How to build teacher capacity and reduce discipline referrals

1. How to build teacher capacity and reduce discipline referrals How to support teachers while regulating student behaviors Gary Murphy- Northwest Region

2. What about you? • How long have you…

3. Objectives: • 1. Discuss teachers, students and administrator roles in school discipline. • 3. Discuss strategies to reduce school discipline through teacher empowerment. • 4. Discuss how to empower teachers to increase Tier 1 proficiencies (classroom level).

4. Socrates says: • “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are not tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

5. Teachers: • Come to the field with varying levels of proficiency in handling behaviors. • Often try to correct behaviors the way their parents corrected them. • Have only a few methods to help students handle stimuli in the classroom.

6. What do teachers want from administration? • https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=P0h9oQu5tU8

7. School isn’t a business… • We can’t speed up the assembly line to increase productivity. • We don’t get to decide what raw materials come in off of the bus. • We CAN adjust how we interact with students and teachers. • We can increase the variety of interventions we have to correct student behaviors.

8. Ask your teachers about their favorite teacher? • They made me feel like I mattered. • Their class was fun. • They taught content in a way that made me realize I needed to know it.

9. Teachers I survey say… • The biggest challenge in their classrooms are: • A. disrespect • B. Students arguing with teacher/not following directions.

10. Let’s activate Schema at the whole school level: • PBIS/PBS • 40 Developmental Assets • Capturing Kids Hearts • Second Step • Conscious Discipline • (Pax) Good Behavior Game

11. Looking Inside and Across 25 Leading SEL Programs: A Practical Resource for Schools and OST Providers (Elementary School Focus) • https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/navigating-social-and-emotional-learning-from-the-inside-out.aspx

12. In the past, students with behaviors were: • referred to special education. • Suspended • Retained • Dropped out at 16 (or 17 after the law changed).

13. How can we help students succeed at a whole group level or individually? • In Visible Learning, Hattie says the most critical component of education is the teacher. • How can we help teachers get better at handling behaviors? What do students know? How well would students do with Math If they only used skills they knew from Home?

14. Essential 8 from Positive behavior supports • Classroom expectations & rules defined and taught (all use school-wide, create classroom examples) • Procedures & routines defined and taught • Continuum of strategies to acknowledge appropriate behavior in place and used with high frequency (4:1) • Continuum of strategies to respond to inappropriate behavior in place and used per established school-wide procedure • Students are actively supervised (pre-corrects and positive feedback) • Students are given multiple opportunities to respond (OTR) to promote high rates of academic engagement • Activity sequence promotes optimal instruction time and student engaged time • Instruction is differentiated based on student need

15. Essential 8: • Put each component in the essential 8 on a continuum of 1-10. Rate the classroom teacher on each component mentally. What skills/procedures are missing? • “Everytime I pass out Reading work Joey blows up. It’s like he knows exactly what he’s doing!” (Joey is 2 years behind in reading). • What’s predictable is preventable! • Do we need to lower reading difficulty? Shorten assignments? Pair Joey up with a peer?

16. He knows exactly what he’s doing… • Don’t we know what we’re doing when we: • Eat a 900 calorie doughnut. Then, eat a second one? • Play the lottery 84 times more than we should? • Spend $75 at Kohl’s but we saved $1,094.29? • ”Well, he smiled when he behaved that way.” I smiled when I did all of the above behaviors too. Does the student need an intervention or a punishment?

17. Visual Learners:

18. But those behaviors though… They didn’t teach me this stuff in college.

19. When students don’t behave correctly • “I get the toughest class every year.” • “Don’t intervene with that student. I’m documenting all of the bad things they’re doing.” • ”I’ve got 23 other students in my room. It isn’t fair to them.” • “The parents of the other children don’t want me to make exceptions for any students in the room.” • ”It isn’t fair to the other kids if I don’t treat everyone the same.” • These philosophies lead to the Administrator being the Tier 1, 2 and 3 intervention. It becomes your problem, not the teacher’s.

20. Randy SPrick • I’ll give you10,000 dollars if you don’t write an office referral or send this child to a buddy room today.

21. Study finds second born are more likely to be criminals (1-2-18)

22. Intervening at a whole school level: Are your teachers on the bus? • Dealing with student behavior should tie into any mission statement. It’s about safety and learning. • Teachers need to be aware of the board policy governing how we interact with students. • I always reference classroom management in observations. It’s going well or it needs to improve. • The Crisis Cycle

23. Be on your best behavior • The behavior of children has been reinforced for nearly 5 years before they come to school. In some cases, that reinforcement has led to unhealthy behavior patterns. • The child in a restaurant who cusses. The parents laugh. The child cusses again. • The child at Wal-Mart. They are told, “No candy!” They scream, they get candy.

24. Dr. Phil saves lives • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyUFzNVolG8 • Dr. Phil’s Brat Camp series. This is a great video to show when to intervene and when to wait until a child de-escalates. Play the long game. Don’t get an immediate win with very high relationship costs.

25. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs We’re all looking for Something

26. “I could never date Maslow. He was too needy”.- 1943 lady

27. Some Students get their needs met in dysfunctional ways. • Safety= my girlfriend is going to beat up her girlfriend. • Safety= I’ve got guns too. • Achievement= I don’t need an education. I make more money than you already. • Selling drugs at 5 years old. • Basic human needs= eating out of dumpster behind gas station.

28. To get our needs met, we will manipulate our environment. We will increase the: Snack machine bandit. Student wants attention at a bowling alley. • Frequency of our behavior. • Duration of our behavior. • Intensity of our behavior. Video games give feedback every 8 seconds.

29. If a student doesn’t get what they believe they need- • We act the way we know to act in a crisis. Google Backwards Riding Bicycle – Smarter Everyday • If I run away from conflict at home, I will run away from it at school. • Our instincts can take over in a crisis. They may escalate to Crisis levels.

30. The crisis cycle: David Mandt&Assoc.

31. Fight, flight or freeze? Did we just lose 20 IQ points? • Any strong emotion, fear, stress, anxiety, anger, joy, or betrayal trips off the amygdala and impairs the prefrontal cortex's working memory. The power of emotions overwhelms rationality. That is why when we are emotionally upset or stressed we can't think straight. The IQ points we need to thoughtfully consider decisions are depleted temporarily.

32. De-escalation is an emotional process • Escalation/anger are fueled by emotions. To de-escalate one must have their emotions addressed. • ”Just drop it.” • “You’re acting LIKE an idiot.” • Frustration • fear

33. All behavior is a pattern • When I go to Target… • When I have a bad day… • When I have my kids clean house… • When someone wants money from me… • When a students gets off of the bus with a scowl… • When I pass out today’s Math/Reading assignment…

34. Students behave as they do because the behavior is reinforcing!

35. If “bad” behavior is reinforcing, how do we change it? • Remove the reinforcement. BUT, the student will still seek ways to get that particular reinforcement. We have to give them opportunities to have their need for: • BELONGING • ATTENTION • AUTHORITY/CONTROL • MOVEMENT/sensory

36. Replacement Behaviors: • When someone quits smoking- what are some “new” habits they could adopt? • (With their fingers, mouth, socially?) • Kids are the same. They need to be able to replace part of their behaviors. If a child is “yelling out” to get attention we can force them to stop. They will find another way to get attention. The trick is to channel their need so it matches our classroom goals.

37. How to channel a child’s behaviors • Determine the function of their behavior using an interview process, checklist and by talking to parents. If you can figure out the “why” of a child’s behaviors you can help them meet the need on your terms. • If a child is a natural born builder, can they stack books on the shelf? • Can the “bossy” child be in charge of making sure playground equipment gets inside? • Can the fretful, detail oriented child make sure the class is on schedule with a clock? • Can the child who needs attention be a door greeter?

38. Behavior • The students, parents and co-workers we deal with daily don’t always say what they want or mean. • If someone says the same thing to you three times without changing their message they think you’re not listening/arguing with them. Say, “Oh really?” and let them talk. • We may have to interpret their motives and help them make a plan. They may not have the language they need to express themselves.

39. If a student: • Needs a break have them take a message to the office. • Needs attention, have him write a letter to the cooks. • Needs a voice, make them a reporter for a class paper. • Needs to mind, increase their motivation through positives or negatives.

40. Individual behavior plans: Must define a behavior concretely. Must define the behavior that will replace the undesired behavior. Must be communicated with parents. Must be implemented across all settings at school. Must be measurable and tracked using data.

41. None of this works! • Refer to board policy, your expectations and identify the specific student behaviors that need to change. • “He needs meds.” What would the meds change? How can we effect the same change using breaks, movement, interaction with preferred adults? Dole those out on a schedule until we get the desired behaviors. • Limit referrals- No “button pushing.” “You said X was an automatic referral 10 minutes ago!”

42. When Do I send them to the office? • See hardcopy handout for teacher managed behaviors versus appropriate office referrals. • It may be necessary to coach teachers through what is an appropriate referral as opposed to a frivolous referral. Not all referrals are good referrals. • If teachers keep sending the same referral on the same student- are you managing their classroom or are they?

43. Questions? • Garymurphyconsulting@gmail.com

44. Resources: • Love and Logic provides a non-confrontational language to guide student behaviors. • Capturing Kids Hearts: Provides ways to connect with students to increase motivation • Conscious Discipline: provides ways to self monitor and encourage students to self-regulate with calming techniques. • Zones of Regulation: shows students how to be aware of how escalated they are and what to do to de-escalate. • Learnball: A positive peer pressure game that allows students to hold offices and shoot baskets in a classroom. A layered behavior management technique.

45. Resources:(Pax) Good Behavior GameDavid Mandt and Associates Crisis CycleGood behavior gamePBIS Essential 8Incredible 5 point scaleOutrageous behavior mod book-B. ChristianBrian Mendleryoutube- Fly through itCapturing Kids Hearts-Flippen GroupBehavior Intervention Support Teams-Ozanam