BES Operations
This month’s Bucyrus Elementary School blog was submitted by Mr. Timothy Souder, Elementary Associate Principal.
Being committed to providing a safe and supportive environment conducive to learning for all our students, Bucyrus Elementary School has modified many operations with regard to discipline. Starting in January, BES implemented a Structured Recess for students that had difficulty finding socially acceptable activities at recess. This has been a huge success as we, at first, designated one recess aid to work with up to ten students on a particular game or sport. Since this time we have had students desire to be part of the Structured Recess and we have now expanded to two aids working with up to 20 students each. These students are learning sportsmanship and socialization skills along with different games.
To go along with Structured Recess, to make the playground a safer environment, we have increased the supervision on the playground as our teachers have volunteered to assist with supervision when their lunch has concluded. Since this change on March 8th, there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of playground injuries in our clinic and the number of office referrals for discipline. With this playground rules have been modified and streamlined to help with consistency of discipline and safe play of students.
In October, the Bucyrus City School District unveiled its Bullying, Harassment, and Intimidation Reporting Form to help with gaining information to better protect our students by curbing the frequency and severity of bullying. As of March 15th, BES will have after-school detention on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This adds a step to our discipline ladder in order to help the students adjust their behavior and hopefully avoid further steps including out of school suspensions.
Further steps to help students prior to administrative discipline are referrals to our Response to Intervention (RtI) team, which deals not only with academic, but also behavioral concerns, and referrals to our councilor, Mrs. Kim Light, and our family advocate, Mrs. Marie Stuckman. These ladies and the RtI team along with the changes noted above are all part of Bucyrus Elementary School’s efforts to provide an environment conducive to learning in a cost effective manor for the students and citizens that Choose Bucyrus.
