Core Behaviors Breakdown: Greet One Another

The first of the four Core Behaviors listed is that of Greet One Another.  I spend time at the beginning of each year teaching and practicing all of the steps for this skill.  It is clearly not something that I ever learned or was taught; because of this, I recognize its impact.  Effectively shaking hands and engaging an acquaintance with small talk, with eye contact, is not a skill that is naturally inherited.  When I understood the impact of an effective greeting, I hastily embedded it into my expectations, long before the district adopted the Core Behaviors, and I can attest to the positive difference it makes in my students.  The greeting absolutely affects other behaviors.

So...In this series about breaking down the behaviors, we begin with the easiest to teach and practice.  We'll try to clarify the others in the near future.

Here is how I explained things in a previous post:

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When I teach the art of shaking hands, I go into the details:
Web touches web (referring to the skin between the thumb and pointer)
The grip includes the engagement of all four fingers on bottom and the thumb on top.

The grip is not too hard and not too limp.

The grip lasts only a couple of seconds.

Throughout the process, the shaker's eyes must remain on the eyes second individual.
Now, we will focus on postures.  That means we need explicit instruction about how to sit, how to stand, and how to walk - not so I can micromanage my students, but to make them more engaging, more attentive, more attractive, more employable, and more confident.

Adam Dovico, author, teacher, and visiting professor at Wake Forest University, has effectively broken down the greeting skill and created the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. acronym (Our version of the acronym is below.).  Here is our starting point for addressing this Core Behavior. We will address each of the letters in the acronym and repeatedly practice, not only at the beginning of the year, but throughout the rest of the year, as well.