Because at Janssen, everyday...

...we DO the Janssen Way!

Our students orate this catch phrase each Monday morning at Morning Paws.  The purpose is to build ownership with our students on the Janssen Way.  It is not about simply know what to do or not to do, but to make the decision and act on making positive choices.  The weekly reminder is purposeful.  We want to continue to keep the DOING at the forefront of the students' day.  When we see the positive choices when then acknowledge.  The acknowledging makes the students feel successful.  When the students feel successful they are more motivated.  When they are more motivated they DO more.  When the DO more they own the DOING.  When they own the DOING, they see a purpose to why it is important to DO.

This approach is only successful because our staff has ownership in PBIS.   They see the successes in 90% of our students and see purpose for continuing to own the integration of PBIS in their classrooms with fidelity.

What about the remaining 10%?  We have great kids who make poor choices sometimes--not purposefully, but more impulsively.  We are working through PBIS Tiers II and III to provide generalized support for a small group within the 10% of students through a process called Check In-Check Out (CICO).  Our small group of students check in with their learning coach throughout the day.  This process provides us information to better anticipate students' needs and provides students with a set of expectations for them to practice throughout the day.  We are in the initial practices for CICO, but our committed small group of staff members are continuously refining the process to positively impact this small group of students.

Great job to all our adults practicing PBIS--The Janssen Way.

Sincerely,

Mr. N

Extra Extra Read All About It...

Dear Reader:

"Extra, extra...read all about it:  Janssen Elementary is in their 3rd year of implementing PBIS-aka The Janssen Way.  And...we started our year off with such a WOOOOF!!! from our staff and students.  We began our year with an all school assembly that we called our Boarding Ceremony.  Our staff was decked out in a Hawaiian cruise wear theme and cruise music was playing throughout the school.  Each grade level represented a cruise ship ready to embark on fantastic voyage where as a school we revisit/teach our expected community values of honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility.

[Chorus] "...because at Janssen every day...we DO the Janssen Way!"

Two weeks later, our cruise ships returned from their voyages of knowing, making meaning, and practicing our community values and docked themselves in a second all school assembly.  Here, each grade level shared their learning through writing samples about the Janssen Way.

We are four weeks into the school year and you can clearly see our students routinely and purposefully practicing the Janssen Way.  Kudos to our entire staff for facilitating our students learning in citizenship.
At Janssen, we a have a staff that sees the value in PBIS and continually push each other to support our students into practicing the Janssen Way.

To another great start to our school year...thank you all!!!

Bon Voyage
"Captain" Nikolaou :-)

Dear Janssen Readers:

I have added a poem written by one of our third grade students about teachers.  This revealed to me an example the value-laden impact our Janssen Way has on students.

Enjoy:

A Poem about Teachers

Each teacher is unique,

Each one has something in common:

One:  to teach us to stay active,

One:  to teach us to be musicians,

One:  to help us with reading and math, 

One:  to teach us with something truly amazing--The Janssen Bulldog Way.

Also thank you for making this year great!

Thank you,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

Two thoughts I wish to share with you...

We are in our last week of school and our Morning Paws think and reflect is on how to practice The Janssen Way during the summer in our homes, neighborhoods, and communities.  The Janssen Way does not need to be limited during the school day or within the school year.  Our staff does a fantastic job connecting the good decision making skills we expect in our school to the lives our children live outside their school.

We are finishing our second  year of The Janssen Way off the PBIS initiative in our state and we have had great experiences with what we have taught our students and what they are practicing.  The challenge for next year is sustainability and ownership.  At a minimum we need to sustain our level of implementation that we currently have and allow students to own their decision making experiences and continue to find value in the practice instead of simply teaching them how to behave and rewarding them with dog bones.  Our staff believes each of our students can make good decisions, we simply need to encourage, support, and reteach them through out the year.

In conclusion, PBIS/The Janssen Way has strengthened our building culture for our students and staff.  The impact of what we do is based on what our students do, WOOF!!!

Your Principal
Mr. Nikolaou

Booster Time

Dear Reader:

This week we began our last 8 weeks of the 2012-13 school year.  Our staff have been communicating with each other  about targeting 'booster lessons' for our students.  Boosters are indiscriminate amount of learning opportunities (based on strengths and needs) to have students practice, reflect, and refine their actions around the Janssen Way.
Quarter 4 and the anticipation it brings for students about the upcoming summer is an excellent opportunity to provide our students with booster lessons.  We are very excited about finishing the year strong.  Woof!  Woof!

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

We are currently on Spring Break for the week, but I still wanted to share with some data we have collected related to our practices of the Janssen Way--for it sets the stage for the remainder of the year. Since the start of the school year until the end of March, 95% our students have received 0-1 office referrals.  Office referrals take place based on the severity of the behavior or its frequency. This is positively phenomenal--an example of the fidelity in which our staff members integrate the Janssen Way into their daily routines.   I also believe our daily messages during Morning Paws contributes to the high percentage of students making good choices during the day.  Last week for example we target honesty throughout the week--our students were prompted each day about how and why it is important to honest.
We have a great incentive for our students this month.  The more dog bones they receive the closer to reaching the target.  I cannot give you the specifics at this time, but it does include all students who do not receive any office referrals for the month of April.  This all school event's purpose is to acknowledge to our students the thousands of good decisions they make at Janssen School.
Upon our return from Spring Break, 8 weeks of school remain.  Our staff recognize the challenges for students during this time of the year and are committed just like the start of the school to acknowledge good decisions and reteach and prompt for making good decisions.  Developing and practicing citizenship skills for  each of our students continues to be very important to our school.

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

I begin this blog by posing a question for parents to reflect on:  How is your child practicing the Janssen Way outside of school?  Each day we integrate the principles of the Janssen Way (our community values:  honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility) in everything we do and work hard to have our students make connections to why it is important to practice the Janssen Way at school.  Our hope with such a daily focus is for our students to practice making good decisions and making meaning for themselves on the importance behind why we do the Janssen Way.  In other words, we want our students to find value in the Janssen Way.  The question posed to parents at the start of this newsletter is to have them reflect on whether our students are transferring their understanding of the Janssen Way by practicing our community values outside of school—for example:  at home, in the neighborhood, or at the grocery store. 

We continue to learn from our experiences and refine our practices in order to make the Janssen Way more meaningful for our students.  We additionally welcome parent feedback to improve on what we do around the Janssen Way.  For more information on the Janssen Way, please go to our school’s webpage and link to “The Janssen Way” tab or contact your child’s teacher.  We do great things at Janssen and want parents to be a part of our experiences.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

This month our Janssen Way-PBIS group want to make connections to what we do at Janssen around PBIS with parents.  Sharing Kindness Hearts is the venue for making the connection with our families.  As families fill out the paper hearts with words of kindness, we will be displaying them on our lunch room windows for several weeks.  Kindness is one of our 4 Community Values for our district.  It is so important for our students to see acts of kindness each and every.  The experiences between parents and their children provides multiple exposures to acts of kindness.  By having these paper hearts displayed in our lunchroom over the next few weeks adds to these experiences.

I want to thank our Janssen Staff for pushing these experiences out to our families and our families for contributing to these experiences.  These actions serve as another example of building capacity as a Janssen Community.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

Every Thursday at our Morning Paws we sing our school song.  Our school song aligns with our district's Community Values and our commitment to the Janssen Way.  Below are the words to our school song:


We've got kindness, honesty,
Respect, responsibility, (clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We are bright, we are strong,
We are friends the whole day long (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We love to learn we like to give,
We use our strengths for how we live (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We are positive and fun.
We use teamwork to be one (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs. (YEAH!)



When our student body sings this song in our small gym to start our day...simply awesome!

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

In wanting for our students and staff to practice our Janssen Way with fidelity, we realize that we need to provide boosters--timely re-teaching opportunities.  These boosters allow for our school to re-acclimate the concepts and beliefs of the Janssen Way to each other resulting in a re-vitalizing or re-energizing of our school culture--similarly to how we start the school year.  With the start of second semester, we will provide based on the data we collect learning boosters for our students.  What makes these boosters successful is the buy-in from our staff.  Our staff has seen directly how the Janssen Way has changed our school culture and wants for our students to be successful each and every day.  Providing  boosters is just a natural way of thinking for us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

I wish each Janssen Family a happy 2013 and welcome our students back from our winter break.  As we welcome our students back, we are cognizant to give each classroom a Janssen Way booster to re-acclimate them to our Body and Line Basics and remind them about our voice levels through the building.  What is so exciting about coming back from winter break is...once again working with our students.  Our teachers' energy cells have been refueled, and they ready to continue to engage and challenge our students into meeting and/or exceeding our learning proficiency levels.
Our Morning Paws 'sets the stage' for our students each day.  Today is a bit more special based on teachers and students seeing each other for the first time in a week and a half.  I saw so many happy and cheerful faces today at Morning Paws--staff and students.  It is so GREAT to be a part of a GREAT school with such GREAT people.

Happy 2013!

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou