Creating a Schoolwide System for Student Behavior, ep. 230

Creating a Schoolwide System for Student Behavior, ep. 230, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran 00:00
Hey, coaches, it’s time for the event of the year, and this year it’s even bigger. The simply impact Summit, formerly simply coaching Summit, it’s my favorite coaching conference of the summer, and this July, it’s even more incredible. Administrators, teachers and all school leaders are invited to the summit. There will be sessions designed for different audiences to make sure everyone gets what they need to have an amazing school year. Keynote speakers like my friend Nicole Turner, Dr Jan berkins and Carrie Yates, authors of the science of reading book, shifting the balance and Dr Sean Woodley, behavior and management guru will share their knowledge and inspire us. And I can’t wait. I’m presenting high impact coaching strategy, improving the effectiveness of the coaching strategy that you already use. This session will walk you through this coaching strategy that will create the biggest impact on your teachers and classrooms. You’ll learn when to use each one, how to make each one effective and purposeful, and all of the tips I’ve learned when using these strategies with teachers. If you felt like Coach, teaching or observations just aren’t cutting it, this session is for you. Save your spot for the simply impact summit this July 14 through 16, so you don’t miss out on all the incredible learning and fun. I love a good PD, but I really love a good PD from home. Register for the summit and get all the tools you need to make the school year a great one. Head to buzzing with the sea.com/summit to save your spot, the sooner, the better for awesome pricing.

Chrissy Beltran 01:22
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Chrissy Beltran 02:38
Welcome to instructional coaching with MS B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan, and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

Chrissy Beltran 03:05
Hey coach and welcome to episode 230, of instructional coaching with Miss B. Today, we are starting a new podcast series about your favorite topic, management. The issues that we are seeing with classroom management everywhere are just massive, and it’s one of the things that’s truly getting in the way of student learning and teacher happiness. And so whenever we talk about management, we are talking about something pretty complex. This is a big machine, right? There’s a lot going on when a child comes to school with certain feelings and behaviors and habits, and that same thing is true for a teacher. They come to school with feelings and habits and the certain the way they learn to react to situations since they were children themselves. So whenever we’re talking about changing management across your school. It’s it can be a bear and it feels like a bear. One thing that I want to share with you before we get started, I do have a free, handy dandy guide to behavior. I actually created this guide back whenever I was a coach, and I’m going to talk a little bit in a few minutes about the mistakes that I made as a coach. But you know, I was struggling to work with teachers specifically in behavior, and I was struggling to work with classrooms that had pretty atrocious behaviors going on and pretty difficult teacher responses to those behaviors. So management was not really in place, and so I would look at those classrooms, and I just immediately felt stressed out, and I didn’t want to go in there, and I didn’t know what to do. And if I was going to model, I was like, how am I going to even walk into this chaos and model a lesson whenever my management style was based on relationships and rapport and the time that I spent working with kids over time and they knew who I was? And I didn’t have any of that going for me when I walked into a classroom to model or co teach, so I created this approach to management that I used whenever I would model or co teach a lesson. I would also offer it to teachers if they were like, feeling like they didn’t know what to try and they were kind of at a loss. I have used this with them, and I have had teachers actually really liked it, and they have adjusted it to suit their need, their needs. It’s broad enough that anyone can use it in a way that makes sense to them, but it includes enough support that the teacher feels like they know what to do, and that students absolutely know what to do because they’re explicitly taught what to do. So that’s something that I’ve done for years, and I do recommend checking it out if this is an area that you’re having a hard time into, if you had to buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 230 you can grab that download towards the bottom of the post there, and that’s just going to be the show notes for this episode. So in this episode, I want to talk to you a little bit about things to consider when you’re beginning to work towards a school wide approach to behavior, ways that I’ve gone about it myself, and mistakes that I have made, and I mean, I’m going to be pretty honest about those mistakes, and I’m pretty sure I have shared most of those mistakes before, because I’m pretty frank about my mistakes, but maybe hearing them all in one place will make you feel better, and it’ll hopefully help you avoid them. So let’s talk a little bit about things that you’re going to want to think about as you are working towards a school wide approach to behavior. One of them is that whenever you are talking about changing behavior, you are talking about culture, because the way that we manage our classrooms, a lot of that is the culture that we had growing up. It includes our beliefs about behavior, our understanding of how kids learn and why they act a certain way and how to get them to act differently. It includes our relationships, and what we believe relationship building is it includes respect, what our definition of respect is, and so it includes all of these things that are deeply embedded in teachers, and these fundamental beliefs that they might

Chrissy Beltran 07:06
not even realize are there because if a teacher who believes that children will learn from a positive example is faced with a student who is doing something that they don’t want them to do some kind of inappropriate behavior, the teacher who believes that kids will just learn from seeing a positive example, positive example might try to model the positive example. The teacher who believes that kids need to be taught explicitly what the expectation is, will explicitly teach the expectation. The teacher who believes that kids need to be told when they’re misbehaving will tell kids they’re misbehaving, and the teacher who believes that kids learn because of punishment will provide a punishment. So that fundamental belief is what is driving all of our teachers actions in terms of behavior and management. And the issue that we have there is, how do you change fundamental beliefs? Now I’ve given you some really good episodes to think about in terms of transformational coaching and looking back at how teachers can really change what they think about teaching, and how we can support them in doing that. One of my favorites is episode 115 transformational coaching with Becca silver. It’s not specifically about behavior, it’s about everything, about how you transform the way a teacher operates. And in that episode, Becca talks to us a little bit about how we can change and support teachers in acknowledging and reflecting on those fundamental beliefs that they have that are bringing they’re bringing into the classroom. So if you are that’s an area that you’re struggling in. I would definitely check out that episode. It’s a good one. We are also challenging deeply held stereotypes or prejudice or even racism that our teachers have, and maybe do not realize that they have. I think that the issue with racism that we often see is people think racism is burning crosses and pointy white hats. And it is not only that that is one kind of racism, very overt and horrible, but this other kind of racism is different, and it means that maybe people expect certain things from certain kids. It’s subtle. You might not realize it if it’s not being directed at you, right? It might be one of those situations where, wow, I didn’t even realize that was something that was inherently racist, because I was not on the receiving end of that, but a person who is on the receiving end of it might notice that pattern. So we have to be open to listen to people who tell us things. When students tell us things over and over again. We have to listen to that. Whenever they’re constantly saying that they see something that’s wrong, we have to listen and take into account their perspective. There’s a reason multiple kids are telling you things right. And sometimes we see that. We see individual kids who say that teacher doesn’t like you know, kids like me, whatever that kid may be. And we have to listen to that. So. We have to challenge those stereotypes and deeply held beliefs and things that people don’t even know that they believe. Because if we can’t do that, we cannot help people manage differently. We cannot help people interact with kids differently. Now, will solid classroom management change everything we’re seeing? No, it will not, because the factors that lead into the issues that we’re seeing include trauma from home, you know, a lack of structure, access to devices, 24/7, all kinds of things that are impacting the way kids behave. So just changing management at school is not going to completely change who people are when they come to school, right? But it can help them understand what is expected of them when they come to school and what will happen if they do not do the things that are expected of them when they come to school. Sometimes we jump to the second part too quickly. We have to teach kids what’s expected. So that’s kind of my next thing that I want to mention to you, in terms of considering what you’re attacking whenever you’re starting to work towards school wide approaches to behavior is you are going to have to have some people on a team, and you’re going to have to talk about, what are the expectations, what is non negotiable, what is going to be different for each classroom, how much wiggle room is there is A teacher able to determine individually This is disrespect that is not how do we know if a child is being disrespectful? What does that look like? What are the expectations with school uniform? Is that considered discipline, or is that something else? What are the expectations with homework or work completion? Are those considered disciplinary tasks, that they are finishing something because we told them to. So now it’s tied to their behavior, or is that more of a self management issue that kids might have? But it’s not really about behavior or discipline. You have to have these conversations with people and decide what are the things that we are going to expect. What do they look like? Now, one of the mistakes that I see a lot of schools make is they do have a committee, which is fantastic, and they have a group of people come together, and they start having these conversations. But the conversations only get as far as, oh, we want kids to be respectful, to be responsible, to be kind, to be I don’t know, organized, tidy, whatever. You know, the other the fourth one could be, that’s great, but when I say kind and you say kind, we might be talking about two different things. When I say respectful and you say respectful, we’re almost absolutely talking about two different things. One of my children has a teacher who requires kids to say Yes, ma’am. I do not require my children to say Yes, ma’am, to me. I don’t feel like I need that for them to be showing me respect. I didn’t say to my parents, although my dad probably would have liked it, but he wasn’t a he was he worked a lot, so he wasn’t present enough to really enforce it. My mom is very casual, and that’s kind of how I was raised. I didn’t feel the need for children as a teacher, for my students to tell me Yes, ma’am, either. I didn’t need that. My child’s teacher wants kids to say, Yes, ma’am, I’m fine with that. She come my daughter came home. She’s four years old. She came home saying, Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am, and I said, you don’t have to tell me, ma’am, but you do have to tell your teacher, ma’am, because that’s what she wants you to do. The expectation is different in different places, and if it’s going to be a big deal, we need to start thinking about what is most important, what is necessary, what do we want to align ourselves around? So in forming a forming a committee, that’s one of the things that you’re going to need to focus on. What do we all agree on are the essential core behaviors that we are expecting from students, and they’ve got to be black and white, and they’ve got to be written and, you know, they need to be written down somewhere, because if not, there’s going to be a lot of confusion and a lot of gray area, and a lot of, you know, disagreement. I mean, it’s still going to be it’s a disagreement, but you definitely want to make sure that everybody knows what the expectation is. Are you aligning practices such as, when can students get a drink of water? When can they go to the bathroom? Do you have a bathroom sign out form? Can kids go whenever they want? Can they go once in the morning, once in the afternoon? Are kids looking at getting their calendar signed every day by parents? You know, are you are you actually going down to management routines, or are you just looking at behavior? And those things are not considered behavior? You really have to be thoughtful about that. I also recommend that you identify some basic procedures that you are going to want teachers to teach in their classroom, and what that procedure is might look different for each class, right? But you want the procedure to be taught. So when can you get a pencil or sharpen a pencil, or whatever? That’s a huge problem teachers have. It’s a constant complaint. Teach them what you want, teach them what you expect. Have a procedure written down, and that way they know when they’re not doing it and they know when they are. You can make choices around lunchtime. How are they going to let you know what they’re going to eat for lunch? How are they going to put away their materials? What do they need to have on their desk first thing in the morning? So. What do they do during a fire drill? How do they turn in papers? What do they do whenever a teacher is speaking with another adult in the classroom or in the hallway? How is the phone answered? All of those things are things that you can help teachers figure out for their classrooms, and they can decide on the specific procedure, but they need to have a specific procedure. We want to teach expectations upfront, because, if not, our kids don’t know what we expect, and then whenever they start doing whatever they want, because they don’t know what they what is expected, we get really upset about that, but we haven’t always told them what we expect. From there. You want to talk about consequences. What happens when these things don’t happen? Do we immediately jump to some kind of consequence, or does the teacher talk to us and teach us what is expected? We go back revisit the procedure. We go back and revisit what the expectation is. That’s what I would recommend. Obviously, we want to have a conversation with our kids to re teach what it is that they are not getting right. And from there, you can decide, are we talking about a written note to parents? Are we talking about a call home? Is there some kind of points or something that you’re going to take away or give in? Some sort of app you use? Maybe you use class, dojo, or one of those kinds of apps. There’s so many. Those can be all written out in your behavior plan that you are deciding as a team.

Chrissy Beltran 16:29
The last thing that I would really recommend that you do is distinguish classroom handled behavior interruptions, office behavior interruption. One of the things that was super helpful, and I mentioned this actually in one of the later episodes, whenever I talked to Crystal charissani About be about management, was whenever we were undergoing this process at an elementary school, the assistant principal took all of her data and she organized it into where are the referrals happening? Different places around school. Is in the classroom, the hallway, the library, the outside, during recess, during PE she organized all the data. She kind of calculated everything, and found out that the majority of referrals were coming from the classroom. Well, that makes sense, in a way, kids are in the classroom more than they are at any of those places. However, the assumption had always been that it was happening whenever kids had less structured time, that when kids were kind of doing their own thing during recess, that’s when the management issues were happening. But it wasn’t true, they were happening in the classroom. So that meant we had to change the way we approached our classroom management within the classroom and having some alignment there. You know, studies show that that kids it can be overwhelming to have to change what is expected from room to room, and not all kids can do that very well. So helping kids know what is expected consistently is a great way to ensure that kids have a better shot at getting it right. You also need to include parents here. And so having some sort of discipline contract, and having parents sign it is really, really important make sure you provide it in the language that parents speak or you you know you have it translated. I believe that districts are supposed to provide translation services. I don’t know. Not everybody is always as equipped as they should be to do that, but there are so many technologies out there that we can get this right. We need to make sure parents understand what is expected of their students, because if they don’t understand, they absolutely cannot reinforce it. They cannot help you, right? They can’t support you in doing any of these things, because they don’t even know what the kid is being asked to do. And so you’re going to want to keep a record of that parent communication to make sure that you know exactly what you have communicated with the parent, and the parent knows what the expectation is as well. These are a few mistakes that I personally made when coaching behavior, because whenever I first started coaching, I was very uncomfortable around coaching behavior, like I mentioned before. I felt like it was this big, personal, impossible task to change, because people were so deeply rooted in their beliefs about people. Because, to me, this is a belief about people. Can people change or not? Can people learn or not? Are people always going to be the same if they’re if they have problems in at the beginning of the year, they’re probably always going to have those problems. That’s a belief that you might hear, right, the idea that kids who have struggled are going to struggle. Well, he was, he was always in the office last year, as if that is the reason he’s in the office this year, right? So challenging those statements was hard for me, and there were certain conversations that I did not engage in because I didn’t know what to say. I have found over time, asking questions to try to understand is a good way to start. But again, if all we do is ask the questions, teachers will answer the questions, and if they are very confident in their belief system, they will think that that is the. To the conversation, that the questions have been answered, and so saying something along the lines of, you know, I hear this is what I’m hearing, and I’m wondering how that affects kids behavior. Or I’m wondering, do you think that there are other reasons that this child could be doing this? Or I’m wondering if there is something we haven’t considered that might help us reach this child, what could the possible reasons for this? What could the motivations for this be? And so having those conversations, it became much more comfortable. I mean, I don’t want to say completely comfortable. I was never I still am not. You know, we’re not, let’s just be honest. Coaching is not the work of a comfortable person. We are frequently uncomfortable. But having those conversations became more more more accessible to me because I felt like I’m just having conversation about the reasons that this child is acting this way, and that alone can be challenging to the adult who is responding to that behavior. Another thing that I did was I didn’t hear cries for help. And I’ve told this story many times. If you’ve been with me, it’s because that’s how much the story bothers me, right? We all have those stories that we’ve made mistakes or missed something, and it just eats us for the rest of our lives, hopefully not, but it eat that as for a while. I mean, it’s been a good probably 12 years so early in my career, there was a teacher that I had tried to work with. I had done different things in her classroom, but I was very uncomfortable in the room. Even a lot of yelling teacher included a lot of aggressive just not kindness, like there was. And I’m not perfect either. I get it, but this room was it was not a pleasant place to be. There was not a lot of joy in that room. And the teacher used to complain about their students all the time, all the time, every single day, ugly complaints, and I would sometimes ask the questions, and I would sometimes have some conversations, but I was coming at it from the wrong place, because when I heard those complaints, I heard a teacher who didn’t like her job, I heard a teacher who didn’t like her kids, and I heard a teacher who was blaming the kid for everything. That’s what I heard. And over time, I realized and took like an event of the teacher telling me, You’re not helping me, she came to me and told me, You’re not helping me. And I realized, oh my gosh, she’s been trying to say help me this whole time, help me all of those times that she was complaining about the kids she was trying to say, and I don’t know what to do about it, but I didn’t realize that’s what she was trying to say. I didn’t know that’s where she was going with it, I felt like she was just complaining to complain about the kids, and she wasn’t doing anything about it. So my personal belief and my interpretation of that teacher’s concern kept me from providing good coaching support. So we have to really analyze ourselves and our reactions to the way that people talk to us whenever they’re talking about their kids, because our reaction might be immediately to defend kids, and that doesn’t always help sometimes, I mean, it comes from a good place, and sometimes maybe it’s needed. But if there is a teacher who’s persistently complaining, ask yourself, are they asking me for help? Are they lost right now, and they just don’t know what to do, and here I am thinking, All they’re doing is complaining. Maybe this is an opportunity. This complaint is a true opportunity for support that I can provide if I just realized that’s what she needs. So that’s my biggest mistake that I made when coaching behavior, I neglected the cries for help. The last one I’m going to share about is whenever I would manage in classrooms, or I would try to work with teachers on management, I felt like I was trying to show them my way of managing a classroom, which, you know, like I mentioned before, it’s pretty personal, and it’s dependent on relationships, and it’s dependent on time spent, and so many conversations had, and so many expectations taught. And so I struggled to do that whenever I would work with a teacher, and over time, I realized, you know, what I need is a simple framework for this. I don’t need to teach them the way I handle behavior. I need to help them see what some best practices for behavior management are so that they can build their own framework for management that works for them, and that’s whenever I actually devised that, that guide that I mentioned, because the idea of a Management Guide is I have teachers proactively teach the expectations that they want kids to follow. They only pick three and then they teach kids what they look like, and every day they review it. And because that’s so proactive kids, if they were little unsure, like, let’s say that you have kids that are kind of like just disengaged. They turn around. And I’ve seen it happen. It’s pretty shocking, if you constantly refer back to the expectations, which, honestly, if no management is in place, there’s not much learning going on anyway, you’re not losing any. Time by bringing up the expectations you’re teaching. And so you point out the expectations again, and you praise who’s doing it, and you remind them, and you have them set daily goals for what their behavior is going to be like and what they’re going to work on, and you praise the heck out of the ones who are doing it. And I used to give team point. They didn’t earn a thing with those points, except for the point, but it was a celebration. We all celebrated. Every time I saw a kid do a thing, we did a little clap, and I added a point to the chart, and I verbally acknowledged. And over time, you don’t have to do it that much, but to start, that was what supported a lot of my teachers. They needed to see it happen, and we don’t want to take over management as somebody else’s classroom, but going in and and maybe co teaching a lesson and saying, Hey, we’re going to try something out with you guys. If you think we’re really going to like it, we realize there are some expectations that maybe we’re having a hard time with it, or getting in the way of our learning. And if you could learn these things, oh my gosh, the stuff you’re going to be able to do, we’re going to be able to do more fun projects. And I would love to do that with you. So let’s get good at this. Let’s get good at these expectations, and from there, you and the teacher can teach expectations, have kids practice them, and encourage the heck out of those things. And it does make a difference. At least. There aren’t going to be stand up behaviors, for sure, but the majority of the kids, once it’s taught and praised and consistent is consistency is key. You can’t drop it, or else you’ve just undermined yourself. Those kids are going to benefit so much, and that’s the majority

Chrissy Beltran 26:25
of your class. So those were a few things I wanted to share with you today, things to consider as you’re moving into management, and things that I did wrong as I was working with teachers in management. Specifically, next week, I’m going to talk to my my guest, Crystal charissani from she does some work with MTSS, and I’m super excited for that. It’s school systems that support behavior and she’s going to share with us a little bit about what school wide behavior support can look like, areas that teachers tend to struggle in a lot whenever they’re implementing new behavior systems, and then some success stories that she has had and what those schools have done well. So I can’t wait to share that episode with you. This is going to be a really good series. It’s always in demand, and so I hope you love it. If you’re listening in real time, hang in there. The end of the year is coming. We can make it until next week. Happy coaching. Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee and check out the podcast. Show Notes. Happy coaching!