Students at Evanston Township High School will be rewarded for good behavior next year.
In an effort to improve student behavior, ETHS administrators presented a new behavior support plan at the school board meeting Monday night. The plan, which will start in the fall, includes encouraging good behavior with Kit Cash, which students can redeem for various rewards, including raffle prizes or school supplies.
“We’re redefining rules, redefining behaviors, and we’re putting it in a positive sense instead of a negative sense,” said teacher Gary Haller, who helped plan the new program.
A series of behavior support workshops staff members attended last summer at Loyola University Chicago inspired the program. After the workshops, ETHS formed a team to work on a plan that incorporated the key elements of the workshop, such as responding consistently to misbehavior, systematically using data to monitor progress of student behavior and clarifying appropriate behavior for different locations throughout the school.
For the upcoming school year, ETHS administrators intend to implement a school store to redeem Kit Cash, an online discipline referral system and schoolwide behavioral expectations for all students at different locations on campus.
“I’m very supportive of the idea of positive reinforcement,” board member Mark Metz said.
ETHS administrators will distribute surveys to a sample student population in the next month to obtain feedback on the program. Teachers will also learn more about the program in workshop sessions in August.
“When it’s all said and done, we’re going to have a program we’re very proud of,” Principal Oscar Hawthorne said.
SELF-SEGREGATION STUDY
ETHS seniors presented their findings on self-segregation and peer groups at the high school in a study completed in partnership with the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola.
The study found students at ETHS segregate themselves into groups largely based on race, and these peer groups order themselves in a social hierarchy with white students receiving the most power and privilege.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
Also at the meeting, Michael Van Krey and Matt Walsh, co-leaders of professional development at ETHS, updated the board on the progress of professional learning communities, which are groups of staff that meet on a regular basis to improve student learning.
Van Krey and Walsh also presented a model for professional development for next year that focuses on four learning “strands.” These strands, which faculty members will experience over a four-year period, include race and equity, instructional practices, effective effort and behavior and data-driven problem solving.[email protected]
