ood behavior looks like."
The reason to go beyond the main three content areas (Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic) is that students will perform better as a result.
"If all a student's basic needs are met, then they do better at learning and hence better on assessments," Goethals argued. Basic needs "have to be in place before kids in Orion can think about doing well on a state assessment. Those are things that you can't measure."
Perhaps it is difficult for standardized exams to capture these types of gains, but that doesn't mean they can't be tested.
"Teachers and parents can tell a difference," Goethals said. "But the state assessment doesn't measure those things. We could tell you that we feel like it's making a difference for our kids. They're happy to come to school, our attendance is high, we have high turnout for school activities. Those things are how you measure a healthy school community, but I don't know if you see that in MEAP scores."
Superintendent Marion Ginopolis applauded the efforts of these two educators. She knows the value added to Lake Orion and the larger community when the entire child is considered when building a curriculum.
Goethals and Manzo are examples of "two of many initiatives that we've got that focus on the whole child and not just the academic part," Ginopolis said.