Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How we turned around our student tardy numbers

Demographics:

Nicolet High School District is located in the southeast region of Wisconsin and serves over 1,000 students from four Milwaukee suburbs and the city of Milwaukee.

Biggest challenge:

Our district wanted to maximize each minute of every class period by getting students to class by the beginning of every period and reducing the time needed to record attendance. We were seeing our student tardy numbers increasing annually, which meant more students were missing valuable class time each year.

Our teachers were losing instructional time due to the manual processes we had in place for recording student attendance, which ate up several minutes into every period. Meanwhile, our office staff was overwhelmed with writing tardy passes, submitting referrals, and calling students down to the office for discipline-related tardies.…Read More

Looking for a way to lower suspensions and reduce bullying?

Suspension has been a commonly used disciplinary method in schools for decades. Unfortunately, it also has no positive impact on students. What’s worse, these same children often develop a dislike for law enforcement that lasts into adulthood. This is a dangerous cycle that we have to stop to help students stay in school, develop positive relationships with adults in positions of authority, and achieve greater success. At my school, we found a solution. Read on and you will discover where the idea came from and how to replicate it in your school.

DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programs involving law enforcement presence in schools were common two decades ago. At almost the same time these programs slowly faded out of schools, we encountered some of the most prevalent rise in violence in schools. Confronted with this reality, smaller communities and suburban schools took a page from the large, urban school playbook and began hiring school resource officers (SSOs). Their primary purpose is security, but they can do so much more.

Typically, SROs (we call them SSOs, for school security officers) are retired law enforcement. With 25 years of law-enforcement experience behind them, they bring a breadth of knowledge and skill not previously accessible to school communities. I decided to make the best of these resources and the results are impressive. Here is how we did this, in simple strategic steps that can be replicated anywhere SSOs are employed.…Read More