these times is crucial, equally crucial is our ability to hold onto a belief in positive future possibilities. Hope can sustain us, and gives our hard work a purpose that fuels us with energy and optimism. The same is true for our students. Students who are high in hope have greater academic achievement, stronger friendships, more creativity …

05Nov 2020 by Pase Garrett

November Tips & Tools – Harnessing Hope (For Parents)

Tips & Tools

Hope is the belief in a positive future. It is an optimistic, exciting sense of what is possible. In this time of global health crisis, economic uncertainty, racial reckoning, and physical disconnection from other human beings, the day to day challenges of doing everything differently make it difficult to hold onto hope. Yet hope is an antidote to despair. It can give us the energy to persevere and can offer a sense of purpose, calm and connection. Parents are children’s first hope builders. Your presence, connection, and attitude can help your child be more hopeful. They look to you to …

14Oct 2020 by Pase Garrett

October Tips & Tools – Four Ideas for Stressed Parents

Tips & Tools

We are parenting more hours a day than ever before. In-person school, in-person play dates and visits with family and friends are things we hope to resume in the near future, but they aren’t providing much relief for parents at the moment.

Have you noticed any of these issues coming up for your kids?

stressing out over seemingly small things, like tech issues during on-line school or having to ask the teacher a question
more disorganized than usual and having difficult time keeping up with assignments
less physically active
less social and more isolated
on screens much more than usual

…

09Oct 2020 by Pase Garrett

Sound Discipline Data Teams: Addressing Disproportionality in Discipline

Featured, In the News, Point of View

Sound Discipline school data teams are representatives from the school community who share leadership and meet regularly to review disciplinary referral data with a trauma informed, solution focused lens. As day-to-day situations come up, the data helps place those incidents in a broader context, revealing patterns and pointing to deeper systemic issues — processes, policies, practices, and mindset — often the upstream causes of problems in the classroom.

Ms. Thompson’s 4th grade classroom was a stark example of the kinds of issues data teams can uncover. When Ms. Thompson saw her disciplinary referral numbers, she was shocked. All of the …

08Oct 2020 by Pase Garrett

October Tips & Tools for Educators

Tips & Tools

2020 is not what any of us imagined when we chose to become educators! Most of you are teaching online and have not met your students except through a screen. We are hearing that the learning curve has been steep and that you are stressed …and it is only October. We, at Sound Discipline, thank you for your Herculean efforts and for all that you are doing for our community’s children. Our job is to help support you in your job. Each month in our newsletter we will offer two tips or tools that have been proven to make a …