Our fifth graders have gone back in time to the early 1600s to visit the land of Iroquoia, the home of the Iroquois Nation. From hanging corn to dry in our classroom to writing detailed travel guides for visitors to Iroquoia to visiting the American Museum of Natural History, we have really delved into the lifestyle of how the Iroquois lived.  We have even made a model of an Iroqouis longhouse!  Through hands on learning in social studies and synthesizing our thoughts in writing, we have become expert historians and sociologists.

Our seniors are also revving up for the middle school application process.  Thanks to the guidance from Ms. Horton, our parent coordinator (who is now on maternity leave, and her temporary replacement, Ms. Greene), students have successfully filled in their applications and ranked their choices for middle schools.  Now we are practicing our interviewing skills, and soon we will be writing our personal statements.  We are now heading out for interviews, and by the spring, we'll know where we are headed!

Expect great things from our seniors over the next few months and beyond!

I'm really glad that David Brooks mentioned the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) in his recent column about Samuel Huntington and the idea of clash of civilizations. This phenomenon, a basic element of Psychology 101 courses, deserves more widespread attending in education circles.

Simply put, the FAE highlights the human tendency to excuse our own mistakes and errors as influenced by circumstances beyond our control, while we assign permanent characteristics to others when we observe the same mistakes and errors, without considering the same influencing circumstances. We will blame the uneven sidewalk for our own trip and fall, but assign the attribute of clumsiness to the stranger across the street who trips and falls on the same crack.

I find the FAE to be so important in education because the mindset of teachers, parents and principals impacts our day to day decision making, treatment and expectations about children so greatly. A no-excuses, high expectations environment demands that we stay vigilant against falling victim to the FAE, and that we see the positive possibility and potential for good choices behind student behaviors when they strike us as awry. It means we need to understand why students behave the way they do, and to get inside their perspectives, rather than assigning a label or a judgment that closes to the door to change.

There are many student behaviors that stand out to me when I think about the FAE - behaviors to which a natural human reaction is to say, "What a ______ child" or "Clearly, that child cannot do this or that." But one, a fourth grader at our school who I'll call Keisha, is particularly dramatic. Keisha enrolled in our school in kindergarten in our first year of operation, when our expectations for student behavior were far less clear than they are today, and the structures and systems we had in place were commensurately so.

While we were still safer and more orderly than the school down the street, our imperfect adult behaviors formed the circumstances that led to many problematic student behaviors. In that start-up environment, with adults communicating different messages and unacceptable student behaviors leading to inconsistent adult responses, many of our five and six year olds naturally had a hard time adjusting to school.

Keisha didn't simply have a hard time adjusting. She was in pain. She spent most of each lunch period screaming at the top of her lungs. Unclear what she wanted, she would scream for an adult to hold her hand and then scream for the adult to stop touching her. She spent most of her classroom time wandering around the room, appearing to be in anguish, with no teacher intervention working to calm her down. On the school bus on the way home, Keisha was a veritable tornado of disruption. We feared for her safety.

Aware of the FAE (I was a psychology major in college for a reason), I knew that I shouldn't leap to conclusions about Keisha or her home life. Family members responded to our entreaties to get involved in school, shared some possible reasons for her behavior and committed to working with us over the years. This belief in each child, even a child with such obvious and outrageous struggles as Keisha, led our school to invest the time and resources needed to support her. Over the years, our Academic Intervention Services teachers and one of our school social workers collaborated with the family and classroom teachers to try a variety of strategies to support Keisha's needs and her growth.

Importantly, the school settled down that first year and systems and routines became clear. As the years have gone by, Keisha has struggled less and less, making at times dramatic improvements in her ability to adjust to school life. Having missed so much class time, she had to repeat the first grade and still went to second grade struggling academically. But she has caught up. Now in fourth grade, Keisha is having a terrific year. She has not exhibited a single behavioral problem and on the 2010 state reading test - a test that 48% of New York State students failed in grades 3-8 - Keisha scored at Level 3, a passing score. This morning she excitedly showed me a chapter book she is reading about a high school for Greek gods and goddesses (yes, a Rick Riordan ripoff, but a book that she chose herself and a gateway to interesting and high quality literature).

Working with Keisha now it's hard to imagine, let alone remember, the struggling five year old we met in 2005.  It was the family's belief in their daughter and our teachers' belief and commitment to Keisha's development - our shared resistance to the FAE - that facilitated this success story.

-Steven Evangelista