Celebration of Student Learning: Hatherly

Caption: Students collecting their certificates for reaching a new level on Lexia, ST Math or Symphony.

On November 21, 2022 Julie Ward, Hatherly School principal, and Kristine Sheahan, grade four teacher, presented to the School Committee the ways students’ learning is celebrated at the Hatherly School. The information below includes some of the slides that were shown during the presentation and additional details to elaborate on the information shared. 

Celebrating Learning

The Hatherly School takes time to celebrate the accomplishments of the students and staff. For instance, once a month students are recognized for personal achievement. These celebrations do not have to be focused on only academics. From scoring a perfect score on the MCAS to mastering to overcoming shyness and speaking up, Certificates to Excellence are earned by students. 

In addition, each morning we announce students who have reached a new level on Lexia, ST Math or Symphony. Kinds bounce down to the office with pride to collect their certificates.

Energy Bus

During our last All School Meeting, Chet Stone shared the following introduction, “When we hear the word Positive, it tends to make us feel good. It's a mindset! When we think of things that make us happy we are thinking positively. The goal for PBIS assemblies is to come together as a school to learn tools to help us maintain a positive attitude. These tools also help us with our daily activities in creating our HOME AWAY FROM HOME. Remember Positivity is contagious!” 

As a follow up to the lesson on having a positive vision in the Energy Bus, families were asked to create a banner at home describing their positive vision. The banners the families created are now hanging in the lobby. Below are two samples of the banners that were sent to school. The second picture shows all of the banners hung in the Hatherly School lobby.

• See video with highlights from the rest of that All School Meeting based on the storybook, Energy Bus, by Jon Gordon.

Additional Social Skill Lessons

In addition to the PBIS lessons, Colleen Franke, school psychologist, and Jamie McNamara, adjustment counselor, provide social skills lessons in the classrooms. Some of these lessons are based on the Social Thinking curriculum. The goal of the lessons is to help students develop their social competencies, flexible thinking & social problem solving resulting in successful social interactions, perspective taking and self regulation.The super hero characters describe different obstacles and teaching strategies. Below are just a couple of examples:

The other piece of the program that is often used to help students with perspective is the size of the problem. The visual below is hung throughout the Hatherly School. Students are taught how to think about a situation and determine the size of the problem. Then students are encouraged to match the size of their reaction to the size of the problem.

Celebrating Staff of the Hatherly School

The Hatherly School is filled with superstars who deserve to be celebrated. Some of the ways that they have been celebrated have included daily sweet treats, recognition from colleagues at each staff meeting, time to collaborate on school-wide fun and help with mundane tasks such as making dinner.

The PTO Appreciation committee pulls out all the stops when it comes to celebrating staff members. Some of these efforts happen periodically throughout the year. However, this year they have gone above and beyond by keeping the staff room filled with snacks, utensils and paper goods.

This month the PTO provided every staff member with a full pie to bring home to Thanksgiving!

Celebrating 91

The Hatherly staff took time this fall to celebrate the MCAS percentile ranking. In 2019 before COVID had impacted education, the Hatherly School performed better than 91 percent of the other K-5 schools in Massachusetts on the MCAS. In 2022 after experiencing COVID, the Hatherly School remained at the 91st percentile. 

Although we know we have work to do and want to raise that bar, the Hatherly School took time to recognize the incredible staff who put in the work to stay at 91.