Astute observation, Angela :-) Respect and student voice are pretty much at the core of how our school sees itself, and it's nice to see that matters so much to the students as well as the adults.

As to next steps... this Constitution is for MOCA ("Middle school Office Caring for All," their student government, which includes all middle school students). We have posted a signed hard copy in the classroom where we meet, and an electronic version to the "MOCA" folder on our email system. It will be used to govern rules of conduct during MOCA meetings (twice a week for 25 minutes).

They had their first meeting yesterday under the new Constitution, and the hit five agenda items in 25 minutes, and accomplished a great deal. Yay kids.

Many classrooms wrote their own class rules at the beginning of the year. In my Humanities classroom, I ask my students to reduce them down to no more than six, to start them down the path to learning to work well together and compromise, and to get them thinking at the "synthesis" level on Bloom's taxonomy.

Take care,
Bill