THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997 TAG: 9702060339
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 62 lines
Sharon Lofton has a message for her first grade students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School.
``Starting today, I'm going to be really watching them,'' she said.
While that sort of statement would normally sound pretty ominous, what Lofton - and the rest of the staff at the school - will really be watching for is good behavior.
On Monday, the school kicked off its new Caught Being Good program with a rousing assembly starring students from its very own Safety Patrol and bands from Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk and Norfolk State University.
The purpose of the program is not only to reward students for being good - usually through stickers noting they were ``caught being good'' - but to help them learn to resolve conflicts without resorting to aggressive behavior.
``The children are exposed to a lot more violence in the community, and it comes into the school,'' said Michele Heckman, the third-grade teacher who started the program in her own class last year, before she and the school's Stop The Violence Committee developed it for the school.
Heckman said the program may be similar to others found in many schools today in which the focus is on rewarding good behavior rather than just punishing bad behavior - but the Stop the Violence Committee decided to develop its own program because some of the other programs are just too expensive. One popular program requires kits that cost more than $200 per classroom.
``We had to work with what we had, and that was nothing,'' said Heckman.
Heckman said that in the seven years she has been at the school, it has become clear to her that kids are increasingly resorting to aggressive behavior at younger and younger ages.
``Instead of talking problems through, they're. . . '' she said, ending her sentence by making a fist with one hand and punching it into the other.
``Sometimes you come in, you bump into someone, but instead of saying `Excuse me,' you get an attitude,'' Kenneth Harrell, a fourth-grade teacher, told a group of students in kindergarten through second grade. ``But we don't want you to get an attitude, we want you to be caught being good.''
What that means to Jimaille Spruill, a fourth-grader who wowed the crowd when she led the Safety Patrol in a rousing Caught Being Good cheer, is simple.
``It's needed for the kids who don't have anything else,'' Jimaille said of the program. She added that to her being good meant, ``Respect, following directions, respecting adults and even children. And no hitting.''
When students are caught being good - which Harrell defines as behavior that went above and beyond what would just be expected - he told them they not only would receive a sticker saying as much, but their names would go into a box and each week a winner's name would be drawn. The winner will get to wear a Caught Being Good button and join other weekly winners for a special lunch at the end of nine-week cycles.
``We are desperately in need of corporate sponsors and community involvement,'' said Heckman, adding that more than cash donations are needed. She said they could use donations of printing services or pencils and other small gifts to use as rewards for the kids.
School Board Vice Chairman Roderic A. Taylor, who attended the assembly, said the program was the kind of thing he'd like to see more schools do and offered his help in finding grant money to help expand the program.