Action Research: Jewish day schools and derekh eretz

Galya Greenberg is a graduate of Brandeis University and The Jewish Theological Seminary with more than twenty years of Jewish day school experience. She participated in the 2003 and 2006 cohorts of the Lookstein Principals’ Seminar.

The desire to help students develop into decent, moral, caring human beings – mentsches – is often included in the mission statements of Jewish day schools. Educators and parents alike recognize that academic learning is but one part of a Jewish education, along with spirituality and derekh eretz. The Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Hartford includes in its mission statement: “We strive to be a model egalitarian community of Jewish religious expression, ethical thought and action.”

The Problem

There was a perception among some members of the school community during the 2005-2006 school year that there were too many bullies and victims in our small school. Parents and teachers alike were wondering if the school was doing enough to counter bullying and teasing. At the time, the school had already been using two social competency programs[i] to help teach derekh eretz (grades K-5 were using Open Circle,www.open-circle.org, and grades 6-8 were using Connecting Character to Conduct, www.connectcharactertoconduct.com), and featured a school-wide Jewish value of the month.

Being a member of the Lookstein Principals’ Program in the summer of 2006 gave me the opportunity to apply action research as a tool to assess the social climate of our school. In addition to looking for statistics about bullying, this was also an opportunity to see if the social competency programs we had been using for six years were making a measurable difference in student behavior. The statement of the problem was broadened beyond bullying and teasing behaviors:

The school environment is affected by an inconsistency in observable respectful behavior. A school culture lacking in respect hurts individual students who may be teased or excluded, lowers the morale of the staff, may lead to recruitment/retention difficulties, and produces an environment that shows a lack of pride in the physical plant of the school.

I conjectured five possible factors contributing to the lack of respectful behavior in the school:

1. Inconsistent expectations by teachers, parents, and administrators – within each group and across the groups.
2. Incomplete instruction and modeling of the desired behaviors.
3. Insufficient ongoing review of the expectations.
4. A lack of reinforcing and acknowledging the desired behaviors when they are seen.
5. Conflicting values messages from the culture outside of the school.

The project became known as Building a Respectful Community and three specific goals were concretized:

1. To assess current and ongoing perceptions of student behaviors by students, teachers, and parents.
2. To increase respectful student behavior in school.
3. To provide teachers with tools, training, support and opportunities to fully and continuously encourage respectful behavior by students in all areas of school activity.

Steps of the Project

At the time of the project, my position was Assistant Director of the school. My responsibilities included school-wide scheduling, coordinating the Middle School and supervising more than half the teachers. In order to be effective and lasting, Building a Respectful Community needed to be more than “my project” – it needed to be a collaborative endeavor that engaged all stakeholders in the school community, including teachers, parents, students, and administrators. In order to accomplish this, I did the following:

• Met with the Head of School and President of the Board to explain my plan and gain support.
• Conducted a professional development workshop for the staff before the start of the school year, during which we brainstormed the behavioral characteristics that the ideal graduate of our school would have. We reviewed the various programs, activities, lessons, and structures already in place to help us teach and reinforce these behaviors. The staff also suggested appropriate questions to include in surveys that would be given to the students.
• Arranged the school, class and teachers’ schedules so that teams of teachers had time to meet during the school day to collaborate on issues related both to the curriculum and to Building a Respectful Community.
• Created a “Respect Bulletin Board” in the hallway by the cafeteria that everyone in the school passes daily.
• Met with the school counselor to discuss ways in which she could support the project and collect data
• Began to schedule focus group meetings with parents in order to inform them of the project, get their support, and listen to their thoughts, ideas, and concerns
• Presented the proposed project at the September Executive Board Meeting.

Action research involves gathering information and using it to make data driven decisions. I needed to gather some baseline data about the school in order to evaluate where we were on the spectrum of being a respectful community. The following actions were implemented in order to collect data:

• Surveys were created and administered to students, parents, and faculty.
• Teachers kept track of the content of communication with parents in a Parent Contact Log which was handed in to me monthly. The teacher noted if the issue was “Academic, Behavioral, or Other,” and briefly described the issue. The teacher also noted if the communication was via e-mail, telephone, or in person, and whether or not there was follow-up.
• I conducted “Walkthroughs” of the school and the classrooms with a checklist of specific things I was looking for.
• Feedback was received from a small group of middle school students who met with me weekly as a­­­­­­­ focus group about Building a Respectful Community.
• Records were kept of behavioral referrals to the administration and after-school detentions resulting from unacceptable behavior.
• The school counselor kept track of the types and frequency of issues that brought students to her office.

In many ways, the information gathered in October and November was even more helpful than the end-of-year data, in that it gave us a snapshot of the school community from which we could infer which issues needed our immediate attention.

The data revealed the following:

1. Bullying: 90% of the middle school students and 80% of the grades 3-5 students reported that they had never been bullied up to that point in the school year. Fifteen students from grades 3-8 reported that they had been bullied at least once that year. Of the 59 parent respondents (out of 164 families), 17 reported that their child had been bullied at least once that year.
2. Teasing: 40% of the middle school students and 47% of grades 3-5 students reported that they had been teased. 73% of the responding parents said their child had been teased
3. Respectful Interpersonal Relations: The section of the survey regarding respectful behavior included questions about “students towards each other,” “students towards the adults in the school,” and “adults towards the students.” Answers that said these behaviors are “usually” or “always” exhibited ranged from 67% in middle school responses to 97% in parent responses.
4. Respect for and cleanliness of school property did not appear to be as serious an issue for the survey respondents as I had anticipated.
5. 72% of the parent respondents agreed that the school “is doing enough to teach my child about problem solving interpersonal conflicts.”
6. Data collected during the classroom walkthrough documented that the “school wide non-negotiable rules”(Respect Yourself; Respect Others; Respect Property) were not posted in 33% of the classrooms. The steps to follow in problem solving interpersonal conflicts were not posted in any classrooms. The Jewish value of the month was not posted in 71% of the classrooms.

Based upon the information gleaned from the data, we concluded that there were three main things that it would be worthwhile for the school community to work on during the coming months:

1. Problem solving steps and procedures
2. Reduction of hurtful teasing among students
3. Respectful interpersonal relationships and interactions among all members of the school community: parents, teachers, students, and administrators.

This plan was communicated via e-mail to teachers, parents, and administrators. The offer was made to share the survey results with anyone interested upon request.

Some changes were made as a result of the classroom walkthroughs and the survey data:

• Teachers had been receiving a sign to hang in their classrooms about the Jewish value of the month. I had assumed that they were integrating that value into their discussions about literature, bible, news events, and class meetings. Upon discovering that the majority of classrooms did not even have the sign posted, I added a list of suggested activities incorporating the Jewish value of the month into the curriculum and daily life of the class. Teachers were encouraged to connect the value to respectful behavior in the classroom.
• We began a school wide “January is Problem Solving Month” initiative. Posters with the Problem Solving Steps were distributed to each classroom, along with a list of suggestions to teachers about how to teach, review, and/or implement the procedures. Emphasis was placed upon empowering students to solve their own dilemmas. The teachers in the grades 3-4-5 team were encouraged to use the problem solving steps in trying to resolve a problem that arose in the girls’ bathroom in their hallway.
• A practice began earlier in the year of giving tangible rewards as an incentive for appropriate behavior in a particularly challenging second grade class. This now became a school wide initiative: Students received slips of paper as rewards for behavioral accomplishments that were defined differently in each grade. Written on the slips of paper (English on one side, Hebrew on the other) were the phrases: “I did the right thing! I acted with Respect!” Students who gained 10 “Respect Slips” were publicly honored in front of their peers with the presentation of a special certificate. Middle School students could “trade in” their 10 slips for a nominal trinket type of prize.

Impact of the Project

By the end of the school year, the accumulated data led to the following conclusions:

1. Teasing is a constant, though not severe problem in the school.
2. Bullying is a problem affecting four or five students.
3. Hallways, recess, and the cafeteria were identified by students as the mostly likely places and times for teasing. We planned to give more attention to policies and staffing in these areas in the coming year.
4. Explicit expectations of teachers need to be made verbally and in writing by administrators/supervisors on a regular basis in order to achieve maximum compliance.
5. We would continue to use the social competency programs already in the school, with special attention to tailoring the programs to meet the needs of our students and our school.

I believe that the greatest impact of the project was to create a stronger team structure and more collaboration among the teachers of the school. Building a Respectful Community also communicated strongly to students and parents that our curriculum is more than academic– it concerns the whole child.

What I Learned

In the initial plans, I was asked to reflect on the ways I wanted to learn and grow as a leader through the implementation of this project. I wrote at that time:

I want to grow as a leader by learning ways to sustain the momentum, excitement, and commitment to new initiatives in the school. There is often a plateau or loss of interest in the school community after an initial success. I hope to begin to build a culture that recognizes and celebrates ongoing and progressive successes even though the specific program may not have a defined ending.

I did learn to create celebratory moments with “high fives,” “respect slips,” and certificates. Everyone, young and old, appreciates being recognized for behaviors that are often taken for granted. I also grew as a leader in my desire to gather data before making decisions, and in creating a more collaborative culture among the staff.

So did we build a respectful community? We learned that it is an ongoing endeavor. Teaching, modeling, and encouraging respect is part of the curriculum of every Jewish day school that understands its mission to be not just academic excellence, but also to educate children socially, emotionally, spiritually, and morally. The level of respect in the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Hartford during the 2006-2007 school year was probably consistent with the developmental stages of the students. The data showed that lack of respect was a chronic but not severe problem. However, devoting specific time to this issue for an entire school year deepened my understanding of the factors involved in improving the social climate of a school. Also reinforced was the idea that schools must teach and review not only academic knowledge, but also the desired behaviors and habits that we expect from our students.

Students will test the limits and teasing is bound to occur. It is the way in which we respond to these behaviors that shapes the social climate of a school. One middle school student who had previously attended two other schools observed: “Teasing and bullying take place everywhere. But at this school, the teachers don’t ignore it.”

Note: I wish to acknowledge my mentor Dr. Scott Goldberg whose guidance was invaluable for the implementation of my project.