January 2010

Exchange Ideas on:
Educational Online Magazine

Contact us about our online educational magazine designed to facilitate interaction between parents, teachers, principals and other educators. We have something for everyone, including students.

Educationalonline.com extends an invitation to teachers, parents, principals and students to submit articles for publication. If your your school and/or district has implemented innovative ideas that others can benefit from, you can now share it with the entire nation.

What Is Race To The Top?

President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced that states leading the way on school reform will be eligible to compete for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top competitive grants to support education reform and innovation in classrooms. Between the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), more than $10 billion in grant money will be available to states and districts that are driving reform.

To read more: click here

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Specific Solutions for Difficult Behaviors:

Create physical space.
Establish emotional boundaries (standards of behavior).
Invite critical feedback.
Consider your response to rights vs. needs vs. wants.
Develop respectful responses to disrespectful behavior.
Do not shoulder the blame for criticisms that are not yours to own.
Listen with respect and respond with care.
Stick to issues and behaviors.
Choose and use a level of assertion; especially try empathetic.
Initiate contact with, “Specifically, how can I be helpful to you?
Maintain your focus on, “We can work this out.”
Expect respect. (“We can work this out when you stop yelling.”)
Say what you mean in specific terms (we can’t read minds).
Use fair humor (quips, toys, stickers, etc.).
Keep congruent – words, tone actions.
Avoid debate.
Use sure signals for confidence. (Head up, face forward, eye contact, shoulders back, steady stance, posture straight, no leaning)
Count to 10. Use silence to increase your calm. It’s valuable to “leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Speak from the “same side of the table.”
Tangible reminders to respond appropriately. (notes, touchstone, cues from a colleague, this notebook J)Document facts of behaviors and situation.
Build your credibility with your language and actions of deny Junk Talk^sm and raise WOW!^sm.
Give people a way out. Establish choices.
Refuse the win-lose perspective.
Breathe. Fully breathe for calm and for conveying steadiness and confidence.