West Bath School students embrace and embody our school’s Code of Character traits to become ethical people.

Before implementing EL Education structures, the character and the culture of the school was less than desirable. Through the development of our Code of Character there has been a decrease in school suspensions and an increase of student self-awareness and awareness of others. Students have developed skills such as mindfulness, emotional regulation, bucket filling and bullying prevention while having the opportunity to work in vertical teams in kindergarten through fifth grade. This evidence set includes attendance data, suspension data, and character growth data over time. It also includes student work samples from multiple grade levels that show how the Code of Character forms the foundation of expeditions, and how that work has grown over time.

West Bath School's First Expedition Products - Character Based

After developing the school Code of Character, grade spans worked together two develop two products to help others to better understand the school's Code of Character. The K-2 students explained what the Code of Character traits looked like in various settings. The 3-5 students wrote an anthology of poetry to help to describe the traits. The books were utilized as expert texts in crew lessons in the following years.

Character-Based Projects and Products

Since the development of the Code of Character, the character traits have been part of the foundation of case study work. Some products are clearly focused on teaching traits, while others are focused on promoting the traits in others, or helping to build a comfortable community, or reflecting on traits students have made progress with. All expedition products focus on the common good, and therefore always have thread of the Code of Character woven through it.

Kindergarten - Cultivating Character

PBIS

Once the Code of Character was established at the West Bath School, the state of Maine required that schools develop Positive Behavior Intervention and Support plans. As we had already had a student developed Code of Character, we developed our system to be in support of this work.

The staff created a matrix explaining what the character traits looked like in each setting, wrote lessons plans to explicitly teach the behaviors, created a universal screening of the traits, created office referral forms that were framed as lagging skills, and developed a system of positive rewards, known as arborist awards to celebrate students who were demonstrating the traits. Daily crew meetings were utilized for teaching and practicing some of these lessons and skills, and schoolwide crew meetings each week had a time dedicated for celebrating our classroom arborists.

Mindfulness at West Bath School

Mindful Mornings:

• Every morning for about 5 minutes with a group of 12 students
• Utilizes Mindup Curriculum for self-regulation skills including: getting to know your brain
• Core Practice - Breath, yoga, filtering the senses
• Positive Psychology - optimism, positive self talk, gratitude, and compassion/kindness

Observed Results - increase in tolerance of others (less reactive - more reflective), Increased communication skills, and more self-awareness of behaviors, possible triggers, and possible solutions.

Small Groups and 1:1 Coaching:

• Can identify and target very specific needs and goals.
• For example: focus & attention, filtering external stimuli, emotional regulation, and executive function.
• Make connections to the classroom, school day, and life.
• Can personalize based on student skills and interests: Aromatherapy, yoga games, postures, and mindfulness activities.
• Can make great gains in short bursts of practice over time.
• Builds relationships - good preventative of “crisis” mode and builds up mental and physical memory of positive experiences in school.

Integration into Academic Curriculum:

• Response to Intervention - math, literacy, behavior
• Can benefit from yogic strategies: Brain Gym, physical encoding, and anxiety reducers for optimum brain function.
• Gifted & Talented - The Integrative Education Model - Barbara Clark
• Focus on Brain Science - Organizes the major functions of the brain into 7 components to ensure all functions of the brain will be part of a student’s learning to ensure optimum learning conditions for brain growth.
• This includes responsive learning environments, complex and challenging learning cognitive activity, empowering language and behavior, choice and perceived control, relaxation and tension reduction, movement and physical encoding, and intuition and integration.

School Data

As can be seen by reviewing the credentialing data sheet, West Bath School's daily attendance rate is higher than the state's and continue to grow. Suspension data for the state of Maine is not available, but West Bath students have only had one suspension in the past two years, and disciplinary referrals for "bold behaviors" are practially non-existant. This compares to having an average of 2 referrals per day for "bold behaviors" in 2010.

Students, faculty, and parents have gathered in separate groups on several occasions to discuss West Bath School's culture. Warm and cool feedback has helped to mold the type of school that West Bath has become and has encouraged continued growth. Each voice is equally weighted and we are rewarded with honesty and integrity in the responses. The evidence set below contains the voices of our students and parents over time, expressing how character work has been among the most important work of the school. Additional feedback from alumnae underscores the value the focus on character has meant to them as students and citizens years later.

West Bath Alumnae Offered Their Perspective About how the Code of Character Helped to Shape them as Scholars and Citizens

• "West Bath really promoted good character and being self-aware of our actions, promoting the positive and addressing the negative in ways that were constructive and open for apologies as well as self improvement. This helped me learn that making mistakes are okay, but that I have the responsibility to amend any hurt feelings and fix any damage or harm caused by my mistakes, or to ask for help if it be an academic mistake. I also felt welcomed and cared for by all of the faculty which really helped me enjoy school. Although school most certainly got more challenging, enjoying school through elementary levels set me up to really apply myself and care about my education in later grades when it was increasingly important. I’m glad I was in an elementary school where the arts were encouraged: visual, musical, and theatrical. They all played a role in shaping who I am today, and even if I do not currently engage in all three, I treasure my experiences with them and what they all taught me. And I thank West Bath school for offering and encouraging exploration them. I definitely would not be who I am today or be doing what I am doing today if I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore those kinds of art in elementary school." - Sarah, grade 12
• "One thing that I learned at West Bath and still carry with me today is to always try to be kind and help others. This lesson has been focused on for so long, especially at West Bath, that is something that I do subconsciously." - Fionna, grade 8
• "The school’s strength is the Code of Character, which helped me to become a better person and persevere through hard things. Another strength is EL because it helped me realize that I have a voice and that your voice and opinion matters. It also had lots of hands on learning experiences that helped many of us learn, and they had a wide range of ways to learn that connected to every kind of student, not just one that is a visual learner or a reading/writing kind of learner." - Audrey, grade 8
• "During my time at West Bath School, I saw myself grow as a citizen by how I improved my motivation to help the community, school, and world. I helped motivate a group of girls to plant a tree with me for West Bath School by the playground to help the environment as well as providing other benefits for the students and teachers. I was encouraged to do this from our learning about the environment and climate change in class for an expedition, as well as inspiration to try to be helpful to the community from similar activities at school." - Isabel, grade 8

Through the embodiment of the Code of Character, students have become passionate about helping others, as compassion is one of our traits. No matter the age, students have developed the skills of an ethical person by supporting equality, fairness, and encouraging each other to strive to make more virtuous choices and actions. As a way to express this, students pursue passion projects that show ethical leadership through actions like developing service projects, or creating inclusive clubs, earth-friendly awareness campaigns, and food share programs. This evidence set shares a sample of students' passion projects, the impact the projects have on others, and students' reflections of how their own passion projects have in turn helped them to become more ethical people.

Share Table

The idea Share Table came from a group of students' concern that food was being wasted in the cafeteria, while at the same time others did not have enough to eat at school or at home. With food being provided by the Good Shepard Food Bank, once a week, this group of students sets up a table with food that students can bag up and take to go home.

"We started the share table because we have kids in our school who do not have enough food at their houses. I noticed that kids liked granola bars, so we started just giving out granola bars. But then we wanted to have a balance and have fruits and vegetables too. It feels like a food pantry, but it is easier because if you don't have a car you can still get food from the share table. I think that kids are thankful that we created this. I feel better now that kids have food to take home. It also helps other kids know how they should take care of other people. We are going to keep this going and it will get better with each generation." - Brody, Grade 3