February 7, 2014

Student Leadership…

On Friday, January 31st Noah Baltramaitis, Jocelyn Polansky, Ally Brunelle, and Dylan Poet traveled with Mr. Baker and Mrs. Foss to the Mandel Jewish Community Center in West Hartford to attend the Middle School Student Leaders Forum.  The event brought together students from over 70 middle schools across the state of Connecticut to discuss the topic of improving middle school climates.  Best-selling author Rosalind Wiseman delivered a keynote address in which she discussed strategies to help students have mastery over their words and actions.  She talked about the difference between respect and dignity, saying that though respect needs to be earned, everyone has a right to be treated with dignity.  Mrs. Wiseman’s humor and concrete strategies gave us a lot to talk about as a group and we look forward to bringing some of those things back to Moran.

The students who attended the forum were also asked to read the book Wonder by Raquel Palacio and participated in a fishbowl activity in which they shared their own experiences and made connections between Wonder and Mrs. Wiseman’s presentation.  To end the day, we met as a school team and talked about how we might bring what we learned back to Moran.  We are looking forward to sharing what we learned with our school community and working with other school groups within Moran to make our school climate even better than it already is.