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A professional public school educator has constructed a manual for school management and educational process. The standard hierarchy begins with government officials who are charged with legislating and regulating. Administrators such as the school superintendents who execute school policy come next. The principal and vice principal provide on-site leadership, while teachers have direct responsibility for conveying policy in a way that students can understand, participate in, and incorporate into their classroom and general behavior. Naming this hierarchy “The Everyone Team,” Christy gives realistic examples of how such functioning should work, showing how easily discipline can go astray when anyone on the team is not fully in sync with the larger vision. When all parties in the hierarchy are smoothly and solidly playing their parts, the student can and should learn to assume responsibility for his or her actions, ensuring order is maintained.
Christy has composed her guide using a variety of practical models and examples. The student’s progress is conceived as a wheel, rolling forward with components, representing various responsible parties—teachers, media, legislature, society—all contributing. Classroom scenarios illustrate how a careless principal or neglectful teacher can disrupt order as much as an uncooperative or neglected student. Accountability for discipline is shared; good leaders “set the mold for the school and classroom” that students can then absorb and follow. Christy quotes from numerous educational authorities while using her own dynamic models: the Knowledge, or K, Plan, DNA (Discipline with a New Attitude), and “apples,” an acronym expressing ideal order—Application, Preparation, Professionalism, and Leadership for Effective Schools. The goal is to develop students with “mentally fruitful alert minds” by constantly maintaining basic order in the educational environment. Prospective teachers and anyone currently involved in school organization and discipline may wish to utilize Christy’s ideas for more effective future functioning.