School seeks to change bad behaviour

Thelma Berry Nursery School is making the effort to get students to cut out negative behaviour.

Principal Katie Riley said that in order to get what she described as “unbelievable behaviour” coming from students under control, the school’s management saw it necessary to relaunch the School’s Positive Behavioural Management Programme (SPBMP)

“It is unbelievable, some of the behaviours that we actually see coming in. We get children who are rude, disrespectful, they are biting, they are scratching, they are not listening, and they are not obeying.

Students of Thelma Berry Nursery at the relaunch of the School’s Behavioural Management Programme.

From left, Principal at Deighton Griffith School Anthony Alleyne, principal at Thelma Berry Nursery Katie Riley and principal at Maria Holder Nursery, Gall Hill, Olwin Walker.

“So we wanted to find means to deal with these issues because obviously you can’t constantly be sending them to the office. You can’t take them out of the classroom.

“So we have to find means and ways to deal with these behaviours outside of lashing them. At three years old, lashing is not the ideal thing to do because you realise that you would lash them and they would go away not really understanding why it is they are being lashed,” Riley told members of the media at today’s launch.

The programme is an approach, which emphasises the reinforcement of positive behavioural norms as a means of building student-centred school environments.

According to Riley, teachers are now focused on talking to students about the wrong they have done, encouraging them to do what is right, and rewarding them for their good deeds.

“At the same time we are encouraging the parents to come on board with us so that when we deal with the behaviours in one way, they would also complement us by dealing with the behaviours in the same manner that we deal with them, hence improving the behaviour in the long run without lashing,” she said.

Delivering the feature address at the launch, principal of Deighton Griffith School Anthony Alleyne said the SPBMP could help address many of the behavioural and socio-emotional challenges schools currently face. He said it could bridge the gap between home and school when parents support the school’s values and mission.

“It can help to reinstill those values that kept our communities and villages together. It takes a village to raise a child and all of us must play our part. I fully support the initiative and will soon launch ours at Deighton Griffith School,” he said.

During the launch, Thelma Berry staff and students presented a food hamper to the National HIV/AIDS Commission. Behaviour change specialist Cecelia Nebblett-Murray who accepted the donation praised the initiative.

The behaviour specialist urged parents to pay attention to how they behave around children who she said were always watching them.

“I went to a church the other day and I asked the young ladies there to tell me something that they want me to do for them. A little girl, she was three-years-old said ‘please mam I want you to do something for me’.

“She said ‘I would like you to stop my daddy and my mummy from fighting and she was three. And then she began to say the address of the parents, she say mummy works this place and daddy works that place. And it really hurt me because we have to set good examples for our children,” Nebblett-Murray said.