Keeping students motivated — and conflict-free — can be a sticky situation.
That why Doug Gaither allowed himself to be duct-taped to a wall at Suncrest Elementary School a couple of years back.
“Hey,” laughed Gaither, who is principal of the school on Collins Ferry Road, “a bet is a bet.”
Which, for the record, he had long been banking on losing.
It was a reading challenge.
Students turning pages through a prescribed number of books by the end of the year, the principal proposed, could roll out their payoff — by literally taping their school leader to the gym wall for the several minutes that afternoon.
They made their reading quota and more.
And Gaither obligingly, cheerfully, honored the bet.
Right before the end of the 2022-23 school last month, the West Virginia Behavior/Mental Health Technical Assistance Center went to the wall for Suncrest Elementary.
The center, which is housed at Marshall University in Huntington, gave the school Tier 1 status through its Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports initiative (PBIS).
PBIS schools do the entertaining, motivating things such as the above, while more importantly mixing in serious measures to quell bullying, arguing and other forms of harassment — from classrooms to the teacher’s lounge.
The program’s coordinator Alicia Ziman said maintaining emotional health is more critical than ever.
Especially, she said, in America’s schools, where students and staffers alike regularly bring the stress from home to the main hallway and the threat of gun violence is casting shadows that couldn’t be more pronounced.
Schools named as models in the center’s conflict resolution program aren’t shy about sharing what works, Ziman said.
The center, she said, has a long reach across the Mountain State.
“Identifying model schools gives us the opportunity to showcase the work,” the program coordinator said.
“We also have the ability to share their experiences with schools across the state and with outside stakeholders,” she continued.
“Model schools can instill an excitement in others that is hard to capture in any training alone.”
In recent years, Suncrest Elementary was named among the top-three achieving elementary schools in West Virginia, according to data from Niche, a marketing research firm in Pittsburgh.
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