MSD Board of Education heard details on discipline improvements
At a recent meeting, Milford School District Board of Education heard details on new practices being implemented for discipline from Dr. Jessica Weller, Supervisor of Climate and Safety. A full report will be provided to the board in December.
“This is just a really quick update on our proactive measures, such as our Bridges Room, Positive Behavior Intervention Plans, learning modules and others put in place to have a positive impact on the culture, climate and discipline data in our schools, especially at our secondary campus,” Weller said. “I will put together some discipline data for you to be presented in December so you can see the difference from this year from last year, but we are seeing a lot of positivity in that area.”
Weller explained that the addition of school climate specialists at both Milford Central Academy and Milford High School have resulted in positive outcomes as well. The schools are efficiently handling discipline and making sure that they are more visible in hallways so that they can respond better to situations.
“Our Conscious Discipline coaches, which is a district wide framework and uses a trauma informed lens, visited our elementary schools earlier this month, and they have provided feedback to our teams on how to continue to immerse and implement Conscious Discipline throughout our schools. We will continue to work towards that with our secondary campus in November,” Weller said. “We’re just going to continue to reflect on all of our practices, tweak things where they need to be tweaked and continuous improvement in the school, climate discipline, safety room.”
Weller was asked to explain what Conscious Discipline entailed. She stated that it is a framework that provides training for the adults in the building to better understand the brain science of students, addressing discipline based on what skills have developed relative to the student’s age.
“We use a hand model of the brain as an example,” Weller said. “We teach the students that if they are in an emotional state in their brain, they are not going to respond appropriately. So how do we work through that? We try to bring them to their executive functioning state in the brain, so they understand what they have done, apply consequences that are appropriate, teach accountability and processing so that they actually learn something from their behaviors.”
When asked if they saw results from that approach, Weller stated that they did.
“We have had Conscious Discipline in certain schools prior to this year, but this year we did a district-wide implementation,” Weller said. “We are seeing results from that, especially ins specific types of situations. I know with MCA; we are really seeing a lot there with making sure we are addressing the development of a preteen into a teenager.”
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