Shadowing the Dean

This week I left my class and co-teacher to begin shadowing members of the school staff.  We are shadowing as many members of the school staff so as to get a complete view of how the many different roles at a school work together to create one (or in NAF and NAF Prep's case, two) fully functioning schools.  The first person I provided a shadow for was Mr. Blackman.

Mr. Blackman has had many titles ranging from Behavior Dean to Parent/Student and School Liaison.  He knows how to check misbehavior, he knows how to work with parents and guardians, and he knows Baltimore.  Or in his own words he is the "problem-solver."  Oh and he was Barksdale's bodyguard in The Wire http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1737054/

I was fortunate enough to sit in on a meeting with a student and his guardian while shadowing Mr. Blackman.  One of the most important ideas I took away from this meeting was the idea of respect.  The guardian expressed an animated concern for the student not to be bullied.  Understandable.  But it seemed to boil down to respect, she would not have her boy disrespected at school; would not have him disrespected by boys or even girls in class. 

This rings true for me.  When working in an after school program, respect was my quickest default for a student who was misbehaving or off task.  The student who was off task and being blatantly disrespectful stopped in their tracks when I asked why she was disrespecting me after I had shown her nothing but respect. 

I believe much of this is true in Baltimore as well.  Respect, along with effort and taking a chance, is one of the three requirements in Ms. Karree's class.  I will continue to have a respectful approach (easier said than done) and leverage that when and if students believe they can return my respect with their own disrespect.