Duluth middle school students will get lessons on respect

Worried about their city growing shorter on civility, a community foundation here is working to cultivate respect among youth through a middle school course on getting along.

Starting this fall, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at four schools will take a 20-minute civility course three times a week. The Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation is driving the curriculum addition with a $20,000 grant.
“I think this kind of a movement is exactly what we have to do,” said Keith Dixon, the new superintendent of Duluth public schools.
Dixon said he hopes it will start to remedy a coarsened popular culture that fosters the notion that “kick butt is the only way to solve problems and get things done around here.”
Kathy Barsias, a learning coordinator for the school district, said the lessons are designed to be short, catchy, fun and, active.

Concepts such as respect, responsibility and cooperation will be the foundation of the new lesson plans, which will teach nine “civility tools.”
Four years ago, the Community Foundation asked a group of local young people to identify problems and priorities in their hometown. They expressed a concern about rudeness among local officials.
“Duluth was becoming known as a city where people weren't nice to one another” in 2001, said Brenda Sproat, program and scholarship officer for the Community Foundation.
Deb Anderson, a violence and harassment specialist for Duluth public schools, said she's noticed students pushing the bounds of bad behavior.
She said the children's behavior may be influenced by television, video games or something else. For whatever reason, she has seen misbehavior undermine the academic success of many intelligent children.
“They don't know when to put it on hold. They don't change behaviors from setting to setting,” Anderson said. “It's not just kids, it's the culture.”

She is crossing her fingers that the courses will reverse that pattern.
“Maybe the high school teachers are going to wonder in three years, 'What happened?' And that's my goal,” Anderson said.
The foundation awards grants and scholarships to local groups and individuals from an endowment of nearly $40 million.

1 August 2005

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