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Committee responds to editorial

PART Comittee, Letters • March 24, 2011

To the Oracle Staff:

We, the PART Committee, would like to take this opportunity to address the editorials your staff wrote recently regarding your feelings about the “Spartans, Do Your PART” program.

Your February 7 editorial describing PART lessons presents only one viewpoint. Sure, there are people who feel as you do, that talking about one’s values is “stupid,” but not everyone feels this way and research shows that promoting positive behavior in groups is far better than reacting to negative behavior, which is the basic element of positive behavior support.

What we are trying to do in our school community is to promote a positive change. We’re not just trying to have a discussion about values; we’re hoping to change how our community of learners thinks and acts.

When a community truly believes in a shared value-set, great things can happen.

What we really are trying to do is to create an environment that prevents negative behavior, or simply does not tolerate it. At the same time, we are trying to teach positive social skills and behaviors. Prepared, Accountable, Respectful and Truthful are not just words.They are big ideas by which we live our lives.

Our vision is to create a place that cares for one another, a place with a heart where people feel comfortable to be themselves and accept others.

WS has always been a great place to work and learn, but what PART is trying to do is foster good behavior consistent with democracy in which each generation must work out the details for itself.

Your February 7 article pointed out some things that could be improved with the PART lessons and with each lesson, we have tried to incorporate student and teacher feedback for future lessons.

We definitely want to be discussing topics that are important to you and would gladly take feedback on issues that you would like to see discussed.

This year, in particular, because of the current events throughout our country, we as the committee have been tasked with the difficult goal of tackling bullying.

This is a topic of extreme relevance to today’s youth, not only in other schools but also here in our own school community.

As for having no student involvement, that is simply not true. The January lesson that resulted in the “Wall of Intolerance” was planned by a student as part of her Capstone project and we thought it was an excellent idea and an excellent way to present the material.

This student worked very hard and was proud of her accomplishment, as were we as well. It is unfortunate that not every teacher presented the material in the same manner, but it shouldn’t have stopped students from taking the material seriously.

We can only ask each and every student to participate in these lessons with an open mind and understanding as to the problems all around them in this world, a world we want to help prepare each student for.

As a committee that has designed many of the lessons for the school, we’d like to invite The Oracle staff to do better—better fact-checking before printing your editorial (let’s face it, some of your facts were not correct) and better lesson-planning for PART.

We have collaborated with Student Services, Buddies Club and individual students over the course of the year.

So, in the spirit of further collaboration with students, we invite you, The Oracle staff, to create April’s lesson on the topic of accountability, focusing on what you feel is appropriate for our school community. Or, given your comment in the February 21 editorial that the “R” in PART has been lost, you might choose to develop a lesson around the concept of respect—to your motto “Don’t whine about it; write about it,” we add, “do something about it,” and we challenge you to design a schoolwide lesson that will inspire our school.

If you choose to accept our invitation, we can give you the specifics of any details you might need to implement a successful lesson for the entire school.

We sincerely hope that your staff finds a new and engaging way to implement PART at our school; it will only help us to be a stronger community.

Sincerely,

The PART Committee

Mrs. Maren Herzog

(Team Coach)

Mrs. Jamie O’Neill

(Team Leader)

Mr. Ryan J. Good

Mr. Craig Hamilton

Mrs. Lynne Orens

Mr. James A. Percoco

Mrs. Kay Rizzuto