The Clerc Center
Connection

Community Meetings on Respect

by Heather Jilao

On On the freshmen team we have community meetings every Tuesday and Thursdays. Tuesdays are for meeting in small groups and Thursdays are for whole team meetings. An agenda board is posted in our hallway for students and teachers to write down things that they would like to address in the meetings. Agenda items are discussed in small groups meetings and on Thursdays each team takes a turn in sharing or summarizing the ideas and strategies they came up with.

In October a concern was listed on our community meeting agenda board regarding disrespectful behavior among students. The problem focused on students insulting and teasing other students about being "lower ability." The team decided to focus on this problem during our community meetings. During our next small group meeting we identified disrespectful incidents that students have seen or experienced themselves. These lists were brought back to the whole team for sharing. The next step was to develop scenarios for the students to role-play in their small groups. The goal of these meetings was to come up with strategies to reduce or eliminate the disrespectful behavior. Students practiced their strategies through the role-playing sessions for two weeks and then shared their scenarios with the whole team.

The problem focused on students insulting and teasing other students about being "lower ability."

The next question being addressed by the small groups is how to convince students on the team and in the school to try the strategies that we have developed. We will be working as a team to devise activities and projects suggestions for getting the word out about our resolutions for disrespectful behavior. The students will present their ideas/projects to the team and the team will vote on one project to develop and implement on a school wide basis. Stay tuned for more updates on our project.