CAES assembly suits kids to a T

© 2017 Telegraph Publishing
Photos by Cynthia Prairie

Wearing bright red T-shirts and filing into the auditorium at Chester-Andover Elementary School, the 200 pupils were ready to take their places for the first all-school picture that anyone could remember. Older students came first, followed by the younger, then the  youngest — and the most fidgety ones.

But this well-organized photo shoot, under the direction of photographer and para-educator Janet Gage and teacher Frank Kelley, was a testament to a program that Principal Katherine Fogg began phasing in last year. The Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports program helps to teach educators new ways of managing student behavior, which in turn teaches those ways to the children themselves.

It was Friday, the start of a long weekend for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and the assembly was just one of the monthly ones that Fogg had scheduled.

The brand new T-shirts, bearing the CAES eagle logo on the front and, on the back SOAR, for Safe, On Task, Accountable and Respectful, were worn by not only every student but every teacher, aide and school employee. The $1,400 needed for the 255 shirts was donated by the Parent-Teacher Group, families and the Class of 1954 as well as from the Chester Rotary, Dakin and Benelli and the Red Nose Foundation.