TRAVERSE CITY — One by one, the students of the week at Traverse Heights Elementary School stepped to a big prize wheel and spun it while the rest of the group chanted: “Spin that wheel!”
Each student then stepped back to watch as the wheel turned and turned, flying by point values — 5s, 13s, 20s — before stopping on the one that would be added to their house, or team, total that morning.
Once every student of the week had a turn spinning, Principal Bryan Kay brought the students out into the hallway to hold hands in a circle, and he reminded the group of the school’s values — safety, respect and responsibility — and their motto: “We are one.”
The weekly ceremony is associated with the house system at Traverse Heights Elementary School, in which students earn points for their house for positive behavior throughout the school day. At the beginning of last school year, students and staff were randomly sorted into one of five houses — Michigan, Erie, Huron, Superior or Ontario.
Whenever a new student joins the school, they are sorted into a house as well.
It’s an uncommon system, Kay admitted. It was developed by American educator and reality television personality Ron Clark, and it helps students feel like they belong at Traverse Heights.
“How can we make our school a welcoming place where everyone feels like they belong? That has been our charge for the past two and a half years,” Kay said.
The house system is one of many positive behavior support systems in place at Traverse Heights Elementary School. Since Kay started there, he has been working with staff to make students and staff feel a better sense of belonging and community, while emphasizing new and old practices that focus on kids’ social-emotional learning.
When Kay became principal at Traverse Heights in the fall of 2020, the school community was struggling with its own identity.
“Some parents even questioned like, ‘Are we roadrunners? What’s our mascot?’” Kay said.
Through interviews with students, staff and families, Kay found that the staff and community around the school lacked a cohesive understanding of its mission and vision.
In his first few months on the job, Kay worked with the school’s staff and community to define what it meant to be a roadrunner. After workshopping for a bit, they landed on safety, respect and responsibility as core values and the motto “We are one.”
“We’re one big family; we’re in this together. When one of us isn’t doing what we need to, magic can’t happen,” Kay said. “We’re really just trying to instill that with our kids, with our staff and with our families.”
With those newly defined values, a focus on building community and providing the right resources and support to students socially, emotionally and academically came naturally.
Traverse Heights was already incorporating the Second Step social-emotional curriculum – which is used across Traverse City Area Public Schools – before the pandemic. But it’s more concentrated in the classrooms now. Teachers may show students videos, hold discussions about feelings or have students practice social skills during class time now.
Those lessons are more effective that way, school social worker Gretchen Evenhouse said.
According to the Michigan Department of Education, SEL helps students understand and regulate their emotions, successfully complete goals, take others’ perspective or point of view, develop positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. Evenhouse said it also fosters academic success.
“Prioritizing social-emotional learning makes the math and the reading happen,” Evenhouse said. “I think that is a collective belief of our school.”
Traverse Heights Elementary staff also use restorative practices, as opposed to punitive discipline, which helps students develop and improve their social skills and build a greater capacity for empathy, said Evenhouse and school social worker Esther Voisin.
For example, if a student is struggling with the transition from class to recession, one of the social workers or a teacher will show them a video to teach them proper behavior, rather than punishing them by excluding them from recession entirely. This helps the students understand better what kind of behavior is expected of them throughout the school day.
Those restorative practices, as well as trauma-informed practices, which teachers at Traverse Heights also do, have aided the pandemic recovery process as well.
The social isolation caused by the pandemic caused many young kids to fall behind on social skills, including the basic skills they needed to be in school, such as being quiet when a teacher is speaking or walking calmly in the hallway.
With trauma-informed practices, teachers recognize student behavior as communication and consider what the student is experiencing emotionally that may cause certain negative behaviors.
“Regardless of how unfortunate the behavior is, behavior is communication, and we have to take that at face value,” Evenhouse said. “We see the behavior as communication versus we see behavior as inconvenience or on purpose or manipulative.”
In their capacity as social workers at the school, one of Voisin’s and Evenhouse’s daily tasks is checking in with students, helping them set goals for the day, talking through problem-solving and helping them navigate conflict and empathize with their peers.
With all the ways that Traverse Heights staff have sought to better support their students and create a more welcoming community, the school is already starting to see positive results.
Traverse Heights conducts three surveys each year asking students, staff and families about their sense of safety and belonging at school, and the percentage of teachers and students who said they feel they belong at the school rose between spring 2021 and this fall.
But the work is continuous, Kay said.
They even have something new on the horizon: In January, Traverse Heights will be starting a new mentorship system so their older students can have more opportunities to mentor their younger peers, Kay said.
With all the work they’re doing, Voisin calls Traverse Heights a “small but mighty neighborhood school.”
The effects of the pandemic still linger in the background for students. But, at Traverse Heights, they’re trying to take it day-by-day, student-by-student.
“I think I’m less focused on the pandemic, and more focused on what each kid is coming in with every single day,” Evenhouse said. “If we can provide a joyful, safe, brave, exciting and empowering school experience for our students, moving forward like that would be my biggest hope.”
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