Positive Comments
I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to making positive comments to people (in this case my employees), giving them a pat on the back and thanking them for the work that they are doing. It is way too easy to focus on what we are doing wrong; which of course breeds an environment of negativity and makes coming to work/school awfully difficult. Being aware is a step in the right direction, we are all working on this. As you are probably aware, we have begun a three year initiative to improve our discipline and bullying program in our school. The program, titled Positive Behavior Supports (or PBS), is one in which we establish a clear continuum of consequences for behavior in the classroom (and in non classroom settings) that we would like to see corrected, while at the same time acknowledging students for the behavior that we like to see repeated. Research tells us that by acknowledging postive behavior to negative behavior at a ratio of 5:1, we can significantly decrease the percentage of disciplinary sanctions in our school. Our PBS team has begun training and it is our goal to begin implementation by the end of October.
The effect that a postive comment can have on the morale of a student/teacher/parent is amazing! Let me share a couple of brief examples for you. On Monday of this week, I received an email from a parent of a former student who is now a freshman in high school. A simple note, really, thanking the teachers for the work they did in preparing them for high school. The parent had just had the first parent teacher conference and the stuent is performing fabulously!
Last Friday as we were preparing to close up shop for the week, we had a parent that came into the school and thanked us for the work we have been doing for her children. She was very complimentary about the school, the staff, and the wonderful atmosphere that we have in our Catholic school. At the end of the conversation, she presented us with at check for $10,000.
Boy it sure is nice to hear the good news!
