Gotta be Positive on Fridays!
To set aside time to positively recognize students is the single most important characteristic of a thriving Freshman Academy. If this is not done well, I believe teachers and students suffer, and the overall results will disappoint.
In meetings today to refresh our understanding of this important effort, four common elements emerged:
The Team’s Disposition
The Means for Delivery
The Modalities of Praise
The Categories to Praise
The Team’s Disposition
The heart of the team needs to have a bent toward these:
Attention to the academic and personal lives of freshmen
A growth mindset
Generosity
Initiative
Prioritization of time
Without these five elements, an impactful, positive recognition of freshman success is unlikely to happen. We set aside most Fridays as a completely positive day. Not a negative word is to be spoken!
This moratorium on negative comments can generate light-hearted adherence to this rule: “I am so positive that Robert is not doing well today.” But to spend 20% of our team time on the 80% of freshmen doing well, is time well spent.
The Means for Delivery
Teams need to translate their observation of freshman success into memorable and receivable forms. Here are a couple of examples:
Recognition avenues in the building that are already in place (Why recreate the wheel?)
Postcards
Email
Phone
Texting
A conversation
Post-it notes
Candy or other food rewards
Recognizing publicized goals or targeted behaviors
Time and focus turn these everyday avenues of communication into credible, purposeful, and meaningful observations of the efforts of these first-year students.
The Modalities of Praise
Teams have ways of recognizing freshmen that are unique to them but often include these modalities:
The team meets a freshman in their meeting room.
The team travels to a freshman’s classroom and brings them into the hallway for a brief discussion.
Three-Point Praise - The success or accolade from one teacher is carried by another teacher to a freshman. (It’s great to see the look on their faces as they receive praise in Algebra for a Biology victory.)
The team can develop targets for each week’s meeting:
Every Friday we will write ____ postcards to freshmen.
Every Friday we will visit with at least ____ students in our meeting room.
Every Friday we will email or text _____ parents about this week’s successes.
The team tracks the who and when of praise to guide their efforts. (This is very helpful!)
The team has a calendar rhythm:
Student of the week.
Student of the month for each content area.
Top 10 freshmen of the month, the semester, or the year.
At the end of each semester teams will have an awards assembly.
A good balance between variety and consistency is needed. Teams that have a plan in place step into their meeting with energy, purpose, and culture-producing impact.
The Categories to Praise (Likely a partial list, but they all start with C.):
Change
Consistency
Character
Concerns
Courtesy
Creativity
Communication
Content
Caretaking
Attending to freshman success is good for us.
It’s good for them.
It’s great for team health and stamina.
And it’s a great way to end a week of struggle and stress.