THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504030045
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
Finula Reid decided to volunteer when her daughter Megan started coming home from kindergarten ``talking fresh'' and complaining about conditions at school.
Reid said she saw children ``swinging from the coat closets and hanging from the rails in the cafeteria'' at the school in the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank system. She saw two boys ``pounding on each other.'' She saw social workers dealing with kids who had problems stretching beyond the classroom.
Reid had seen enough.
She and Megan visited a private school, and Megan soon left the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank system.
``After 10 weeks she was already way behind, and I think it's because the teachers have to spend half their days disciplining children that I guess aren't disciplined at home,'' Reid said. ``There is such a difference between what she had and what she has now.
``I felt like she was lost in the shuffle because she wasn't a naughty kid.
Discipline in the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools is one of the district's most significant practical and public relations problems. Reid went out of her way earlier this year to discuss her impressions at a public hearing. Parents of well-adjusted and troubled kids often complain that not enough is being done to control or help the children who disrupt classes.
The county's schools, said Superintendent Joseph Peel, are caught in a wave of rising crime and poverty that is sucking up growing numbers of neighborhoods and depriving more children of the early care they need to succeed in school.
``Our community has been changing,'' said Peel, adding that growing numbers of troubled children have brought additional challenges to teaching. ``For some of our people, this is a new phenomenon.
``There's a lot of concern in our country about violence and about our inability to get along with each other,'' Peel said. ``Kids are safe in our schools. . . . But I think there's another issue, and that is, what is our learning environment like?''
The schools in the last several years have taken a number of creative steps to address the problems of disruptive students, from peer mediation and teacher training to the opening of an alternative school last fall for students in the upper grades.
Late last year, the district convened a Task Force on Disruptive Students that met several times to share information on the latest research and on efforts that have worked within the system. As the budgeting season approaches, School Board members are beginning to discuss some of the task force's recommendations.
A wish list prepared by the task force would seek about $100,000 next year to expand programs aimed at disruptive students and add staff members to deal with discipline problems. But under a budgeting climate that's encouraging cuts rather than expansion, Peel said the system will more likely build on what it's started at little additional cost.
The task force, consisting of about 18 principals, teachers and central office staff members, found that the 10 schools take a number of approaches to discipline based on the communities they serve, said Dr. Judy Thorne, the district's director of exceptional children and support services.
``I'm not sure if we ever arrived at a common enough definition of what would even be characterized as a disruptive student,'' Thorne said. ``Some of these schools, given their location, had more tolerance of certain behavior than other schools.''
``I think the elementary representatives were real interested as to what we can do in the prevention area,'' Thorne said. ``They're seeing kids come to school not ready to learn.''
Part of the district's efforts will be to identify and help children who come to kindergarten without the tools they need to take part in class - the same kinds of children the new state-sponsored Smart Start program is working to prevent in Pasquotank County.
And just as the school system is working on a variety of methods to teach children with different needs, it is exploring a range of ways to instill and enforce discipline.
``For a long time, most kids came to school ready to learn,'' Peel said. ``Behavior was not something you had to think about teaching them.''
But now, discipline is a form of instruction. And different children will respond to different methods.
``We don't teach everybody to read the same,'' Peel said. ``The same thing is true with behavior. It's almost like another subject.''
Some efforts to deal with disruptive students have been as simple as rearranging schedules. Sheep-Harney Elementary pulled its counselor out of the classroom, freeing her up to deal with students in single, group and family counseling.
``I feel good about it,'' said Sheep-Harney Principal Yvonne Walton. ``We should see a big difference next year.''
Schools are also working to get both children and parents more involved in student discipline.
Pasquotank Elementary has spent three years developing a process of ``cooperative discipline,'' in which students get a say in the rules that govern them and the consequences of misbehavior.
Renee Harris, a fifth-grade teacher and soon to be a national trainer for cooperative discipline programs, starts each day with a 15-minute class meeting. Her students use the time to compliment and help one another, to plan events, and to solve problems among themselves that arose the previous day. Often the class votes on solutions.
``It takes awhile to get results,'' Harris said. ``You can't expect anything to work overnight if you have a problem.
``We've seen positive results this year. It's been much easier on the teachers.''
At P.W. Moore Elementary, parents are volunteering in a variety of before- and after-school programs to help kids keep up with their schoolwork, Principal Linwood Williams said.
The school also has a child-advocacy program, in which at-risk students are teamed up with faculty and staff members who look out for them from day to day.
``We're finding that in many cases, children misbehave in the classroom when they can't do the work,'' Williams said. ``We're moving them forward so they can do better in the classroom.''
The task force has recommended that schools build on the successes of their own initiatives. For instance, all school counselors may be required to devote more time to individual or group counseling, as Sheep-Harney has done.
Schools will also be encouraged to develop a range of services for students who need alternate instruction. The system may seek to expand the Crossroads Alternative School, aimed primarily at sixth through 12-graders who have been kicked out of their schools for the year.
School disrupters often are ``the same children again and again,'' said Northeastern High School Principal Becky Phelps, a task force member.
``One of the main things that we have are just disruptive children in the classroom,'' Phelps said. ``We've labeled them the `won't-dos.' ''
Those are the children the system will have to work harder to reach, officials say. Educators hope the discipline children learn in school will carry over to the working world. Otherwise, they won't succeed.
``If we don't deal with those kids - that's why we're building prisons up the road here,'' Peel said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by ROBIE RAY, Staff
Renee Harris teaches a class in cooperative discipline at Pasquotank
Elementary School. Behind her on the wall are some of the rules for
class behavior set forth at the start of the school year.
by CNB