A P2 Middle School Strives For The Breakfast Of Champions
By Daniel DohertyMany people, societies, and industries focus much more on their cereal box, as opposed to their cereal – that we put more time and energy on appearances than on the actual substance of how we live our lives.
Not Another New Initiative: The Cereal & The Cereal Box
Many years ago I came across a writer named Emmet Fox, a 20th century author on spirituality, who wrote about what he called “The Package and The Cereal.” What I gleaned from his short essay is that many people, societies, and industries focus much more on their cereal box, as opposed to their cereal – that we put more time and energy on appearances than on the actual substance of how we live our lives. I found the analogy instructive, not only for keeping one focused on what is really important personally, but also as a guide to help us understand and navigate the world.
When I became a teacher, I found the analogy an apt descriptor for the many new initiatives I saw come down the education pike with their colorful and novel cereal boxes but with little in terms of sustenance and sustainability. As a principal, I’ve been a bit wary of “the new shiny toy” of initiatives and I know that many of my veteran staff at Todd Middle School operate with a similar mindset.
So in many ways, I would be the last person you would expect giving an online testimonial for The Positivity Project (P2) and how our P2 initiative has supported Todd Middle School’s positive school culture, staff efficacy, and students’ relationships. But here it is, because we’ve been doing P2 at Todd MS for the last two plus years, and it has been a great addition to our culture and practices. That being said, P2, like any initiative, needs to be examined, evaluated, and updated in order to continue and grow. So this testimonial is not only an opportunity for me to tell our story, but an opportunity for me to articulate to myself and my staff on where we have been and where we hope to be going.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL): Feeding The Underfed
In May 2018, NY State released their SEL Benchmarks and the Five Competencies of Student Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Decision-Making. We immediately saw the need and benefits of teaching these more explicitly and began the 2019-2020 school year with developing these as our Site Base Team charge for the year. In our October faculty meeting, we explored “What we are doing,” and “What we could be doing,” with the Five Competencies.
What became frustratingly apparent through the fall and winter was that the NYS SEL Benchmarks provided the ingredients (components) and nutritional facts (benefits) of Social Emotional Learning, but with no actual cereal (a program). When we inquired with the state for more guidance, it was suggested that we look into existing programs that were being marketed by outside vendors. Not surprisingly, my cereal box detector of the latest educational fad was pinging and the Site Base Team decided to try to develop our own SEL program. We found making SEL content across three grade levels and for the staff to be daunting at best. It turns out quality SEL cereal isn’t so easy to make! However, we pushed on, trying to develop a curriculum and initial lesson plans that we would roll out to staff and students in September 2020. For reasons we all know, that didn’t happen.
Choosing P2: Nutritional Facts & Ingredients
What impressed the team during that meeting, among other things, was the amount of cereal they had. We were impressed not only with the quality of their lessons but the fact that they had content to cover all grades.
From March 2020 through June 2021, we found ourselves, along with the rest of the school districts in the world, finding out just how important SEL was in the midst of the COVID Pandemic. Our SEL work had morphed into the student and staff needs for remote and hybrid learning during that time. In the spring of 2021, based on the P2 experience of one of our elementary school principals in his previous district, our two elementary schools decided to adopt P2 for the 2021-22 school year. The question was: Did Todd MS want to join them? After taking a look at their cereal box (website), we moved forward with scheduling a meeting with Jeff Bryan, one of co-founders of The Positivity Project, in June of 2021.
What impressed the team during that meeting, among other things, was the amount of cereal they had. We were impressed not only with the quality of their lessons but the fact that they had content to cover all grades. Their focus on positivity and their no-nonsense, matter-of-fact approach to the content, along with Jeff and co-founder Mike Erwin’s background and story, also informed our decision to join our elementary schools. Of course, this still was more cereal box than cereal, but we were intrigued with the side label’s ingredients/nutritional facts and were cautiously excited to see how it would be received and how it could develop at Todd.
Implementing: Getting Everyone To The Breakfast Table
As we explored different models we could pilot within a middle school schedule, three important concerns emerged: equity amongst the staff, consistency with the lessons, and being comprehensive with the content.
In September 2021, we introduced P2 to our staff by delivering the basic training at two extended faculty meetings. The staff was compliant but less than enthusiastic. Our first post-pandemic school year was an overwhelming time. Between the SEL needs of students and their academic gaps and struggles brought on by the pandemic, the staff’s emotional and mental bandwidth available for a new initiative was low at best.
As we explored different models we could pilot within a middle school schedule, three important concerns emerged: equity amongst the staff, consistency with the lessons, and being comprehensive with the content. Some of the typical pilot approaches – using the content with only a few teachers, using the content without a schoolwide model, exposing students to the content and getting to a functional model later – all fell flat in the discussion stage. We looked at schoolwide models by subject area, by period, by homeroom, and continued to run into issues of equity, consistency, and comprehensiveness. If you don’t have an agreed upon sustainable model, why pilot a plane that can never get off the ground?
The model that emerged, dedicating a 12 minute block daily by taking 2 minutes from our 6 non-lunchtime periods, came out of desperation on my part and goodwill faith on my staff’s part. If we were going to do a pilot, we would pilot what we would actually do if it went beyond the pilot. The P2 block would be in mid-morning, around 10 am, at the beginning of 4th period. I would be responsible for delivering P2 Virtual Lessons on Fridays to all classrooms. All blocks would be co-taught with every member of the staff (including admin and counselors) teaching. We would do it for the entire 3rd quarter so we had a full breakfast and really got to taste and experience the cereal.
Into Action: Is this cereal any good?
What sold P2 to the staff and students was the only thing that could, its cereal—manageable daily lessons in a model that was equitable, consistent, and comprehensive.
The short answer is – yes. The staff and students responded positively to the lessons. For the staff, the preparation time for the lessons and the delivery of the content was manageable. They made personal connections with students that weren’t necessarily new, but were now consistent and explored in a new SEL light. The 12 minutes was long enough to have meaningful discussions but sessions were completed before middle school student distractibility, malaise, and contrariness set in. For the students, they were explicitly learning and exploring content that they could personalize and engage with, and it also gave them the opportunity to see their teachers and other staff members in a different light.
About five weeks into the pilot, we surveyed the staff and students. The results were favorable. As a staff, we decided to extend the pilot through all of Quarter 4 to the end of the school year. What sold P2 to the staff and students was the only thing that could, its cereal, manageable daily lessons in a model that was equitable, consistent, and comprehensive.
Monitoring: Adding Fruit & Considering The Serving Size
Over the next two years we looked for ways to sustain P2 and improve the program, using various schoolwide approaches (fruits) with mixed results. We found out that middle school students’ fashion consciousness made P2 shirts not as popular as we would have thought. On the other hand, we found that P2 Virtual Fridays were a nice way to do schoolwide activities that created displays and updated our hallway bulletin boards. We found adding P2 and OPM (Other People Matter) language to our disciplinary interactions and student discipline reflection forms to be a good way to infuse P2 into our discipline approach and code of conduct. The staff and students voted on a trait of the year (the winner was Humor) which we highlighted intermittently during P2 Virtual Fridays.
A component of P2 that we have wrestled with and need to examine more is the serving size. With the P2 Virtual on Fridays, it leaves four days of 12 minute instruction (48 minutes) for the weekly content of each P2 & OPM trait. We have found that the law of diminishing returns starts to set in by Wednesday, and that by Thursday the students (and staff) are no longer engaging with the content as they had been earlier in the week. Everyone has a limit to how hungry they are, even when the cereal is really good.
Evaluating: Oh Yeah, About That Cereal Box
We, too, need to keep our cereal box close at hand to ensure the Todd staff and students keep coming to breakfast.
This past spring (2024), the staff provided me their most extensive feedback on P2 since early 2022. This came as a result of some staff members informally discussing P2, providing that feedback to me, and then formally discussing possible changes as a whole staff. Those discussions occurred, in part, due to a void I created by not having explicit monitoring and evaluating protocols built into our model.
Two overarching concerns emerged: the amount of weekly instruction (the serving size mentioned above) and what the specific positive gains/outcomes were of doing P2 (nutritional value). To address the first concern, we are exploring adding a weekly, virtual mindfulness lesson on Mondays to kick off each week. We are working with a local mindfulness practitioner to develop content and train interested administrators, counselors, and teachers. The second concern is more complex and will be explored in our Site Base Team this school year. P2, like all school initiatives, interconnects and influences other school initiatives and school culture as a whole. Part of the charge of the Site Base Team will be to determine and clarify exactly why we are doing P2 and what positive gains and outcomes are to be expected by doing it. While P2 provides a holistic, comprehensive approach to student SEL needs, how do we also ensure that our approach and those lessons also explicitly address school culture and student behavior during the school day?
In many ways, the work we need to do – establish clear goals/outcomes and create agreed upon monitoring and evaluating tools, is Leadership and Change 101. It is the sort of stuff that you will find on the side or back panel of any program’s cereal box: the why of what we do and the how of measuring its success. As children, it is while we were eating our cereal that we would look to the cereal box, perhaps for a prize, or for which sports hero was the latest breakfast of champions, and find the cereal tasted that much better while we were engaged with the box. We, too, need to keep our cereal box close at hand to ensure the Todd staff and students keep coming to breakfast.