Borrowing from practices of a program called the Responsive Classroom, Ascend began to retrain teachers to focus on social and emotional development. This provided the framework for creative problem solving to help prevent conflicts between students, or between teachers and students, from escalating.
The chair circle is a regular feature. Just before Christmas a group of girls who were arguing over boys and accusations that had been made on social media asked him to convene a circle. He told them, as he often does, to "attack the situation rather than one another." When it's over, he has the students pose for a circle selfie.
Across the network, suspension rates dropped to 4.2 percent in the 2015-16 school year from 9.5 percent in 2012-2013.
"Our big purpose here is to create agency," Mr Wilson told me. "Our view is not about grit. Our students have a lot of grit, look at their lives. But if all you have experienced is unrelenting structure how do you emerge with autonomy?"
New York Times, March 12, 2017
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