A Better Approach Than Zero Tolerance in Schools

A school in Walla Walla was essentially a dumping ground for all the students deemed to have behavioural problems and their explosion rate was through the roof. This all changed when a principal ditched the atrocious zero tolerance policy that the school was using (many schools in North America punish and demean students this way).

The principal found that better communication between the school administration, teachers, and students was key to solving a lot of the issues that led students to be expelled. This new approach cut the expulsion rate by quite a bit and improved the overall learning being done inside the school.

2009-2010 (Before new approach)
* 798 suspensions (days students were out of school)
* 50 expulsions
* 600 written referrals

2010-2011 (After new approach)
* 135 suspensions (days students were out of school)
* 30 expulsions
* 320 written referrals

…These suspensions don’t work for schools. Get rid of the “bad” students, and the “good” students can learn, get high scores, live good lives. That’s the myth. The reality? It’s just the opposite. Says the NEPC report: “…research on the frequent use of school suspension has indicated that, after race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of-school suspension correlate with lower achievement scores.”

There are just two simple rules, says Turner.

Rule No. 1: Take nothing a raging kid says personally. Really. Act like a duck: let the words roll off your back like drops of water.

Rule No. 2: Don’t mirror the kid’s behavior. Take a deep breath. Wait for the storm to pass, and then ask something along the lines of: “Are you okay? Did something happen to you that’s bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?”

It’s not that a kid gets off the hook for bad behavior. “There have to be consequences,” explains Turner. Replace punishment, which doesn’t work, with a system to give kids tools so that they can learn how to recognize their reaction to stress and to control it. “We need to teach the kids how to do something differently if we want to see a different response.”

Read more here.

Get High from Running

You may hear from people who run that they feel great afterwards and get “addicted” to running, well it turns out our bodies may be born to run, which is why we get high from it.

As a doctor, Morganti knows what regular running does for her body. “Your heart gets stronger. It gets bigger. The amount of blood your heart can pump is more.” That’s called “stroke volume.” Oxygen metabolism gets more efficient, as well. “That means your blood vessels and muscles absorb more oxygen,” she says. “Running also builds new bone.”

But when I ask her about “runner’s high,” she lights up. “Oh, it’s really like an empowerment. And zen at the same time. You feel strong and light, and you feel relaxed.”

Read more at NPR.

Empire State Building Gets a Green Overall

The Empire State Building in New York has received a green overall that has cut 20% of the building’s energy consumption and will save the owners a ton of cash.

The renovations are part of a $500 million rehab plan for the building. The building’s owners, Malkin Holdings LLC, filed for an initial public offering back in February which valued the building at $2.5 billion.

The changes to the Empire State include:

–Filling the existing windows with an energy saving gas and adding an additional plastic pane.

–Upgrading the building’s cooling system.

–Using computerized “smart” energy management technology that can adjust temperatures floor by floor.

–Provide tenants with detailed energy use in their space.

–Automatically shut off lights in unused areas.

Read more at CNN.

Lose Weight the Geeky Way

Weight Hacker is a website and book that focus on losing weight in a very geeky way. The creator of weight hacking writes about geeky things all the time and he decided to take his appeal of geeky things to his diet.

Sometimes I tried dieting, but either it didn’t work or it didn’t work for long. I concluded that diets weren’t for me because 1) they usually aren’t sustainable for anyone in the long term and 2) they weren’t compatible with my geeky lifestyle.

So I created Weight Hacking, my own personal weight loss system that used my geeky nature to work for me, and one that I could incorporate into my daily life. I didn’t go on a diet, I permanently changed my diet. I didn’t “get exercise,” I re-arranged my life so that I was naturally more active. And it wasn’t particularly hard.

Read more.

Bike Lanes Makes Road Safer for Everyone

The worst mayor in Canada hates people who don’t drive automobiles and thinks cyclists deserve to die. The mayor of Toronto wants to remove bike lanes (while every smart city is installing more) despite the fact that the number of cyclists has increased. So where’s the good news you ask?

It turns out (much to the chagrin of mayor Rob Ford) that bike lanes improve safety for all road users!

The Toronto Cyclists Union has drummed up a City staff report that compares crash data in the three years previous to the bike lanes and the one year with the bike lanes. The report finds that the overall crash rate for Jarvis has actually decreased by 23 percent. That’s for all road users—bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. In fact, the report notes that “most of this reduction can be attributed to the reduction in collisions involving motor vehicle turning movements and collisions involving pedestrians.”

But the bike lanes have also been better for cyclists. While the number of bicycle-car collisions has increased from an average of 7 per year in the three years prior to the bike lane to 15 in the year with the bike lane, the report notes this still represents a drop in the rate of collision when you take into consideration the fact that the number of bicycles increased threefold post-bike lane implementation.

Read more at Spacing.