Minutes from January
6th BLT meeting:
In Attendance: G. Kipper, H. McGivney, K. Fennel, C. Hecht,
A. Lerner, E. Felber
Hilda McGivney spoke with Kim Fennel and Caryn
Hecht about the SEL program. They were
looking for recurrent themes regarding bullying that could be woven into
their
curriculum. They felt that there needed
to be more discussion about bullying and the importance of respect in the SEL
program. They felt that all of the
programs could be more structured.
They all liked two books: 1) The Advisory Guide and
2) Bully‑Proofing Your School.
They want to incorporate some of the ideas from these books into the SEL
program.
Kim Fennel gave the example of a Jeopardy game as a good way
for kids to get to
know each other.
The BLT committee all tried one of the activities: closing
your eyes and imagining your dream house, and then cooperatively drawing a
house while not communicating verbally.
The idea is to practice communicating, negotiating and cooperative
play. The concept inherent in the
exercises is to address bullying from getting to know one another as people,
and from the focus of respect.
Gail Kipper observed that the process was more important
than the product. Afterwards, the group
agreed that the exercise might work better with kids if it were changed from
imagining your dream house to imagining your dream bedroom.
At the end of the meeting, Gail raised the idea of
identifying kids that might be at risk of being bullied.
The next meeting was to be to meet with Scott Fried and
write a grant to the Education Foundation to allow Scott to come and work with
all of the grades, talking about bullying.
The suggestion was made to pick one grade to work with and
work the activities into the existing programs and working up by replacing some
of the activities. For sixth grade, the
programs would be worked into the CHAT program.
Goal: The overarching goal is to achieve school citizenship.
The next BLT meeting
is scheduled for March 7th.