W-E Schools District Focus November, 2013 | Page 2

-Chuck

Murphy, Assistant Superintendent

Welcome New Staff!
DAMON YOUNG

ROBIN UNGAR

JAMES STANKUS

Long-Term Substitute Teacher

Library Assistant

Custodian

South High School

Edison Elementary School Royalview Elementary School

O

ur Resident Educators and Mentors have
been working hard plowing through the Ohio
Resident Educator Program! This four-year
program is designed to help orient new teachers into our field and provide them the
knowledge and skills it takes to be successful.
The key to this program is the working relationship between the Resident Educator and
the Mentor. Keeping in mind the old adage, “It
takes a village…” I would look to everyone in
this school district to take it upon themselves
to help out a new teacher in any way possible.
I think we all remember what it is like to be
new and having an army of willing “mentors”
would be invaluable!

W

e are socialized to believe that
warmth and strictness do not
go together. It is an “or” thing rather
than an “and” thing. But most of us
would agree after some deliberation
that warm and strict are in fact “and”
things. In other words, we can be
warm and strict at the same time and
furthermore, this technique argues
that we need to be doing both simultaneously.
So, the challenge is to be caring, funny, concerned and nurturing while
being by the book, relentless and
sometimes inflexible. An easy way to
picture this paradox is by thinking

Resident Educators are working towards the
culminating activity of the program called RESA. This is an online performance-based assessment to assess Resident Educators’ skills
and practices developed during the four-year
program. To help them prepare for this assessment, year one Resident Educators are
reading the book, The First Days of School by
Harry and Rosemary Wong. The Resident Educators in years two and three and reading the
book, Teach like a Champion by Doug Lemov.
In each newsletter I am going to highlight one
strategy from that book to help all of us teach
like champions.

“Because I care about you, you must
serve the consequence for being late,”
rather than “I care about you, you
must serve this consequence for being late.” Helping our students truly
make the connection that not only do
we care about them, but the fact that
we do care about them is why we are
holding them to task, is the key to
successfully implementing this technique.



Lemov offers four ways you can make
your Warm/Strict effective:
 Explain to students why you are
doing what you are doing

It is the subtleties of what we do and
say that make the biggest difference
in our success with students. Make
it a great day and “Teach like a
Champion!”




Distinguish between behavior
and people (Your behavior is inconsiderate rather than, you’re
inconsiderate)
Demonstrate that consequences
are temporary
Use warm, nonverbal behavior
(getting down to a student’s level
if they are sitting down when addressing them)