The Principal's Handbook

Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work life balance, I'm Barb Flowers. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.

 Hey everyone, welcome to The Principal's Handbook. I'm so excited to be here today with Jessica Jebryan Hannigan and John Hannigan and we're here to talk about their book Behavior Academies, Targeted Interventions That Work.

so welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Of course. If you just want to go ahead and tell our listeners about yourself and your experiences in education. Sure. Yeah. I started out in the classroom as a teacher and loved it and was, , just, that's what I'm going to do for the next 30 years.

And, , I got tapped on the shoulder by my, by my principal at that time and said, have you ever considered going into administration? And so that's what, Kind of sparked my journey and, so became a, a teacher coach supporting, , classroom instruction and then a vice principal, and then spent 10 years , as a site leader, , as a school principal.

And my background's a little different. I started off, I wanted to be a child psychiatrist and I went to UCLA and I was gonna stay there and, , just continue the path around, child psychology and psychiatry. And I ended up. Substitute teaching for my mom. My mom's a teacher and I just fell in love with being with kids in the classroom, in the school, in that environment.

, but I still wanted to follow my passion around behavior and so I went the path of a school psychologist. So I was a school psychologist at first and then I became a site administrator and I became the director of student support services at the district office focusing on behavior. So both a lot of experiences in education and experiences with behavior.

Tell us kind of what led to your passion of working with students and behaviors. Well, for me, it was our, you know, traditionally the focus has always been on academic achievement. And so that's where, , you know, being able to lead a school in a high concentration of poverty out here in the Central Valley on the West Coast in California.

But the implementing the RTI practices and functioning as a, as a professional learning community, we were able to have our underserved students really outperforming more of our affluent neighbors. And so it really garnered a lot of attention and recognition that our kids pretty much resembled the rest of the state of California.

We still saw that we had a. A large portion of our campus that that we were still missing and it was through behavior. And so we wanted to leverage , the same practices, the same thinking that allowed us to ensure that all students were learning at grade level or higher to then ensure that they were being good humans.

And so that's where really being able to partner , with Mike Madison, Austin Buffum with, with the first resource, which is, behavior solutions, which is that RTI at work implementing, , the same practices that allowed us to get the achievement for students to then leverage those same practices to support students behaviorally.

And for me, I really noticed there was a big gap between general ed and special education in a lot of areas, and, , I really wanted to mind that gap, and one huge area was behavior. Academics and behavior go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. And we need to look at it systemically. And we need to prevent, we need to intervene, and we need to create that systematic response.

So it's not general ed or special ed or, you know, these kids are the ones who have behavior challenges. It was for all kids. And that's where, you know, kind of my passion focus area started. And I love, you know, what you said, John, too, about going into being a principal with more of an instructional focus, because I would say that was me as a principal.

I loved. , instructional practices and curriculum. So I felt really confident in that area as a principal, but when it came to behavior, you know, I knew how to deal with a classroom, but now I had a whole building and I was an assistant principal and it was a whole different ballgame because I dealt with behaviors I had never dealt with before.

That was definitely a challenge. And. I have to tell our listeners before we started this call, I was telling John and Jessica, I actually used one of their previous academies with our students and it was amazing. So can you talk about the behavior academies that you talk about in this book and what those look like and why they're beneficial for schools?

Absolutely. Our first behavior academy was actually born. Gosh, it's like 10 plus years ago, when a group of boys at my site actually, , got in a fight during bully prevention week, I really did. I had things always coming in who had previously had, you know, challenges with behavior and they had overcome anyway, the whole thing. . I realized really quick that looking in their previous, , cumulative files, that the exclusionary practices was the only means used over and over again. And obviously it was not working. So at that time, John and I were brainstorming, okay, well, what, can I do instead? I'm not sending them home.

So what can I do instead? , that's where the first academies were, were born. The way I was thinking about it was, look, they have some skills that they need because right now, the skills that they are going to are not beneficial for the future. When you get upset or someone starts a rumor or someone's instigating and your first go to is to use violence, that's not going to work out for now or later.

The first academy was all around giving them the skills. And over the years, we translated that into a lot of targeted academies. We noticed, look, you have to teach behavior similar to academics and what you teach them has to be targeted. They need to have those life skills, but they don't need to just be taught.

We need to create an environment where they could actually create a new habit. This is their new go to. So that's where Behavior Academies was born. It was not as structured and organized as what you're gonna get in your, , new book, Behavior Academies. , but over the years, we wanted to give that gift to others to be able to have a practical approach.

And so as a principal, You know, what we found was that the only tool in our tool kit for the students that had those repeated behaviors is traditionally check in, check out, you know, where you end with that student. You set those goals. Check out. How did we do today? , but what we found is. I don't want to say the life sentence, but we typically see that second grader who's now in eighth grade and they're still in check in check out.

Yeah, yeah, we exit the student. And so what we found really through our research is if we only have one tool, it's not targeted enough. And so the effectiveness of the interventions we're providing for academics. Specifically, let's say if I have a student struggling with reading, what are the steps we go through?

We give a phonics screener. We see where fluency is breaking down. We diagnose that it's vowel blends and diagraphs and give that student a double dose of vowel blends and diagraphs and get them reading. But then when it comes to student misbehaving, it was either we're going to universally apply check in, check out for every behavior issues we're seeing on campus, or we're going to revert to the old school exclusionary practices, suspensions, detentions, loss of recess, and things like that.

And so how do we use this as an opportunity to teach and change behavior? And so that's where these behavior academies really started with. If you can't keep your to yourself instead of check in, check out. You're going to go into a hands off academy where you're going to learn self regulation, managing conflict peacefully.

If we're seeing bullying behaviors instead of check in, check out, you're going into an upstander academy where you're going to learn empathy, respect, compassion. If we're seeing students that are struggling with emotional regulation instead of check in, check out, you're going to go into an emotional regulation academy where you're going to learn targeted skills.

And so that's where what we found is now the level of targetedness is where you're going to see that success in tier two. And so when we typically see and support schools that are saying we have a tier three problem, tier three problem. Typically, the problem is we don't have really anything in place in tier two, or we're universally applying the same, , universally hoping that it is going to capture all the needs that we, that we want to see, , corrected.

And the solution is it's not targeted. And can I just say one thing real quick? Yeah. I have no problem with check in, check out. Check in, check out is a great tier two intervention. However, it is designed for repeated minor classroom misbehaviors. That is what the targeted focus is on check in, check out.

And that's our main point. We want these academies to be targeted. They need to focus on the life skills that the students need. so they could use those replacement behaviors instead. It's a great tool again for those repeated minor misbehaviors in the classroom. We see it overused or misused as the catch all in tier two and again that it's not targeted enough.

And I love what you're talking about with the academies because we do know, you know, in my school, we do PBIS and we're really great at teaching those tier one behaviors, but we do know that they need behaviors taught over and over again in those life skills, especially I think more and more because we have kids on technology and they're not getting those skills in other places.

And so they come to school and not only are we teaching them academics, but we really do need to teach them. These life skills of interacting. I know every year it seems like kindergarten more and more kids are putting their hands on each other just because they don't know other ways to interact. Right.

Yeah. How to, you know, in a positive way, get attention from your peers. They just don't know. So it's just, they're overstimulated and they just put their hands on each other. And it's like, these are ways to make friends. I love what you said because that is, , the main point of the academies.

It's not just kids getting in trouble. It's also academic behavior. So there's academic behaviors and social behaviors and, and both, you know, in both cases, students need, what can I do instead? And I know, you know, having done Hands Off Academy, one of your academies in my school, when I would call parents and say, like, during their time in the office, we're going to be doing this Hands Off Academy, they would be so excited.

They'd be like, wow, you have that? You know, they couldn't believe that we had this resource that was teaching them. And by the way, a little bit about the name too. We call it, So hands off academy, upstander academy, social skills academy, because we look at, okay, what is that big focus area that we're trying to, you know, focus on?

And then the academy piece means that it's ongoing teaching. So this isn't just a one quick spray or, oh, you got in trouble one day and we're talking about it. This is An ongoing and,, very targeted instruction around this area. So an academy, usually like a pilot academy or police academy, they go to school to learn these skills so then they could demonstrate them.

This is the same idea. Yeah, it's not just done in a one little, One, one little session, one little blast. So that was the word I was looking for Academy police Academy. These are ongoing sessions. You're learning developing skills. And so that's where each Academy actually, we have eight targeted life skills within each, so a skill a week, and then each skill.

Has two replacement behaviors that were that were targeting within it. So we're really building that students inner toolkit so that when they're put in these situations, rather than reverting to what they know, which is putting their hands on someone or whatever the skills are that we're developing.

Can now pull from their inner toolkit, like adults, if we're working through something that triggered us at work or, , our self image or whatever skills that we're working on as humans, every adult is working through something, but then when it goes to students, we just hope that it was developed through simple.

Maturation or that they just acquire these skills genetically and then just shouldn't inherently know how to behave on our campuses. So when we see the students are not demonstrating those pro social behaviors, we need to teach. So we identify those students that are lacking these skills through these repeated demonstration of these undesirable behaviors.

We need to target them and give them the, the, the teaching of these skills. So we see an elimination of those behaviors. Well, and it's funny because I am a life coach and I'm a huge advocate advocate for coaching for adults. And as I was looking at these skills that we're talking about teaching kids, I'm like, this is what I teach adults.

You are hidden on every point. , we joke that these academies actually, as you're reading them and you're reading those life skills and the replacement behaviors. You're like, Oh, I could work on that. Yes. I need to work on that. Those are, those are things that seriously we could do with adults too. Yeah.

Yeah. And I tell teachers, you know, when we teach kids these skills, that's great because we are, we can learn with them. You know, we just did a podcast episode and it was on the report from the CDC and one of the things they're talking about doing in schools is like cognitive behavior therapy, where we replace our.

Negative thoughts. Yeah, positive thoughts. And I said, that is so great to teach teachers. So if we're teaching kids at the same time, we're learning together. And that's what the kind of, , the secret sciences around behavior academies. , what, what we did for almost four years, I mean, we've been implementing, , behavior academies across schools.

, the nation with over 5, 000 schools that we work with. So that part wasn't new, but the part that we really focused in on, on this book was really studying for each academy. What are those life skills? Like, what is it that we're saying when we're saying a kid can't keep their hands to themselves or this kiddo is struggling with social skills, or this kiddo struggling being an upstander?

So we studied those key Life skills for years. And then we studied the science of imagery and visualization. So this is not just here's a worksheet. This is the using and I'll let john talk about it more. But using the science of visualization and imagery. To actually pull from within yourself. What can I do instead?

We want kids being able to pull from these skills without an adult being there. That is our ultimate goal. They need to be independent functioning adults. So they need to have these tools without one of us being there all the time. And that's the main goal. And as a principal, we had, we had a lot of behavior curriculum, a lot of tools to be able to support and teach student these skills.

So when they, you know, receive the teaching once a week, twice a week in tier two of these skills through this curriculum, we were seeing they weren't generalizing it. So then when they get out to in a unstructured or less structured, area of campus or time during the day, we were They get triggered and revert back to that familiar tool, which is putting my hands on someone or, you know, pushing someone out of the way when they feel that someone cut them in line or whatever, it was like, bud, we've been working on this.

And so what we've found is we were training the wrong parts of the brain. If we're using worksheets and kind of those types of things, and I'm not bashing any of the curriculum or anything like there are some phenomenal things out there. But what we saw where they were not able to transfer it when when put in those situations, however, leveraging mental imagery and visualization in being able to give them these mental these rehearsals and that safe environment as we're building that inner toolkit that when they were in that situation.

It was like they've been there before and they knew how to respond effectively. And that's where, that's where I think this book is going to be different than really anything that's out there. And that's where mental imagery and visualization is not new. This is something that elite athletes and Olympians have been doing for decades.

You know, I've run that line a thousand times. We were, , before we were watching the Superbowl, we saw, , it was like two hours before the game on the NFL network. Patrick Mahomes is just walking the course of the field and they said that he's just running fourth and one, third and eight, every situation.

He's mentally rehearsing it, playing it through his head. So when he's in that high stress, impactful situation, when it matters, he's not going to freak out because he's been there before. I just wish my 49ers would have mentally rehearsed to overtime rules. Some examples of mental imagery.

And at first, when you hear about it, you're like, Oh, yeah, we, I do that all the time. I think things in my head. I say things to myself. I see things and scenarios and I practice them. , and you're gonna not stop noticing it now after you read behavior academies. But just some simple examples, just to get you kind of thinking about it.

It's like a stop sign in your brain. You know, when you're getting frustrated, there's a stop sign in your brain. That means stop. , things like a pause button, things like a car brake. These are all visualizations that we're trying to teach kids. When they notice this, you need to activate, and that's the word we use, you need to activate those skills from inside.

And what we're doing is we're teaching them those replacement behaviors that are based on imagery. So that they could pull from their own, you know, skills when they're in that scenario. Another one, , students maybe that are suffering from anxiety, one that we call a bear in the campground. So, when a bear is in your campground, is that a real threat?

You know, that's going to trigger that fight flight response, or is it a perceived threat? So, to be able to see as students are working through their issues, are you putting bears where they don't belong, or is this a real threat or perceived threat? So, those types of strategies. We have another one, like students that are unresponsive or get defensive when receiving feedback.

So, Which is a normal response. So we have one that's called lower the shield. So just feel the weight of just having to carry that shield around, which is symbolizes just always being defensive, inspect the shield, look at the damage to it, those, any types of marks or things. That's kind of that scar tissue that the shield that the student is carrying with them.

That's getting them defensive. They've heard things in the past that have made them feel not good enough, not smart enough. And so that defensive kind of this, that mechanism is, is from past experiences that get them in that state. So then. Like physically feel the weight of lowering that shield and basically that burden of not having to carry around being defensive.

And so through that, that mental imagery and rehearsal. Now, as we start to build that inner toolkit, these students are able to practice. in a safe space, where now we're seeing them now transfer it because we're actually now rewiring the same part of their brain then as actually experiencing it. So when they're in those situations, they know how to respond.

What can you do instead? And I love that because so many times talking with kids, you know, when I'm dealing with discipline, it's like, okay, we need to stop and think, you know, that's the number one thing. It's impulse all the time. So when you're giving them these strategies to really stop and think about, I think that that is really helpful.

So I love that. , can you tell principals, how could they implement these academies in a way that's sustainable and without feeling overwhelmed and like it's another thing on their plate? Absolutely. So in the resource, we provide a very kind of formalized structure to behavior academies. And then we also give suggestions on more informal applicant application of behavior academies.

But as I'm speaking to principles, I think the tip would be. You know, make sure you're creating those systematic structures on your campus that allow for this. So the way we designed our behavior academies, , is for, it to be really practical. So 25 minutes or less once or twice a week is how many times these students go to the academy for at least 6 to 8 weeks.

Because based on the research, we know that it takes up to 66 days and that's just a given median. That's not even for everybody to develop a new habit. So we need to make sure once or twice a week we are creating our system to allow for students that have these repeated needs to access So really kind of taking an audit of your system.

Do I have a system and a team that is helping with this? And am I giving them time in the schedule to be able to do this? So that's kind of the most formalized. If you're actually using, you know, an admin, a counselor, a support provider. In the most formalized fashion, once or twice a week, 25 minutes or less.

And you're helping with the replacement behaviors, and you're communicating with the teachers on how they could help the students generalize, But then there's other ways that you could do it, too. We've had principals who use one of our behavior rehearsal cards. Maybe they take a skill and they do it school wide.

Like, you know what? I'm not, you know, our behavior team is noticing that there's a trend and, you know, hands on behavior or whatever. This is something we're all going to be working on. So there's a way that a principal could incorporate that school wide. There's ways teachers could incorporate that during circles, classroom meetings, with a small group of kids.

So there's a lot of ways of doing it, but the system has to support it. And that's where I think our backgrounds combined with teacher admin on my end, school psychologist admin on her end, that practicality has to happen. I mean, as a principal, I've sat in meetings where it's like, what's the operational definition of motivation?

And it's like, and we spent two weeks talking about that. And it's like, who cares? Support this kid. We don't care. We care. Okay. Make it easy. But you don't have to have a BCBA to implement these. I as a principal ran these academies and so the practicality we're delivering a skill it's this isn't, you know, where you have to have a special degree to implement so practicality hundred percent doable.

If it takes an hour to do, the student's gonna lose their, you know, engagement, attention span, and so's the adults. So we want to take the whole planning out of it, from the adults implementing, it's an intervention on a card, 25 minutes or less, one skill a week, that's doable. So we might also hear, I got too many kids.

John, Jess, we got half our school needs hands off academy. Well, you have a tier one problem. If half your school needs hands off academy, so the way that we look at the distribution, it should be when you're doing tier one well, that's 95 plus percent of your campus will respond. And so that leaves tier two to being about 4 percent and tier three as a 0.

5 to 1%. So if I'm a school of 500, that's maybe 20 kids needing an academy. If it's once a week, that's a group of four every day of the week. And that's, that's very much for 25 minutes. That's very manageable. If we're like, well, what about those kids that are throwing chairs and flipping tables and all that stuff?

Well, Again, that distribution, that 0. 5 to 1%, that's 2 or 3 kids if your campus is 500. If it's 1, 000, just double it. That's still 4 or 5 kids. And so that's still doable. And so go back to that normal distribution of, of, of what we need to do to solidify Tier 1. Because if half our school needs an academy, we don't have an intervention problem.

With that said, uh, if you choose to purchase the resource, highly recommend. There's a commonly asked questions section. So we really break down tips of how to implement, and we also give example schedules for all grade levels. So what this looks like. What would this look like? Um, and how could you know, how could you implement it?

And I just, you know, I have to throw out there just like John said, and I was kind of thinking about my response. The number one thing we're going to say is that, to be honest, behavior solutions, which is how do you create systematic tiers of behavior supports on a campus? How do you integrate? PBIS, restorative practices, SEL, culturally responsive trauma into a multi tiered system is number one.

So our first book is like the mom, like that is number one. And behavior academies is in addition to that. Now you have. repeated, you know, students who need repeated, behavior supports. What could that look like? Now, with that said, you could still implement this standalone, but you're going to get such a huge impact when you get to the place that John talked about.

95 percent Tier 1 prevention's working school wide, class wide. 4% We know what kids need in addition to and we are providing that targeted support and they're responding and then that leaves us also room with our resources in our system to adequately respond to tier three. That's the, that's the ultimate.

Yeah. And that's an amazing approach. I love how you said, if your kids aren't 95%, on track with behavior, then we do have a tier one problem. And this book has so many resources in it as well. So as you're talking, I'm thinking you give everything you need to start it and have all the resources you need, which I love for all the different academies.

Is there anything else that you wanted to share about the book before we end our conversation? Just the last thing is if you find that, , You know, let's say profanity, you know, foul language or things like that, you can have a choice words Academy. So yes, we create eight, but we also teach the thinking around it.

So if you want to create a ninth Academy, that's a choice words Academy, that's going to address some of the problem behaviors that you're seeing that are unique to your campus, we've covered pretty much the eight that we see nationwide. If you don't like a skill, here's, here's a way to implement another skill and create your own academy.

And so, , yes, we do, like you said, tons of tools and resources with the eight that we provide, but we also have another section of how to create your own academy. Yeah, we have built your, yeah, we have built your own academy. And I think that's the highest level of implementation when you can now translate it, the thinking into other targeted areas.

, but the only, , additional thing that I would say is give it a try. Read through the structure. How do you start an academy? What do you talk to kids about? What's your goal? Why are you doing it in the first place? Then consistently teach them what they could do instead and create that environment for success and give it some time so they could translate it and then celebrate that when a student exits the academy and have them apply their learning.

They love it. Have them teach another student. Have them. Do an exit interview. Have them, , celebrate that win so that, you know, we recognize their hard work and it's, it's just a game changer. So I just, my, my challenge is just try one, just, just try one and you can even do it with your own kids. Oh, that's what I was gonna say.

Yeah. That's great for your own children at home. Your significant others. Oh, . Are you, are you using some I would never match, you know, just those, you know, those 25 minute meetings we have on Monday morning targeted. Those are some, those are some focus areas. I love that though as a parent, I could definitely use that with my kids.

They have areas they need. So I love that idea to try it with your own kids. Absolutely. The thinking is common sense. If someone is struggling with something, whether it's your child, a student, an adult, we could talk to them all we want. We could, you know, we could tell them to, oh, do this or calm down or don't get mad, you know, but what are we actually giving them that's going to stick that they could use?

when it happens again. And that's the goal. Well, thank you so much, John and Jessica, for being here today. Such a great conversation. And I'm so excited for your book Behavior Academy's targeted interventions that work. I definitely am going to pull out some things for my own building. How can people reach you if they want to get in contact with you?

Well, definitely through SolutionTree. com. If they go to SolutionTree, , they could get our information there. They could access us. , they could learn about our two day. Behavior solutions workshops, which is an intensive. You bring your behavior team. You're stuck with us for two days, but we go through systematic tiers.

And then we also have integrated behavior academies into that workshop now. So I think that's the. I think that would be the best, quickest way. And we also have a Facebook group and, , and a Twitter, , the page, but the Facebook group is Equity in School Discipline, Hannigan group, , join that group, we share resources and we love just growing our community that cares about kids as much as we do and their future.

Great. Well, I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So people can get to that. And again, thanks for joining us and thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

  Mhm. Mhm.