Tone & Interactions

The general tone of interactions at Eaton Elementary School is positive between administration, staff, students, and parents. The morning begins with staff located throughout various points within the building to welcome students as they arrive. In addition, Eaton’s Safety Patrol greets student car riders as they arrive to school. With an average of 7000 volunteer hours, parents are an integral component to our school and offer positive interactions to students and staff on a daily basis. All of our classroom teachers utilize some sort of positive reinforcement system within their classrooms which sets a positive tone when addressing student behavior.

Teacher greeting student upon arrival to school.

Classroom Reinforcement System

Eaton Elementary Safety Partrol
2010-2011





Values of Work and Engagement

Over the past three years, our teachers have been using a school-wide Master Schedule to plan for the instructional day. Within the Master Schedule, teachers are allotted common planning time, duty-free lunches, and rotating coverage for recess. This allows for teachers to have approximately 100 minutes of student-free time per school day. Our principal collaborates with teachers during grade-level planning and incorporates professional development that aligns with School Improvement Team and Professional Growth Plan goals and objectives. Both of which reinforce our stated values of work and engagement at Eaton Elementary School.



Outliers & Social Isolates

When I notice outliers and social isolates, it is often on the playground or in the cafeteria. Being an elementary school, we are fortunate that students still have a sense of innocence to them. Given that we have an autism program that is housed at Eaton, you would more than likely spot a student on the autism spectrum that could be identified as an outlier or social isolate given the nature of their disability. Our autism teachers work to support those students that are more withdrawn during the unstructured times of the school day (lunch and recess) in order to model and enhance social interaction between the students with autism and their peers.

Interactions

My interactions vary from week to week, but most of my time is spent with parents and community members. Approximately 600 students attend Eaton Elementary, which leaves us with around 1200 parents. With a socioeconomic status of middle to upper class, we lend ourselves to high parent involvement. Eaton also houses an autism program that requires a lot of administrative time. Between the principal and me, we attend over 100 Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings per school year. I would say that on a daily basis, I speak or meeting with over 20 parents per school day regarding various issues or concerns. While I enjoy the parent interaction, it does take away from my time in the classroom. My principal and I are working on allotting more time to observe and coach teachers on a daily basis, but the high demands of parents are often detour our time from the instructional coaching component of administration. While I do enjoy the high level of parent interaction, I hope to find a balance between instructional coaching and parent engagement.

Student Messages

Student Council

Student work displayed

A Honor Roll

Character Education Recognition

Mentoring

Last school year, we restructured all of our Professional Learning Communities (PLC) to ensure that one senior faculty member was one each of the grade level PLCs. That person was chosen to lead the PLC for the next three years in order to establish grade-level norms and expectations. It is often that you will see senior faculty mentoring newer faculty members, particularly during common planning time. With the implementation of Common Core, grade level chair can frequently mentoring their teams on the implementation of the new curriculum. They do this through formal and informal discussions, professional development, and modeling of instruction.

5th Grade PLC Meeting

School Culture

The culture of Eaton Elementary is both positive and collaborative. We are lucky to have a supportive Parent Teacher Association that works hand-in-hand with the administration and faculty. Our teachers work collaboratively between grade levels and across grade levels. Teachers are actively involved in the decision making at our school. We also have an active student council that represents the voice of the student body. On numerous occasions, visitors have commented on the positive culture that we have at Eaton Elementary School. It is a great place to be!



Community Involvement



Processes, Policies, & Structures

I've been fortunate to have been involved with changes in policies, processes and structures at Eaton Elementary School. I was directly involved with implementing a tardy policy in November 2010 due to the excessive tardies were occurring in over 1/4 of our students. Since the implementation of the tardy policy, our excessive tardies has reduced significantly. For example, we had 75 students with three or more tardies within a nine week period prior to the implementation of the tardy policy. Since implementation, the numbers has significantly reduced to 23. Our chronic tardies (30+ per nine week) went from eight to zero students. Again, that is a significant decline.

Eaton Elementary School - Tardy Policy: Students with more than three unexcused tardies in a nine week period will be assigned an after school detention from 2:10 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.  For each unexcused tardy after three, an additional after school detention will be assigned.  For example, if a child is tardy for the 4th time in a nine week period they will be assigned an after school detention.  If they are tardy a 5th time, they will be assigned another after school detention and so on.  It will be the responsibility of the parent to pick their child up at 3:30 p.m. During tardy detention students can work on homework, read, etc. Parents will be notified by phone/letter when their child has received three unexcused tardies within a nine week period. The next offense(s) will result in an after school detention that will documented by a letter to the parent.

Enthusiasm, Commitment, and Engagement

My recent experience as an assistant principal at Eaton Elementary School and soon completion of the doctoral program in educational leadership at UNCW has affected my level of enthusiasm, commitment and engagement in several ways. First, I have learned that I truly enjoy working within the pubic school system, but I feel my greatest impact lies in working with pre-service teachers. From supervising student teachers to teaching a class at the university level, my passion has evolved to teaching the future teachers of America. I believe in public education but in order to have a bigger impact on shaping it, I must have the opportunity to shape those that are soon to be entering the field. I believe my education and experience will support my future goal of teaching at the university level. I look forward to the future and hope to continue to grow as an educational leader.