Eaton High School (EHS) remains on the never-ending journey of improvement for its numerous Capturing Kids Hearts’ programs, which include social contracts, greetings, and other activities designed to increase school culture.
Capturing Kids Hearts (CKH) isn’t a new thing to most EHS students, and it’s been in circulation for two years at EHS. CKH, at base level, is a program designed to “capture kids hearts” in order to capture their minds, and it’s also used as a tool to teach various ways to build meaningful and productive relationships with every student and colleague.
The program was introduced at EHS during the 2022-23 school year. According to Grand Haven Area Public Schools, a district in Michigan that also employs CKH, “Research shows that when students feel more connected to their school and staff, they achieve higher academic success and are less likely to have attendance, tardy, or behavioral issues.”
EHS has been employing CKH’s values to everyday student life in order to achieve this goal, and one of the ways that EHS staff use these strategies is through social contracts.
Originally, during the 2022-23 school year, the way to develop the contract was streamlined among all the teachers. Teachers would hand out worksheets with various questions that asked how the class would treat their fellow students and teacher, and what to do if conflict ever erupted in the class.
This one-size-fits all approach has since changed, as EHS is constantly looking for ways to improve their strategies and work towards a complete buy-in from everyone.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy and, since then, the process has been modified in order to continually improve the school culture. EHS Principal, Jessica Grable, said, “Teachers were given permission to do it their own way instead of the way it was year one, and we have definitely seen big growth in its effectiveness. Also, I think a lot of teachers didn’t know [the social contract] could be referenced in a positive way.”
Now, teachers have found it more convenient to utilize the social contract. Typically, the contract is developed by both the teachers and the students during class. It includes words that dictate the behavior of students and teachers during classtime.
EHS math teacher, Derek Weigle, stressed the importance of the consistency of rules, and believes that it’s the consistency of rules and behavior in class that matters.
Weigle said, “When [the social contract] is too busy, it’s hard for it to mean anything, I think that having too many words can be confusing and a lot of the times, the words mean the same things. I use the E.A.T.O.N acronym to keep it easier to remain on the same page schoolwide.”
Weigle sees value in the schoolwide acronym that stands for excellence, awareness, tenacity, ownership, and noteworthiness and brings a valuable perspective to the discussion that EHS may already have an established social contract.
The social contract can be a positive strategy for EHS students and staff but it faces some potential roadblocks and challenges that halt it from becoming effective. One of these is the unwillingness of students to buy into the process along with teachers.
EHS senior Taylor Ross said, “I think social contracts are good in the beginning but they are never referred to again for the rest of the semester. They set good ground rules so everyone is in agreement for the expectations of the class, but they are just hung up and never talked about unless the teacher is really trying to make a point.”
Grable and Lemon are working to change this part of the process, and they believe the social contract shouldn’t just be something that’s used negatively, but instead, a tool to continually use to influence the class culture both positive and negative behavior.
EHS Athletic Director, Zac Lemon, said, “The social contract is a nice way to give clear expectations to students and staff. When a teacher can identify the social contract during class to a student who’s not following it and then others in the class see the benefit of it working, more buy-in will happen.”
Both Lemon and Grable also identify that taking the courage to use the social contract and observing the evidence of it working is beneficial for students to buy into the ideas.
Another potential roadblock that arises is the understanding of the purpose for social contracts. Grable said, “When the teacher is more bought into the purpose of the contracts, then we also have more buy-ins from the students as well,” Lemon added, “ We need to understand the purpose of social contracts and buy into it. Also, there are a lot of preconceived notions about social contracts before they are used, so we need a frameshift and we need to see it in more of a positive way.”
Currently, the process lacks in full commitment and consistency from the student body, but it’s also a process that will continue to work towards improvement and for EHS administration. The goal is clear, “We ultimately want to see kids treat each other better and create a good learning environment for everyone,” said Lemon.
In a perfect classroom, the social contract is a tool to assist in influencing both positive and negative behavior, establishing consistency, and creating a better environment alongside the E.A.T.O.N acronym.
If teachers and students can collectively commit together to the purpose and switch their mindset and attitude towards the social contract in a positive way, then the social contract can be an extremely beneficial tool to the EHS community.