The Power of a Phone Call
I'll be honest, I'm not big on talking on the phone. I'd rather put my thoughts into an email or a text. But when it comes to school issues, sometimes a phone call can be a powerful tool to fix a problem. Not to mention that there are some situations where trying to describe an event that happened at school is too challenging to do in an email. And let's not forget how the phrase "Do we need to call your parents?" can cause a change in behavior pretty quickly.
For the past few weeks I've been collecting some data on a few students who are "frequent flyers" to the nurse's office or have an "emergency" need to use the bathroom (when the parents haven't already indicated an issue with these areas). Making a few phone calls to check in with parents on these emergencies has helped to clear up many of these unnecessary exits from the classroom. Let's be honest-it's the beginning of the year and some students want to see what they can get away with. I'm not one to hold a student from the bathroom when they say it is an emergency, but I give them a straight-forward reminder about the fact that they should have tried using the bathroom 15 minutes ago when we came in from recess. The last thing I want is an embarrassed student who has had an accident in the classroom. However, once the students realize that I am keeping track of classroom exits and making phone calls, the frequency dies down quite a bit.
Today I spoke with a parent who was having concerns about her son's behavior at home, and she was wondering how he has been at school. Her son had needed to make fairly frequent visits to the office a few years ago for being intentionally disruptive and disrespectful in the classroom. Some medication that he was taking seemed to help with these issues, but he was recently taken off the medication due to ineffectiveness and others didn't seem to help. I think I calmed her fears a bit when I let her know that the types of behaviors he showed a few years ago were not what I was seeing this year. Is her son one of my "frequent flyers"? Absolutely! Does he need some help with how he interacts with some of his classmates? You bet! We talked about these issues as well, but with some consistent reminders of expectations and repeated practice of routines, I am hopeful we can take care of some of his emergency exits. And if some of his previous behavioral concerns arise, his mom is just a phone call away...
Mindfulness thought of the week: "You can't stop what's coming, but you can choose how to react."
A frequent quote that Tom J Deters uses on the ProYou Podcast is "You can't stop what's coming." This quote is from the movie No Country for Old Men. I decided to share this quote with my students with an addition of my own. We talked about the fact that there are certain things that are out of our control and will just "happen". But we have the ability to choose how we will react. I gave them this analogy: You can't control whether or not someone throws a ball at you. But you can control what you do. You can step out of the way and let it pass you by (nothing happens to you). Or you could catch the ball, throw it back, and start a game of catch (turn it into a good thing). Or you could let it hit you and then complain that it happened (not really the best choice...) In life, there are times when we let things pass us by, and we don't know if they would have been good or bad. But when we see them coming, we can choose whether or not they will have a positive or negative effect on us. Now, of course, I knew one of the students would ask, "But what if you don't see it coming?" The answer is still the same-we can choose how we will react.
For the past few weeks I've been collecting some data on a few students who are "frequent flyers" to the nurse's office or have an "emergency" need to use the bathroom (when the parents haven't already indicated an issue with these areas). Making a few phone calls to check in with parents on these emergencies has helped to clear up many of these unnecessary exits from the classroom. Let's be honest-it's the beginning of the year and some students want to see what they can get away with. I'm not one to hold a student from the bathroom when they say it is an emergency, but I give them a straight-forward reminder about the fact that they should have tried using the bathroom 15 minutes ago when we came in from recess. The last thing I want is an embarrassed student who has had an accident in the classroom. However, once the students realize that I am keeping track of classroom exits and making phone calls, the frequency dies down quite a bit.
Today I spoke with a parent who was having concerns about her son's behavior at home, and she was wondering how he has been at school. Her son had needed to make fairly frequent visits to the office a few years ago for being intentionally disruptive and disrespectful in the classroom. Some medication that he was taking seemed to help with these issues, but he was recently taken off the medication due to ineffectiveness and others didn't seem to help. I think I calmed her fears a bit when I let her know that the types of behaviors he showed a few years ago were not what I was seeing this year. Is her son one of my "frequent flyers"? Absolutely! Does he need some help with how he interacts with some of his classmates? You bet! We talked about these issues as well, but with some consistent reminders of expectations and repeated practice of routines, I am hopeful we can take care of some of his emergency exits. And if some of his previous behavioral concerns arise, his mom is just a phone call away...
Mindfulness thought of the week: "You can't stop what's coming, but you can choose how to react."
A frequent quote that Tom J Deters uses on the ProYou Podcast is "You can't stop what's coming." This quote is from the movie No Country for Old Men. I decided to share this quote with my students with an addition of my own. We talked about the fact that there are certain things that are out of our control and will just "happen". But we have the ability to choose how we will react. I gave them this analogy: You can't control whether or not someone throws a ball at you. But you can control what you do. You can step out of the way and let it pass you by (nothing happens to you). Or you could catch the ball, throw it back, and start a game of catch (turn it into a good thing). Or you could let it hit you and then complain that it happened (not really the best choice...) In life, there are times when we let things pass us by, and we don't know if they would have been good or bad. But when we see them coming, we can choose whether or not they will have a positive or negative effect on us. Now, of course, I knew one of the students would ask, "But what if you don't see it coming?" The answer is still the same-we can choose how we will react.
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