This week at Charlotte Lab School

I am happy to be back from my trip to Germany, where I had the opportunity to meet with educators, architects, and designers from around the country and to get a deeper understanding of the thought, design, and production of our VS furniture.  I am proud that we have partnered with such an innovative and thoughtful company.  I look forward to sharing more in an upcoming enews.

For this issue, however, I want to revisit the topic of student discipline, because our approach is one of the qualities that makes Lab unique and one that we believe is very important for parents to understand. We have several core beliefs about discipline:

1. The majority of behavior issues are the result of poor CHOICES, not "bad" kids;
2. The purpose of discipline should be to help students learn to make better choices in the future, therefore consequences should be natural (i.e. make sense based on what the child did); and
3. The approach to discipline should help students to reflect on their mistakes, learn from their mistakes, and make things right through restorative conversations when their choices impact others.

Based on these core beliefs, and our long-term goal of creating thoughtful, kind, and compassionate citizens, we have adopted a simple set of rules for both the lower school (The LAB Way) and middle school (The Lab Code for Living).  Because we also want to help develop students' metacognitive skills (their ability to think about their thinking and learning and actions), we also wanted a system that will provide us, students, advisors, and parents with data and information about how students are doing so that we can provide feedback and guidance.  Finally, we wanted a clearer and quicker way of acknowledging all of the fantastic decisions and acts of kindness that our students exhibit every day.
Like with other aspects of our school model, Lab aspires to implement practices that make sense for kids.  As such, we have put in place the following approaches:

• Kindergarten-Second grade will continue to reinforce the LAB Way with all students and track behaviors of specific students who need support. Advisors and teachers will involve parents when necessary; and
  
  
• Third through Sixth grade will be using ClassDojo, which will ease communication and tracking of behavior patterns for all students and will ultimately be opened up to parents for anytime, anywhere access.

With these new systems, I feel it is also important for us to clarify what Lab DOESN'T do or believe in:

• Students should not be rewarded with candy or food treats;
• Students should not be punished with physical activity;
• Students should not be punished as a group (unless the entire group truly was involved); and
• Students should not miss out on instruction or physical activity as a punishment.

How can you help support the Lab approach to behavior and discipline at home?

• Avoid JUDGEMENT.  Encourage your child to share his/her perspective of what happened.  Ask, "Why do you think that happened? How did you feel when that happened? How do you think that made ___ feel?
• Help instill in your child a GROWTH MINDSET about behavior.  Ask "What did you learn from this? What do you think you can/will do differently next time?" We ask that parents avoid making threats and putting in place consequences at home for a child failing to earn a letter (LS) or earning a "growth point" (MS); these are opportunities for the teacher to provide feedback, and it doesn't mean your child got "in trouble".  When your child talks about another student's behavior, ask "Why do you think he/she might have made that choice?"  
• Implement NATURAL CONSEQUENCES:  Ask, "How do you think you could 'make this right?'"  You might be surprised at their creative - and serious! - ideas.

Together with our Advisory program and wellness curriculum, we hope that we will be instilling in your child strong character habits. We look forward to continuing to partner with you in helping to develop in all Lab students those positive attributes we aspire for everyone in our community.

Sincerely,

Mary Moss Brown
Head of School