Thursday, August 27, 2009

A School with NO Rules

Our school had a bunch of rules last year. This year we threw away the rules. That's right. We are offically a school without rules. One would think children were running a muck, but that is not the case inside our school. We put all of the responsibility on the children. In our school we have three behavior expectations for kindergarten through 6th grade. Rule #1: I come to school ready to learn and to allow others to learn. Rule #2: I am responsible for my own learning. Rule #3: I will show respect through my actions and words. It has been working well so far, but what do we do when we have parents breaking the rules? Visitors to the building are supposed to enter through the front doors and do all business in the office which includes signing in and getting a badge. It's pretty funny when a parent is caught red-handed going on a covert operation to deliver a lunch to their child in a classroom while avoiding the office. It's equally interesting in the afternoon at dismissal when all common sense seems to cease as parents wave their children across traffic to get in the car just to avoid the carpool line. Equally disturbing to me are cars going the wrong way on a one way street....to accomplish what exactly? One would think by the wild parent drivers that dismissal took hours and hours of sitting in seemingly endless lines to pick up a child after school. One would envision parents having to pack a canteen and a backpack of snacks to endure the waiting. Our precision dismissal procedures deliver each child to awaiting cars within 12 minutes. If parents would actually just be patient and follow the rules, I bet it would be less than that. Parents, slow down and take a moment to watch for our children. Is it really worth the three minutes saved to break the rules?

I question, "Can I put the parents in after school detention?"

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