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By MELISSA STEINEGER EUGENE, Oregon- Into the Kennedy Middle School cafeteria, 100 seventh- and eighth-graders quietly file, find seats, and settle down. School counselor Sharon Tabor stands, smiling, before the group. She holds up a hand. Within 10 seconds, all noise ceases. Youngsters sit attentively. Tabor briefly introduces the performance, a soap opera parody. As a dozen peers put on the skit, the audience watches-no wiggling, giggling, or elbowing. Just once does a teacher appear within the youngsters' field of vision. He taps his finger to his lips while looking meaningfully at one student, who blushes and sits quietly for the remainder of the presentation. All this attentiveness and courtesy occurs just two weeks before winter break. On a Friday. Sound like a fairy tale? At Kennedy Middle School, it's the new reality. Highlighted as a model school in the U.S. Education and Justice departments' first annual report on school safety, Kennedy has seen discipline referrals to the school office plunge from 100 a month to 30. Kennedy, along with a dozen other schools in the Eugene area, is participating in the Peaceable Educational Practices (PEP) project. Developed at the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior at the University of Oregon's School of Education, PEP draws upon current research to identify best practices for reducing school violence and then spreads the word. Currently, PEP is collaborating with the education service districts and schools in western Oregon from Eugene to Roseburg. PEP has organized the research on reducing school violence into three simple strategies: 1. COLLECT DATA. PEP helps schools create a profile of discipline patterns to better target their efforts. While schools may know the disciplinary record of individual students, usually they don't have the big picture -what type of referral behavior is most common schoolwide? Where and when does such behavior most often happen? Nor do schools typically know how effective current discipline methods are. With a PEP data profile, a school may see that a majority of referrals stem from, say, afternoon playground fights. The school can then provide lessons in appropriate playground behavior and step up the adult presence at afternoon recess. 2. ESTABLISH SCHOOLWIDE PROGRAMS. Typically using a research-based curriculum, schools teach students:
3. DEVELOP ADDITIONAL STRATEGIES TAILORED TO A SCHOOL'S SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. These strategies-which PEP calls Effective Behavior Support (EBS) systems-can range from schoolwide rules to individual interventions. The EBS team, a group of teachers who work with the PEP program coordinator, finds and tailors solutions for specific problem areas at their school. In the example above, the EBS team might have decided on appropriate interventions to address the playground problems. The EBS team also determines three to five schoolwide rules that every teacher teaches and every student must follow at all times. From these simple steps, in just three years has come a profound change-a revolution, even-at Kennedy Middle School. The transformation actually began before PEP was offered in the district. "It was my first year at Kennedy," Principal Kay Mehas recalls of 1995-96. "The sixth-grade teaching team came to me very concerned about the sixth-graders. They felt there were a high number of negative leaders, that the situation already was critical, and that-since such behavior typically worsens from sixth to eighth grade-if the behavior was not addressed, by eighth grade we would have an extremely serious problem." At a staff meeting, teachers began developing a strategy. The first step was to assign a mentor to each of 30 problematic sixth-graders. Teachers then tapped Mehas and Tabor, also new to Kennedy that year, to find a schoolwide curriculum that would help. While some adults see middle school students as too old for effective intervention-the attitude that if a student isn't reached by third grade, it's too late-Mehas believes middle school presents a wonderful opportunity to turn youngsters around. The middle years are an exhilarating period in the lives of children, she says -a time when kids start thinking for themselves. This critical stage in emotional and behavioral development is almost as important, Mehas says, as the first three years of life. And while parents are the biggest influence in a child's first three years, Mehas says, school-teachers, peers, and climate-can have an enormous influence when youths begin thinking independently. "A school culture," says Mehas, "influences how they'll see the world." Mehas, with an extensive background in education at all levels, and Tabor, also well-versed in elementary and middle school education, began investigating violence-prevention curricula. They chose Second Step, developed by the Seattle nonprofit group Committee for Children, for its strong focus on empathy. (See the article on Page 20 for more on Second Step.)
"There are a lot of programs because violence is a concern everywhere," says Mehas. "But if you can't see a situation from another point of view, you can't problem-solve effectively." Teachers approved Second Step, which at the middle school level teaches empathy, impulse control, and anger management mainly through videotaped scenarios and scripted role playing. The school paid for Tabor to attend training. Mehas paid her own way. "It's important to have at least two people at a training," Mehas says. "During the training, they can talk about how elements apply to their school, and they can assist each other once they're back at the school." When they returned, Mehas and Tabor trained the vice principal, and the three provided schoolwide inservice the following fall- the year the target sixth-graders entered seventh grade. "Everyone wanted the training -certificated and noncertificated," recalls Mehas. "And everyone came -cooks, janitors, office staff. We all wanted to speak the same language." Everyone taught Second Step. Every noncertified member of the school community chose a teacher to team up with. Once a week for 40 minutes, parent volunteers handled office and other duties while teachers and staff taught the Second Step curriculum. To help teachers handle the additional workload, Mehas and Tabor prepared "grab-and-go" folders each week. These contained that week's Second Step lesson complete with overheads, quizzes, role-playing situations, and anything else that was needed. Tabor also offered to interested teachers a weekly work session on innovative ways to teach that week's curriculum. About half showed up each week for tips. At other times throughout the year, Mehas offered additional inservice training on the Second Step curriculum. At year's end, teachers evaluated the program and decided that the following year they would accelerate and concentrate the curriculum to speed up its impact. Instead of spreading out the lessons across many months, teaching them once a week as the curriculum developers recommend, Kennedy teaches Second Step for the first 40 minutes of the day for the first 15 days of the year. The faculty felt this intensive treatment would emphasize the importance of the message and get it across early in the year. Follow-up remind-ers would occur informally throughout the year as needed, teacher by teacher, class by class. At the beginning of the second year, Kennedy became a PEP school, essentially adding the EBS team to its efforts and collecting data for the schoolwide profile. The team spent the first year developing four schoolwide rules, along with some strategies for teaching them to all students: 1. RESPECT OTHERS
2. BE PREPARED TO LEARN
3. FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS
4. DO YOUR BEST
The importance of schoolwide rules can't be overstated, according to Gerald Hasselman, Kennedy Vice Principal and EBS team member. Youngsters need to know exactly what is expected of them at school, not have the rules-and consequences-change from class to class. "Otherwise, it's like driving down the highway where the speed limit changes from 55 to 70 back to 60 then down to 45, none of it marked," he says. "And sometimes the police let you off, sometimes they give you a ticket, sometimes you go to jail." If that would be frustrating to an adult, he continues, imagine how children feel. Yet that's exactly the guessing game created by inconsistency across classrooms. By the third year of Kennedy's efforts, the "wild" sixth-graders were eighth-graders. One day, a teacher reported to Mehas that as he was walking through of the eighth-grade locker bay, he notice an enormous difference. Instead of seeing a lot of shoving, shouting, and razzing, he saw an orderly scene of good-natured exchanges and quiet attention to business. "He told me, 'Wow. I would never have guessed this was that sixth-grade class,'" says Mehas.
Even more remarkable, when the eighth-graders went on to high school the following year, the principal e-mailed Mehas to say the freshman class from Kennedy Middle School was "fabulous … the best in years." "I have never gotten a letter like that from a principal," said Mehas. And there were more accolades to come. The principal of a district elementary school phoned Mehas to report that parents wanted the elementary school to adopt the programs Kennedy was using because they wanted the grade school to "have the same atmosphere as Kennedy Middle School had." Added to this anecdotal record of success are the hard facts: The number of referrals has dropped by a whopping two-thirds. The before and after figures for the first three months of the school year were 450 (1995-96) and 105 (1998-99). Individual results are also compelling. One sixth-grader came into Mehas' office on a discipline referral. "Your teacher said you were fighting," Mehas told the boy. The youngster considered for a moment, then calmly replied: "I can see how from the teacher's point of view it might have seemed like we were fighting. But from our point of view, we were just wrestling." The offender was suspended for three days because, as Mehas explains, "Anything that looks like a fight is treated like a fight." Still, she was impressed with the youngster's growing conflict-resolution skills. He was able to analyze instead of sulking or arguing. "He's obviously gaining awareness of his actions," she says, "and of other viewpoints." And Kennedy's efforts are spreading beyond campus. Parents report that students are using Second Step problem-solving strategies at home and with younger siblings. A survey taken after the first year found that more than 30 percent of students reported using Second Step strategies in their lives outside school. at the mall, students are nicer to each other," says seventh-grader Danielle Purkey. Dr. Jeff Sprague, Codirector of the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior, doesn't find this kind of outcome surprising. It's all in the research that led to PEP. Sprague has researched, published, and taught on the topic of preventing youth violence for 20 years. Four years ago, Sprague founded the institute with Dr. Hill Walker, a noted educator and author of numerous works, most recently Antisocial Behavior in School: Strategies and Best Practices, written with Geoff Colvin and Betsy Ramsey (Brooks/Cole, 1995). The institute, which has designed numerous programs aimed at reducing violence, developed PEP as a way to bring schools the latest research on reducing youth violence, in a practical, usable format. "More children are coming to school not as ready to learn as in the past," says Sprague. "They lack social skills, they bring family issues. They come to school feeling bad …. Kids from stressful family situations learn that the best response is the harshest response. They think yelling, shoving, and hitting are the correct response to criticism. When they get to school, that's how they respond to stresses." For these youngsters, says Sprague, their understanding of the punishment process is already distorted. Even mild punishment or criticism causes them to overreact. Even a neutral adult is seen as having negative intent. "You may think they'll outgrow this negative behavior," he says, "but research shows they get more intense and sophisticated in their negative behaviors." Compounding the situation at school, teachers sometimes model inappropriate behavior. They lose their cool. Or they may unconsciously use negative feedback- sometimes even being "trained" by high-risk students to reward negative behavior by giving more and more attention to it. One study, Sprague says, found that teachers with the highest number of discipline referrals used as many as 10 negative reinforcements ("Keep your eyes on your work," "No talking") for every positive interaction. Yet research clearly shows, says Sprague, that positive reinforcement is a powerful tool for changing behavior. The research-grounded method of discipline that works best, according to Sprague, is to treat the child's transgression as an error, not a symptom of bad character. He sets up a three-part solution:
Sprague believes that expelling or suspending children for misbehavior is "throwing them to the wolves." When a child is expelled, he may find himself in the company of family members involved in drugs or gangs-a setting hardly conducive to creating desired behavior. Instead, Sprague advocates restricting privileges like school dances or recess, or requiring youngsters to do school service. Sprague also advocates "punishment by rewards"-in other words, preventing discipline problems by rewarding good behavior. "People sometimes think that rewarding desired behavior will 'spoil' children," Sprague says. Many parents and educators believe that by the time kids are 13, they must accept the consequences of their decisions. But to Sprague, those young teenagers are still learning how to make decisions. Besides, he notes, teachers are often unaware of a hurtful or traumatic incident that happened that morning in the home or in the hallway that may have caused a child to lose control of good decisionmaking. Schools need to focus constantly on teaching children the skills they need to become more resistant to violence-just as drug-refusal skills are taught-and to give them feedback on how they're doing, Sprague stresses. In a sense, he says, kids need to learn "anger-refusal" skills. All this takes teacher and administrator time in the initial stages, Sprague admits. But schools where safety is a priority find a way. "Most teachers would gladly trade teaching behavior skills for … a classroom of interested, well-mannered learners," Sprague says. "And within a few years, the new culture becomes not a special project, but just the way the school does business." Kathy White, Lane ESD Prevention Specialist, has been helping the county's 16 school districts adopt PEP's three primary practices -collecting data, developing tailored strategies, and using a curriculum to increase social skills and reduce violence. She offers staff development, consultation, and assistance in finding funds. The institute and ESD share the cost of White's position. In the three years she's been helping schools launch PEP efforts, White has seen a dramatic drop in the number of discipline referrals. "By the second or third year," she says, "schools are seeing a drop of 50 percent or more." Kennedy's EBS team, which developed schoolwide rules last year, is now working to develop practices for the small group of youngsters who need additional intervention. Some kids can't be reached by schoolwide efforts. But teaching peaceful practices to everyone inoculates the group, Tabor says. If most students are solving problems in nonviolent ways, they serve as role models for the others. If 500 of 570 kids are using good problem-solving skills and, say, 20 kids show extremes of undesired behavior, those 20 are isolated within the larger group. They have less chance of becoming negative leaders for increasingly larger numbers of children, as sometimes happens. A criticism leveled by students is that some Second Step materials use language or hypotheticals that strike some kids as "hokey" or implausible. "It's good we know this, that we're learning this," says Jodi Parmer, 14, an eighth-grader. "But some of the (examples in the) videos aren't what would really happen." The eighth-graders have been revising some of the role-playing scripts to make them more current. For example, one scenario depicts a student lending a tape recorder to a friend. The new version substitutes a CD player-a more likely possession for today's kids. And regardless of how uncool some language may be, Jodi nonetheless sees positive effects in her life. "I don't think the school makes us act nice to each other," she says. "I have friends in every grade. I know what they feel like, empathize with how they might feel …. In school you can get in trouble if you're caught (being unkind), but outside there's nobody making you be nice-you just do it." One more viewpoint comes from Tim Finkle, custodial maintenance coordinator, and 22-year veteran of school hallways and byways where kids congregate. "Kids are learning how to be more respectful of each other and adults," Finkle says. "There used to be cliques, and there were still some in the second year. This year, none. I've said over and over to all the staff, this is my best year ever in school. The best year ever. We're reaping what we have sown." RESOURCE NOTE: The institute is in the process of developing a manual for educators interested in tailoring PEP for their school. For more information, contact the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior, College of Education, 1265 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1265, (541) 346-3592, ivdb@darkwing. uoregon.edu. n "It's like driving down the highway where the speed limit changes from 55 to 70 back to 60 then down to 45, none of it marked. Sometimes the police let you off, sometimes they give you a ticket, sometimes you go to jail." Expelling or suspending children for misbehavior is "throwing them to the wolves."
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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