Dear parents and guardians, we are so excited to welcome you to our Parent Power newsletter. We're thrilled that you’re interested in learning more from our dedicated team at EBR Schools and can’t wait to start sharing with you.
Inside this Issue
The East Baton Rouge Parish School System wants to celebrate our parents during the month of November for Parent Engagement Month. Parents are the first educators and, therefore, determine the level of achievement of every child. We will encourage our parents to take the PLEDGE (scan the QR Code on the graphic below) and commit to learning new strategies, sharing talents of their families and those in the community, and getting connected with various apps and websites to increase their child's achievement.
About National Parent Engagement Month
The month of November is celebrated as Parent Engagement Month to recognize the contributions of parents across the nation and to encourage schools to raise awareness of the important roles parents play in a child's education. Parent Engagement Month highlights the many opportunities available for educators, families, students and community members to engage in partnerships with the goal of improving student academic achievement. Each year, schools and communities across the United States strengthen and celebrate family engagement throughout the month of November.
Please click the links below to view some public service announcements on parent, family and community engagement provided by the Louisiana Department of Education:
When adults respond quickly and consistently to bullying behavior, they send the message that it is not acceptable. Research shows this can stop bullying behavior over time.
Parents, school staff and other adults in the community can help kids prevent bullying by talking about it, building a safe school environment and creating a communitywide bullying prevention strategy.
What Is Bullying
Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.
In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:
An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power — such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information or popularity — to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.
Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.
Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.
Verbal bullying is saying or writing mean things. Verbal bullying includes:
Teasing
Name-calling
Inappropriate sexual comments
Taunting
Threatening to cause harm
Social bullying, sometimes referred to as relational bullying, involves hurting someone’s reputation or relationships. Social bullying includes:
Leaving someone out on purpose
Telling other children not to be friends with someone
Spreading rumors about someone
Embarrassing someone in public
Physical bullying involves hurting a person’s body or possessions. Physical bullying includes:
Hitting/kicking/pinching
Spitting
Tripping/pushing
Taking or breaking someone’s things
Making mean or rude hand gestures
Where and When Bullying Happens
Bullying can occur during or after school hours. While most reported bullying happens in the school building, a significant percentage also happens in places such as the playground or the bus. It can also happen traveling to or from school, in the youth’s neighborhood or on the internet.
What Is Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cellphones, computers and tablets. Cyberbullying can occur through SMS, text, apps or online in social media, forums, or gaming where people can view, participate in or share content. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting or sharing negative, harmful, false or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior.
The most common places where cyberbullying occurs are:
Social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok
Text messaging and messaging apps on mobile or tablet devices
Instant messaging, direct messaging and online chatting over the internet
Online forums, chatrooms and message boards, such as Reddit
Email
Online gaming communities
Special Concerns
With the prevalence of social media and digital forums, comments, photos, posts and content shared by individuals can often be viewed by strangers as well as acquaintances. The content an individual shares online — both their personal content as well as any negative, mean or hurtful content — creates a kind of permanent public record of their views, activities and behavior. This public record can be thought of as an online reputation, which may be accessible to schools, employers, colleges, clubs and others who may be researching an individual now or in the future. Cyberbullying can harm the online reputations of everyone involved — not just the person being bullied but those doing the bullying or participating in it. Cyberbullying has unique concerns in that it can be:
Persistent – Digital devices offer an ability to immediately and continuously communicate 24 hours a day, so it can be difficult for children experiencing cyberbullying to find relief.
Permanent – Most information communicated electronically is permanent and public if not reported and removed. A negative online reputation, including for those who bully, can impact college admissions, employment and other areas of life.
Hard to Notice – Because teachers and parents may not overhear or see cyberbullying taking place, it is harder to recognize.
Laws and Sanctions
All states have laws requiring schools to respond to bullying. As cyberbullying has become more prevalent with the use of technology, many states now include cyberbullying or mention cyberbullying offenses under these laws. Schools may take action either as required by law or with local or school policies that allow them to discipline or take other action. Some states also have provisions to address bullying if it affects school performance. You can learn about the laws and policies in each state, including if they cover cyberbullying.
Please click the link below to access a video about Cyberbullying:
Terry Potts is the sergeant-at-arms for the Merrydale Elementary Parent Teacher Organization. However, Marria Barnes, Family and Community Engagement facilitator at Merrydale, shared that he is much more than that. Barnes can be found on the campus of Merrydale Elementary everyday. If he is not assisting with breakfast/cafeteria duty, he is giving a teacher a break by monitoring their respective class or making copies. Potts often takes the lead for school fundraisers and schoolwide activities. Thanks, Mr. Potts, for being an exceptional parent/volunteer for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.
To give children the guidance they want and need, parents must be in control. They must establish and maintain authority over their children. Here are some good ways for you to strengthen your authority:
Be a model of the behaviors you value. You can't expect your child to be kind, courteous and respectful if you aren't kind, courteous and respectful to your child and others.
Spend time with your child. Many parents of children ages 4-18 spend fewer than five minutes a day in meaningful conversation with their children. That is not enough time to develop the kind of bond you need to influence your child in a positive way.
Keep your promises. Spending time with your child creates a “bank account” of goodwill that you can draw from when you and your child aren't getting along. The fastest way to “break the bank” is to make promises you don't keep.
Demonstrate your love. Your child is much more likely to do as you say when they know that you love them and when they understand that your requests and actions are in their best interests. Don't just assume your child knows you love them. They need to hear it and see it over and over again — no matter how old she is.
Use the power of routines. Constantly telling your child what to do is exhausting —and it invites them to challenge authority. Try setting up routines. Once established, routines provide a behavioral “road map” to follow. Once your child gets into a routine, they will do the right thing without even thinking.
6. Stay grounded with ground rules. Your child can't do what's expected unless they know what you expect. When you set up clear and reasonable rules, it's easy for them to make decisions, either they obey the rules or they don't. And it's easier for you to administer discipline.
7. Expect your child to test your rules regularly. Just because you set up rules and routines doesn't mean your child will blindly follow them. Expect them to test the rules to see what you really mean by them. You may say the rule is “no TV until homework is done.” But if they can sometimes talk you into letting them watch a show, they learn that the rule really is, “no TV — unless you talk me into it.”
8. Know the secrets to fighting peer pressure. Peer pressure can be a real threat to your authority. The older your child gets, the more pressure they will feel from peers to do things that are against your wishes. To fight peer pressure, you can use the same tactics children's peers use to get others to follow along:
Show that you like your child.
Help your child feel like a member of an important group.
Help him feel special because they're part of the family.
Glasgow Middle School is hosting a FREE event on Wednesday, Nov. 20, for young children of all ages. Students will get to try out being an archaeologist for the night. They can dig for artifacts, play ancient games, make mosaics, write on ancient papyrus, build a pyramid, take selfies in the National Geographic photo booth, pick a free NatGeo magazine to take home and shop all the goodies at our fall book fair! The event will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Hope to see you there!
Not all teens know how to study. Those that don’t may spend more time than they need to on their work for school. Or they may get frustrated and stop studying completely.
Share these strategies to help your teen study effectively:
1. Take notes in class. Writing down what the teacher says can help your teen see what the teacher thinks is important. Reviewing notes regularly will also improve retention of the material.
2. Break it up. Research shows that frequent short study sessions spaced out over time are more effective than one long study session.
3. Study similar subjects at different times. Putting new information into your brain is a little like pouring concrete. Your teen has to give it time to “set up.” So, between a science lesson with a lot of formulas and a math lesson with a lot of formulas, your teen should study history or English to allow the science lesson time to set.
4. Avoid getting sidetracked. If your teen finds their mind wandering during study time, they should keep a notepad by the study spot. They can jot down reminders or random ideas that pop into their head and then get right back to studying.
5. Eliminate distractions. The TV, phone and growling stomach will all distract your teen. Make sure to turn off all electronics and take care of hunger and thirst before sitting down to study.
Organization is the thinking skill that helps a child take a systematic approach to problem-solving by creating order out of disorder. Organization involves learning how to collect all of the necessary materials to complete a task while being able to step back and examine a complex situation. For example, a child is using organizational skills when they take time to gather all of their notes before starting to study for a test.
Listed below are links to some websites and articles that may assist your child with organizational skills:
You probably know that sleep is necessary for your child’s growing body. But did you know that sleep actually helps her brain work better, too? Getting enough sleep each night allows your child to be more alert, pay closer attention and remember material with greater accuracy the next day.
To help you child get the recommended 11 to 13 hours of sleep each night:
Develop a sleep schedule. Have your child go to bed and wake up about the same time each day. Try to keep the same schedule on weekends, too.
Enjoy some physical activity outside. Exercise and fresh air help kids sleep better.
Follow a bedtime routine. Take a bath, put on pajamas, brush teeth and read a story. Talk about something positive from the day. Then, lights out.
Make him feel safe. Put a night light in your child’s room. Tell them you will check on them.
SOURCE: D. Thompson, “Poor Sleep in Preschool Years Could Mean Behavior Troubles Later,” HealthDay, niswc.com/ec_sleep.
Sometimes, it seems that middle-schoolers are permanently attached to their phones, tablets and other devices. They text from the minute they wake up until they go to bed. They share funny videos and pictures with their friends. They scroll through social media.
So it’s no surprise that students often try to use their phones while they’re working in class or doing homework. But several research studies show that the more time students say that they text, use social media or read online while they do schoolwork, the lower their grades are.
Students often think their devices can help with their work. After all, they can watch a video of the pyramids while studying history. They can check their answer to a math problem.
There’s just one problem: Kids seldom stay focused on the work they are doing. Pretty soon, they click from the history video to the latest internet joke. From then on, history is not their focus.
What can you do to help your child stay focused on work and not on the Smartphone? Here are some tips:
Talk about multitasking — and how research shows it doesn’t work. Students need to focus while studying or they won’t learn.
Follow the rules regarding devices in class. Many teachers have a “parking lot” where students must leave their phones or tablets.
Limit the use of devices during homework time. Studies show that the more time students spend multitasking, the longer their studies take.
Be a role model yourself. Don’t check your phone during family dinner or (especially) in the car.
Respectful behavior is just as important at school as it is at home. When students have respect for teachers and classmates, they help create the positive academic environment all children need to be successful.
Encourage your child to:
Address the teacher by name. Simply saying “Good morning, Mrs. Jones” is an easy way to show respect.
Be courteous. They should say please and thank you to their teacher and classmates.
Raise hand. When they wait to be called on, they demonstrate self-control and respect for others.
Do what’s expected. Everyone in school has a job to do. If the teacher doesn’t plan any lessons, no one can learn anything. If students don’t do their jobs — completing homework, listening to the teacher — it makes it more difficult to learn.
Listen to the teacher’s comments. Teachers want students to learn and to succeed. That means they have to point out mistakes. Your child will do much better in school if they can recognize and accept constructive feedback.
Parent Power is a publication of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System
The East Baton Rouge Parish School System and all of its entities (including career and technical education programs) do not discriminate on the basis of age, race, religion, national origin, disability or gender in its educational programs and activities (including employment and application for employment); and it is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of gender by Title IX (20 USC 168) and on the basis of disability by Section 504 (42 USC 794). The Title IX coordinator is Andrew Davis, director of Risk Management (ADavis6@ebrschools.org, 225-929-8705). The Section 504 coordinator is Danielle Staten-Ojo, (dstaten@ebrschools.org., 225-326-5668). The Title II coordinator is Dr. Sandra Bethley, administrative director of Federal Programs (SBHorton@ebrschools.org, 225-922-5538).
All students have an opportunity to participate in career and technical programs of study, including but not limited to areas of health care; construction crafts and trades; automotive technology; IT computer technology; culinary programs; criminal justice; and agriculture. Admission requirements for each course can be found in the student course guide/schedule packet of the individual campus where the course is being offered. Please contact the guidance counselor at the specific school for additional information, program requirements and/or any questions you may have.
Lamont Cole, Superintendent of Schools
lcole@ebrschools.org
Marlon Cousin, Administrative Director of Family and Community Engagement
mcousin@ebrschools.org
Andrea Simmons, Community Liaison
asimmons2@ebrschools.org
1050 South Foster Drive Baton Rouge, LA 70806, USA
