NELMS has a lot of resources for you from books on the topic to professional help. I also have a number of ideas myself so feel free to contact me directly at nelms@nelms.org

As for the Origins Program, I do not know about it. I do know that Responsive Classroom has not worked well in the ML when folks have tried to adopt it to the ML learner. We find that there is a great deal of ready info in a school for an advisory and that most folks like the fact that many are "home grown" to meet program goals and school needs.

All for now,
Bob

In terms of starting up an advisory program at your school... I would recommend that you start off small... and don't overwhelm yourselves with meeting every day! At my school, we spent almost a year planning and gathering materials that we could use in Advisory (we did not purchase a program).

We then started meeting once a week for 25 minutes with our groups. Ideally we could bump that up to two or three times a week, but we have not moved in that direction yet. It's tough to add too much without, since there is a bit of planning for the meetings, without hitting issues with our contract and teaching time.

I'd be happy to send you further thoughts and information if you'd like. My email address is saarinenj@bw.k12.ri.us

Hi Everyone,
We are thinking of starting an Advisory Program at our school and we want to visit a school that has an effective program already. Has anyone trained in the Origins Program? It's an offshoot of Responsive Classroom and Morning Meeting. What's the basic structure of an effective Advisory Program? Is it basically a daily 20 minute morning meeting with a greeting, activity, and sharing like Responsive Classroom or is it something else?

With efforts being made to encourage student involvement and increase student learning, how are other middle schools engaging their students? What positive behavior programs have succeeded and how do you sustain their interest?

There's a great U-Tube video called Hero in the Hallway that goes well with the no bullying theme.

What does TAG stand for or represent? It sounds nice to have them meet in the morning AND in the afternoon. I imagine it's a good way of starting and ending a school day.

Also, to add to the discussion of good movies related to bullying, Odd Girl Out is a Lifetime movie that came out a couple of years ago. It's excellent for middle school and high school students to see the negative girl bullying that occurs.

We have been enjoying TAG groups, as we call our advisory program, for many years. Our Tag group meets twice a day, once in the morning for about 20 minutes and again at the end of the day for 10 minutes. We meet everyday and TAG leaders take care of the attendance and then get down to a variety of activities. Over the years we have focused on a number of different kinds of themes. We work with students on work habits and organization, goal setting, community service activities, interaction between TAGs has been incorporated over the years. For example for a number of years we put on a Variety Show with each TAG putting together performances. This was enjoyed by the entire community. The culminating event included a performance for parents and community members. Each day has a different focus. TAGs spend one day each week talking about current events. I'd be happy to share ideas with anyone looking for them.
Advisory is a very worthwhile multifacited program that can be whatever your school hopes it to be.

You can find information about the National Stand Up to Bullying Day here: http://standupday.com/. We don't plan to get sponsors and buy t-shirts, but we like the idea of an organized day, which I think we'll end up customizing with our own topics.

I don't know websites, but I know that local Boys/Girls Clubs, or for that matter Girl/Boy Scouts, might be a good place to start. We have used clips from the movie "Mean Girls" and the book "The Girls" by Amy Goldman Koss to stimulate discussions around girl-on-girl dynamics including bullying (we're an all-girls school).
Take care,
Bill

I haven't heard of National Stand Up to Bullying Day. Do you know of a Web site related to this or any other information about it?

Angela, thanks for the wrap-up. It sounds like your NNCW went really well. The idea of getting lots of different groups involved really does spread the wealth in terms of work and organization. We are exploring our own name-calling issues here at school, considering a No-Name-Calling Day (since we didn't have our act together enough last week!) on National Stand Up to Bullying Day. The website you pointed us all to was also really helpful, with lots of good lesson plans. Don't discount the elementary plans, in many cases they can be adapted to a short, advisory period with middle school students.

Bravo!

Our NNCW last week went really well! My goal was to encourage as many groups of people to be involved in some way. Reasoning behind this was two-fold in that it number one gets everyone involved and number two takes much of the work off of my shoulders!

The foreign language department had their students make posters in Spanish and French that said things like "no bullying" and "respect one another." These are posted throughout our school. Our art teachers asked their students to be creative and draw posters with positive words that describe people, after they had already discussed the negative words they hear in the hallways. These are also posted around the school.

Our librarians displayed books in the library that were related to friendships, respect, tolerance, etc. Our phys. ed. teachers put an extra emphasis on teamwork and getting along during classes all week. Student Council played songs like "Where is the love?" and "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" on the morning announcements, along with words of wisdom for no name-calling.

The biggest thing we did was ask each team of teachers to nominate one or two students they think show positive behavior, no bullying, sticking up for others, respect, etc. We rewarded these students with a pizza party with our principal and vice principal, as well as certificates for the I AM THE CHANGE Award. They were so pleased to receive an award for simply being themselves, considering they didn't know the award existed before being nominated. It was a great success! We hope to continue this piece throughout the year.

It is definitely an easy but important event that I believe all schools should focus on, especially middle level schools where bullying is such a huge issue.

Thanks for the great tip, Angela, about "No Name Calling Week" and welcome, Jen! Bill has some great ideas for activities that can accompany really any "theme" week or month. We've had some success with approaching the topic of bullying in our advisories, using activities that each advisory took part in over the course of a month or so. Our sixth grade has also participated in "Mix It Up Day" with mixed results.

Please, please let us know your experiences with these resources and activities!

Hello - I just joined this discussion group - and have been working on our school's advisory program for the last year or so. We just implemented advisory to the students and staff in late October - in order for everyone to get into the year and through with the NECAP testing before we added one other thing to our plate.

I took a look at the No Name Calling Week information - specifically that provided at nonamecallingweek.org - I downloaded the free lessons provided there and plan to use them throughout the year, not just during no name calling week. The lessons seem like they are worthwhile and are current. When putting together a resource binder for our staff last year, we had a difficult time finding good information on bullying that was relevant to the middle school age group. I wish that we had come across this resource then!

I look forward to participating in this discussion group!

We haven't done the "no name calling week" but have been involved in similar, tolerance-promoting activities like "Mix it up day" (sit with people you don't know at lunch), "Day of Silence" (to support gays and lesbians), and so on.

I would think there could be read-aloud texts, extracts from books and/or poems. I'm sure there are songs out there too. Students could also create original work - written and/or artistic - around the theme of the week. In advisory, or some other format, students could share how they got their names and what they mean. There could be skits and/or role-plays, public or within specific classes. I hope this helps!