4 The Hampton Roads Messenger Editorial


A Positive Attitude Can Promote Success


that can affect our health. The Mayo Clinic recently reported, “Positive thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health.” The endless thoughts that run through our mind throughout the day are referred to as "self-talk" by the Mayo Clinic. The clinic recommends practicing to overcome negative self-talk with a variety of methods. Some of those methods include, understanding positive thinking and self-talk, learning the health benefits of positive thinking, identifying negative thinking and focusing on positive thinking.


Someone who looks at the glass BY ANGELA JONES The benefits of thinking positively


have been researched and written about throughout history. Norman Vincent Peale made a career of writing about The Power of Positive Thinking. His thoughtful books serve as an inspiration to many people when they need his message to continue on life’s journey of perpetual highs and lows.


The bible speaks of the benefits


of having faith, which is another form of positive thinking. It states, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” Now even the most skeptical of bible critics must admit that they would love to have thoughts that powerful.


I believe we are all born with


positive mental attitudes. For the most part, babies have bright eyes beaming with a thirst to see what this world, which they were just born into, has in store for them. I believe it is the influence of adults’ negativity that eventually turns a youthful positive thinker into a doubting Thomas. Even as adults, our mood and thoughts can be darkened by associating with people who have negative attitudes.


Often, we have no one to blame but ourselves for our negative moods


as being half full rather than half empty could be considered a positive thinker or an optimist. Optimists believe that the best outcome in a situation will occur rather than the worst, as a pessimist might expect. When one’s thoughts are more positive than negative, that person is considered an optimist or a positive thinker. When a person’s endless thoughts are more negative, they are considered a pessimist. Sometimes, self-talk comes from logic or reason but there are also times when we allow ourselves to think negatively because of misinformation.


Learning the health benefits of


a positive mental attitude may be enough to motivate one to work on changing their thinking from negative to positive. The health benefits of being an optimist include an increased life span; lower levels of distress; lower rates of depression; a stronger immune system; better psychological and physical well-being; reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease and better coping skills during stressful situations.


When one master’s the art of


positive thinking, they exude an inner strength that can not only make things happen, it can also motivate others into action. Positive thoughts are contagious just as negative thoughts are. When we surround ourselves with people who think positively, good things are bound to happen--“And nothing shall be impossible unto you.”


Volume 7 Number 8


April 2013


The Secret to Fixing School Discipline? Change the Behavior of Adults


Andre Griggs, after school program director, Le Grand High School BY JANE ELLEN STEVENS If fixing school discipline were a


political campaign, the slogan would be, “It’s the Adults, Stupid!”


A sea change is coursing slowly


but resolutely through this nation’s K-12 education system. More than 23,000 schools out of 132,000 nationwide have or are discarding a highly punitive approach to school discipline in favor of supportive, compassionate, and solution-oriented methods. Those that take the slow- but-steady road can see a 20% to 40% drop in suspensions in their first year of transformation. A few — where the principal, all teachers and staff embrace an immediate overhaul — experience higher rates, as much as an 85% drop in suspensions and a 40% drop in expulsions. Bullying, truancy, and tardiness are waning. Graduation rates, test scores and grades are trending up.


The formula is simple, really:


Instead of waiting for kids to behave badly and then punishing them, schools are creating environments in which kids can succeed. “We have to be much more thoughtful about how we teach our kids to behave, and how our staff behaves in those environments that we create,” says Mike Hanson, superintendent of Fresno (CA) Unified School District, which began a district-wide overhaul of all of its 92 schools in 2008.


This isn’t a single program or a


short-term trend or a five-year plan that will disappear as soon as the funding runs out. Where it’s taken hold, it’s a don’t-look-back, got-the-bit-in-the- teeth, I-can’t-belieeeeeve-we-used-to- do-it-the-old-way type of shift.


The secret to success doesn’t


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Rae Willis, Graphic Designer Ida Davis, Contributing Writer


PO Box 10414 ● Norfolk, VA 23513


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involve the kids so much as it does the adults: Focus on altering the behavior of teachers and administrators, and, almost like magic, the kids stop fighting and acting out in class. They’re more interested in school, they’re happier and feel safer.


“We’re changing the behavior of


the adults on campuses, changing how they respond to poor behavior on kids’ part,” says Mary Ann Carousso, head of student services for Kings Canyon Unified School District in Central California, which launched a five-year plan in 2010 to revamp the district’s 20 schools.


This movement began about


a dozen years ago, and has gained momentum in the last five years. The first schools to yank themselves free of the knee-jerk punitive response to bad


behavior did so based on two unrelated developments.


First, suspensions and expulsions


soared to ridiculous levels. By 2007, a stunning one-quarter of all public high school students had been suspended at least once during their school careers, according to a National Center for Education Statistics 2011 report. The numbers were worse for boys of color. One-third of Hispanic boys and 57% of black boys had been kicked out of school at least once.


Further, the report noted that more


than three million kids are suspended or expelled each year — in 2006 that number was 3,430,830. In California, 464,050 children were kicked out of school that year, many more than once, for a total of more than 800,000 suspensions and expulsions.


The acceleration began with


the adoption of broad zero-tolerance policies that spread like a prairie fire across the United States in 1995, just one year after the U.S. Congress passed the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994. Once “zero tolerance” was locked in, teachers and principals warped it, some say, by the pressure to perform well on tests. Kick the troublemakers out, and there’s less disruption and interruption in class. With those underperforming kids gone, test scores look better.


Here’s the absurd part: Only


five percent of these suspensions or expulsions were for weapons or drugs. The other 95 percent? “Disruptive behavior” and “other”. This includes cell phone use, violation of dress code, talking back to a teacher, bringing scissors to class for an art project, giving Midol to a classmate, and, in at least one case, farting.


But punishment doesn’t change


behavior; it just drops hundreds of thousands of flailing kids into a school to prison pipeline. The ka-ching to us taxpayers is $292,000 per dropout over his or her lifetime due to costs for more police, courts, and prisons, plus loss of income and taxes into our civic treasuries.


“Suspensions and expulsions


don’t work,” says Javier Martinez, principal of Le Grand High School, Le Grand, CA. His approach is: “How do I help student overcome a problem so that it doesn’t happen again?”


“You can’t punish a behavior out


of a kid,” says Jen Caldwell, a social worker at El Dorado Elementary School in San Francisco, CA. “The old-school model of discipline comes from people who think kids intentionally behave badly.”


SCHOOL DISCIPLINE PAGE 14


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