Resources to Prepare your School at the
Policy, Procedure, and Practice Levels: Completing Safety
Audits, Teaching School Area Routines, Passing Teasing/Bullying Policies, and
Creating Relationships
Dear Colleagues,
Well. . .
with the summer winding down, many of us are focusing our attention on
preparing for a new and successful school year.
As we do
this, it is important to reflect on a number of related areas that have been
especially highlighted over the past six to eight months:
***
Keeping our schools safe and secure
***
Establishing positive school climates--- that minimize teasing, taunting,
bullying, harassment, hazing, and acts of physical aggression
***
Making school discipline, classroom management, and student self-management
activities more prominent across school, school, and students
***
Implementing behavioral accountability systems that eliminate disproportionate
office discipline referrals and school suspension
***
Focusing more on interventions that change students' inappropriate behavior
(when it exists), and less on punishments and placements that move the problems
"out of sight"
Most of
these areas were addressed in the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and Justice
(DOJ) School Discipline Guidance Package released this past January:
CLICK HERE FOR PACKAGE INFORMATION
as well as in the
Council of State Governments' Justice Center released a new report, The
School Discipline Consensus Report: Strategies from the Field to Keep
Students Engaged in School and Out of the Juvenile Justice System.
CLICK HERE FOR REPORT
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Today's Focus-- FREE School
Discipline Resources to Prepare for the New Year
In order to address these different areas for the coming school year, it is important to take some or all of the following steps (accompanied by some of our most-popular resources) now, during the staff preparation week before the school year begins, and during the first day and week of the new school year:
1. Right now--before all of the staff and students return-- would be a great time to conduct a School Safety Audit and to make sure that your Emergency/Crisis Management and Response protocols are in place. This should be coordinated with your district leaders, as well as with your local First Responders.
To assist in this area, feel free to download the FREE School Safety and Emergency/Crisis Prevention Audit Technical Assistance Paper that is half-way down the following web-page:
In order to address these different areas for the coming school year, it is important to take some or all of the following steps (accompanied by some of our most-popular resources) now, during the staff preparation week before the school year begins, and during the first day and week of the new school year:
1. Right now--before all of the staff and students return-- would be a great time to conduct a School Safety Audit and to make sure that your Emergency/Crisis Management and Response protocols are in place. This should be coordinated with your district leaders, as well as with your local First Responders.
To assist in this area, feel free to download the FREE School Safety and Emergency/Crisis Prevention Audit Technical Assistance Paper that is half-way down the following web-page:
CLICK HERE FOR TA
PAPER
2. Also right now, it is important to make sure that you have all
of the rules-- or behavioral expectations-- prepared and posted
in your common school areas (hallways, bathrooms, buses, playgrounds,
common gathering areas, cafeteria, etc.). These expectations should
simply tell students what appropriate behavior they need to do in each of these
areas.
For example, appropriate hallway behavior could be as simple as:
"Eyes forward, hands by your side, mouth
quiet,
walk to the right, watch out for others around you"
Cafeteria behavior would describe appropriate behavior and interactions:
In the line. . . In the serving area getting
food
Sitting
down and eating. . . and Cleaning up and
Leaving the cafeteria
Typically, the School Discipline Committee sets up these expectations
with the school administrators, and all students are taught these
expectations-- with behavioral practice and walk-throughs--
on the first day and week(s) of the school year.
For more information about this area of school safety-- which often also
addresses teasing, taunting, bullying, harassment, and physical aggression--
incidents that often occur in the common school areas, please watch the following webinar:
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3. During
the staff planning days before the first day of school, all staff need to
be trained on the most essential crisis and emergency procedures established at
the administrative level (see #1 above), and discussions need to occur as to
when students will be taught and will practice these procedures.
Similarly, the School Discipline Committee can brief the staff on the common
school area expectations (see #2 above), and discuss how and when students will
be taught these procedures.
Beyond
this, it is strongly encouraged that staff discuss the district's policy on cyber-bullying,
and that decisions are made as to when this issue will be discussed with
students from (at least) Grade 3 through High School.
This
relates directly to district policies specifically related to Teasing,
Bullying, and Harassment-- including Cyber-bullying.
Schools
and districts may want to review our free Sample School District Policy Brief
in these areas. This document was written after an extensive review of
state laws or educational regulations across the country in these areas, as
well as school board policies from over 20 model school districts. This
TA paper is the third entry on the following web-page:
CLICK HERE FOR BULLY POLICY DOCUMENT
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4.
Finally, during the first weeks of the school year, it is important for administrators
to be present in the classrooms and the common school areas to reinforce both
staff and student behaviors relative to school safety and discipline, classroom
management, and student self-management.
In the
classroom, one tool that can help organize administrators' (or others')
observations in these areas is a Behavioral Classroom Walk-through. Through
our Positive Behavioral Support System (PBSS) work in Arkansas, we developed a Behavioral
Walk-through protocol that is free to you, and can be found about
two-thirds down the following web-page link:
CLICK HERE: BEHAVIORAL WALK-THROUGH
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_
Summary
Clearly, there
are many school-wide discipline activities that could occur before and during
the first days of the school year, but we have tried to highlight the ones that
we believe are most important and realistic. To read about others--
organized in a three-year Positive Behavioral Support Implementation
Blueprint, feel free to download our free PBSS Implementation Guidebook.
(Click on the Link
below; Find the document titled: PBSS School Implement Fact
Sheet)
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS RESOURCE
This
recently updated 100+ page resource has the following sections:
- The Components of an Effective Positive Behavioral Support System (PBSS)
- A Step-by-Step PBSS Implementation Blueprint
- Professional Development Approaches and Resources
- Evaluation and Outcomes
- Appendices
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_ _ _ _ _ _
I hope that these resources will be useful to you. More important, I hope
that your preparations for the new school year result in the positive school
and classroom climates and relationships that are needed so that
students and staff work together in productive, progression, and collaborative
ways.
Think about how you want the school year to begin, and make it happen.
Let me know if I can help in any way.
Best,
Howie
