THE SILVER BULLET:
If there were only a "silver bullet" for behavior management in education today? We'd completely rid every classroom across America of all off-task, disruptive, misbehaving students while eliminating the need for things like detention, tardies, timeout rooms, suspensions, restitution courts and expulsions!
So, while the search continues for that ever-illusive "silver bullet," I would strongly suggest the single, most important thing any teacher could do when it comes to classroom management is form positive, adult relationships with each of your students. No behavior management system, curriculum, engagement activity or tech device will ever be able to replace the power and sustainably of forming positive, adult relationships.
A TRANSFORMATION:
As a classroom teacher for 12 years, I seemed to regularly hear fellow staff members (sometimes myself included) express disappointment and frustration with classroom management issues, the building-wide discipline program and/or fellow staff members that failed to hold students accountable for their behavior (teachers, office staff, teaching assistants and administration). I simply believed that the management struggles within our building came down to the consistency and fidelity in which staff implemented our building-wide discipline program. In other words, if we were all just a little more fair and consistent, life at Wahluke Junior High would be outstanding!
Then, 3 years ago, I became principal at WJH and stumbled across a presentation on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's). This presentation had a significant impact on my beliefs surrounding student behavior and forced me to take a closer look at our building's discipline program.
DISAPOINTING DATA:
As I took a closer look at our school's discipline data, I was somewhat surprised. I found that in a school of roughly 475 students (grades 6th-8th) and 28 teachers that we had over 300 office referrals and nearly 200 suspensions. This means teachers were sending nearly 2 students per day to the office and the principal was suspending over 1 student per day.
THE WORK:
So we went to work! I leaned hard on my dean of students, counselor, instructional coach, office staff, School Improvement Team and staff to analyze our discipline data, find research and come up with a plan. We completed staff book studies—No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High Poverty Schools by Samuel Casey Carter and Motivating Students Who Don't Care by Allen Mendler. In addition, we sent staff to learn more about PBIS (Positive Behavioral Intervention & Supports), Randy Sprick's Safe & Civil Schools and completed more ACE's training. Through all the book studies and trainings there seemed to be one common denominator linking everything together—staff must form positive, adult relationships with their students.
Dr. James Comer, writes in Leave No Child Behind: Preparing Today's Youth for Tomorrow's World, "No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship."
Erin Green, Director of National Training at Boys Town, says "In a classroom environment, you should be praising kids 4 times as often as your are correcting them."
And Rita Pierson's keeps it pretty dang simple in her Every Kid Needs a Champion Ted Talk (over 4 million views), "Kids don't learn from people they don't like."
IF NOT US, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
Once our staff began to understood the importance of positive, adult relationships, we also realized nobody would be coming to save us. The facts were that the WJH staff had some of the absolute best opportunities to help students and there was no time like the present to get to work!
ENCOURAGING DATA:
We've work hard over the last 3 years to implement several major initiatives (Common Core, new teacher evaluation system, Smarter Balanced testing and standards based grading), but at the heart of everything has been forming positive, adult relationships with our students.
WJH has reduced their office referrals by 56% (from 311 in 2011-12 to 136 in 2014-15) and suspensions by 55% (from 201 in 2011-12 to 89 in 2014-15). There is still room for improvement, but the new 3-year trend data is extremely encouraging! #GoWarriors
UPCOMING:
In my next blog post—We don't have BAD kids, we have BORED kids!—we'll take a closer look at some of the other changes we implemented at WJH to help cut office referral's and suspensions in half over 3 years. Until then...see you on Twitter @MrHlow!
