Dear TCS Community,
Last Thursday, Jane’s class began our community meeting with their inspiring skit connected to the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., dramatizing Cornelius, the wonderful fable by Leo Lionni. Cornelius is a crocodile who dreams of doing non-crocodile things, such as standing on two legs, hanging by his tail, and standing on his head. When he shares those dreams with his crocodile friends, they initially turn away from his ideas. The book itself ends with Cornelius’ friends trying to hang by their tails and stand on their heads. However, Jane’s class wanted to extend the meaning of the crocodiles’ change of heart by adding a monkey-crocodile party at the end that was not in the book—to enthusiastic community meeting applause.
Jane’s class not only served as pioneers in designing and dramatizing a new ending to a story about standing up for ourselves and others—they also became the preview dramatists for the presentations that the remaining older classes will stand and deliver at our MLK assembly. (That MLK assembly has been rescheduled to Thursday, February 3 at 8:40 a.m. because of the snow cancellation.) Inspired by Jane’s students, the other students will offer their own engaging presentations.
In the past few months, TCS faculty, staff, and board have created a bullying prevention and intervention plan, as required by the new Massachusetts law. We started with a template from another independent school that satisfies the legal requirements. Then two very Touchstone things happened:
- Members of the community reminded us that we must insert in any anti-bullying plan language about our efforts to coach students to work through difficulties between and among themselves, empowering them to stand up for themselves in the process.
- Faculty and staff members offered to create an evening presentation to parents about the work we do with our youngest through our oldest students on how to stand up for others, including calling out hurtful behavior, supporting another student, serving as mediators (after training that Polly’s class receives), and engaging in group problem solving about behavioral issues.
Please see the revised plan at the end of this News Notes. We will announce that evening for parents soon.
It is only right that the TCS community didn’t want to stop at accepting an anti-bullying template–that we wanted to make the plan our own. It starts with changing the end of a story and performing our own (and owned) new story for the rest of the school in a true community meeting. Crocodile tales all around!
Best,
Don Grace, Head of School