Czech Schools Defeat Bullies With Understanding

At East End Community School, teachers and administrators work to combat chronic absenteeism by building a “culture of attendance,” with celebratory ceremonies for students with high attendance, monthly attendance reports for parents, community dinners, students raffles, and individualized, shame-free check-ins for families struggling to get their students to school. The school’s rate of chronic absenteeism has dropped from 25% to 13%.

Více než polovina žáků druhého stupně českých základních škol se setkala s šikanou. Existují však i školy, kterým se daří tento negativní jev úspěšně potlačovat. Jednou z nich je Základní škola Sokolov, kde je výskyt šikany hluboko pod celostátním průměrem. Tamní vedení se ji snaží podchytit již zpočátku. Proto do výuky zapojilo sociální pracovníky, kteří na žáky dohlíží o přestávkách. Důležitou roli má také vzdělání učitelů. Ti absolvují školení, na kterých se učí, jak s šikanou ve výuce pracovat.

Spurred by state changes, an elementary in Tulsa, Oklahoma has transformed its approach to chronic absenteeism, adding frequent positive reinforcements for good attendance and building strong relationships with students to get to the root of attendance issues. “This is a solvable problem as long as people keep in mind," the executive director of Attendance Works said. "The solutions take time to unpack and address what’s keeping kids from coming to school.”

One year after LeBron James' I Promise School opened its doors, its students, picked for being some of the worst performing in Akron, Ohio, have shown significant improvement on district assessments. I Promise is funded like other public schools, but also benefits from an additional $600,000 from the James' foundation for more teaching staff, after-school programs, and a family resource center with G.E.D. preparation and career counseling. Teachers say these add-ons have been the key to the school's early success.

As part of an anti-bullying campaign in 1,400 Toronto elementary schools, teachers are bringing infants to the front of the classroom. Instructors ask students to identify the babies' feelings and emotions with the goal of increasing empathy and emotional awareness within the classroom. "A baby is a great unifier... Whatever there different friendship groups or backgrounds, they all share this love for Naomi [the featured baby]." Studies have shown that the program reduces aggression and violence in participating students.

For students who have experienced adverse childhood events (ACEs), support and disciplinary efforts that take trauma into account are essential for them to excel in school. An Alaskan elementary school has done just this by training teachers about ACEs, identifying and supporting students at risk for isolation, and restructuring discipline by providing a space for students who act out to talk about what is going on in their lives.

In Finland, an anti-bullying program that focuses on the whole class rather than individual bullies and victims and provides students with the space to discuss unresolved issues has been proven highly effective. Several researchers and professors in the U.S. are exploring whether the model could be translated to the American public school context. So far, concerns revolve around whether the approach could be as effective with a much more diverse population and with differences in funding and teacher buy-in.

A panoply of responses to poverty has emerged to address poverty in the United States and abroad. The responses share in three key tactics: Measuring impact, paying for success, and collaboration.

One prong of Mississippi's approach to improving literacy has been to retain, or hold back, third-grade students who don't meet reading benchmarks on state language arts assessments. The state has seen scores improve among younger students, but experts caution that retention should be combined with other interventions, such as improving the reading curriculum and providing more literacy training for teachers, to truly have an impact.

In an effort to better support its youngest learners, Mississippi implemented sweeping education reforms, including introducing a standardized “science of reading” curriculum, providing more teacher training and support with in-school literacy and math coaches, and holding back third-grade students who don’t meet their reading skills benchmarks. Over a decade, the number of students reading at grade level has climbed from 12 percent to 35 percent, and the state now ranks among the top ten nationally for fourth-grade reading scores.