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School District 49

Cookies and Coco Celebration

Cookies and Coco Celebration
Four Students decorating cookies

On Thursday, nearly 50 students at Remington Elementary School had a special treat before the Christmas Break, coco and cookies. 

This select group of students received positive office referrals in the last month and were invited to the Principal’s Party to celebrate their good behavior. 

“We were doing positive office referrals in years before, but it wasn't getting as much traction as incident referrals,” said RES Principal Cassi MacArthur. “We started the Principal’s Party last year. It was really about turning around the culture and focusing on the positive.”

Student eating a cookie

The parties are held once a month to celebrate positive behavior and have continued to grow. The party themes change each month, but provide a snack and an opportunity to hang out with school leaders and other students. 

“Our first Principal Party last year had maybe 15 or 20 kids,” MacArthur said. “This year it's been almost 50 kids a month.”

Not only have the positive referrals increased, the incident referrals have decreased. 

“Last year we saw a significant shift toward the positive where we had more positive office referrals than incident referrals. It was still pretty close, maybe 130 to 120,” she said. “It was a great first step and let us know we are going in the right direction.”

Student decorating a cookie

For the fall semester this year there have been about 250 positive and only 50 incident referrals.

“The majority of our incident referrals normally do come in the first couple months of school when we're setting those norms and expectations and behavior systems in place,” MacArthur said. “With about 50 incidents halfway through the year shows that we're on track to have less overall than last year. And we've already doubled our positives in half the year.”

The numbers show this Renaissance approach is working. But it’s not about the numbers. 

“The numbers are an indication that what we're doing is working, but what is working is that we're making kids want to be here. We're making kids want to make the right choices at school. We're making kids feel seen and loved and celebrated,” MacArthur said.

Student decorating a cookie

The first thing the positive office referrals do is provide a positive interaction between students and their teachers as well as school leadership. 

“There's not that negative association with the leadership of the school or people in power,” MacArthur said. “There's like a partnership and things can be celebrated.”

Principal Cassi MacArthur sits at a table with students eating cookies

The second thing happening is students are able to interact with school leaders in a positive environment. They also are put in situations where they have to socialize and share things like frosting and sprinkles with students they may not know. The Principal Parties include kindergarten through fifth grade students. 

“The parties create a social setting,” MacArthur said. “The students can see peer modeling of positive behaviors. They can meet kids they don't normally meet. And they're all in one place, and then they get to interact a little more personally with adult staff.”

Two Students eating cookies

But the most important thing the positive referrals and Principal Parties do is engage the students at school. 

“The point is to get them to want to come in the door and want to be here and want to make good choices,” MacArthur said. “We celebrate those and make as big of a deal out of the good choices, so that we can have them here and help them learn and grow.”

“Have you ever tried to learn when you're in a bad mood? I don't know if you've ever been to a staff meeting or a professional development where you weren't feeling even seen, like you simply had to be there, but maybe no one even knew you were there or things were expected of you, but nobody was doing anything for you. It makes it really hard to want to engage in that environment. But, just like adults, if a kid feels loved and that they are welcomed and wanted, whether they're late or on time, or they were absent and they come back, or whether they made a bad choice or a good choice, they feel loved. They are invested in coming back and doing better,” MacArthur said.

Student eating a cookie

When school started in August, the RES staff made a strategic effort to look for positive behaviors in certain students. 

“We knew some kids needed an early win to get them on the right track,” MacArthur said. “Students that had some emotional dysregulation last year and things like that. We really wanted to start them with something positive. Not necessarily kids who were making a lot of bad choices, but kids that just had a hard time finding happiness. We tried to recognize them as soon as we could in the first month for doing the right thing, because what gets recognized gets repeated. We had parents comment to our staff and on our family engagement survey about this approach. One kid in particular really turned things around, and made him excited to come to school every day.”

MacArthur said, “Renaissance is an avenue for creating a positive culture. And it's the avenue the Sand Creek Zone takes. It's creating a culture and climate where kids feel seen and loved and then recognizing and celebrating them, and that leads to student results academically, behaviorally.”