The Principal's Handbook

Keeping Behavior Expectations Consistent During the Holiday Season

Speaker: 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. 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.

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welcome to the Principal's Handbook. In today's episode, we're talking about finishing the year strong. How to maintain tier one behavior consistency through holiday disruptions. So we all know this time of year can be really crazy when it comes to behaviors. Everybody's just ready for break.

Teachers are tired. I [00:01:00] know as a principal, I'm tired. The schedule gets crazy. There's assemblies special events. There's just less structure. And what typically happens is you start to see a lot of behaviors. And it can be a really difficult time. It can be fun to be in a school.

Obviously during the holidays there's a lot going on. Like I said, a lot of fun activities. But it's stressful because of the lack of structure during that time and because kids' behaviors increase. For some kids, what we have to remember is the holidays aren't always a positive thing.

Going home for two weeks is not a positive thing for every child. And . What we see is sometimes an increase in student emotional dysregulation. I know adults start loosening expectations. I know even sometimes we see adult conflict, which we'll talk about in a future podcast episode for the month of December.

But, , adults are ready for break and they have inconsistent reinforcement sometimes. And really what we need during this time is more predictability. When things feel [00:02:00] unpredictable. So when kids may be feeling anxious or worried about the break and what could come, if they're gonna have enough food, who's gonna be at their house, where they're going to stay, there's all kinds of things that could be going on that we don't even know if our students.

And so if they're feeling anxious and they're worried about, the uncertainty, we have to bring the certainty. So that's really important. And so what I wanted to talk about in this episode are three tier one actions to tighten up before break. Okay. So just reviewing some things for tier one that could be really helpful.

And right now actually I have available my tier one behavior toolkit, and this can be really helpful for creating structure in your building if you do not have tier one systems in place. . But right now what I'm talking about is just if those behaviors are amped up more than normal.

So let's start with my first tip, which is reteach and practice expectations. We need to make sure that we are reteaching, but not spending a long time doing these full lessons. Just quick [00:03:00] three to five minute reteaching. All the time. Constant reminders. , Especially in those high risk transition areas.

Bathroom, hallway, we know the cafeteria can be a problem. It gets really loud for us. Maybe dismissal recess if you're in an elementary school, whatever that is, make sure you are constantly reteaching expectations. And so one way that I've recently started doing this that I really like in my last. School.

I'm in an elementary school, but I will say our high school , they go through and model and reteach expectations, which I love that they do that because even though they're high schoolers, they still need , that modeling. They still need that role play. They need the examples, not just verbal reminders.

They need to see people doing it. And so I think modeling it is really important. The other thing in my last building, and we have this in our district now, are the PBIS signs all over the building. And I think those are good for reminders of reteaching [00:04:00] and , going through those expectations in each area with kids.

But what I have found that is really helpful, I'm in a kindergarten, first and second grade building, but I think you could use this with a lot of different ages is I actually just print the, each expectation on its own, like eight by 11 sheet with a picture. And you don't have to do the picture if you have older kids, but I just hold 'em up and we review.

And so even with the younger kids, I'm saying, remember our three expectations for the bus hands too? And they repeat to me self and I show 'em the picture of the hands to self. My second expectations stay in your, and they'll say seat, and I'm showing them. Stay in your seat, the words with a picture. Then my third expectation, listen to the bus driver and I say, listen to, and they say the bus driver with a picture.

And then my last thing is always the voice level one. And I have those on cards and I can just flash them. And it's a great way to just do quick reminders. And so then as they're walking to the bus, I'm constantly saying, [00:05:00] honestly, I do this daily, but keep your hands. To yourself, and they're repeating after me hands to self, stay in your seat.

And that's just reminding them. But it's just that I have these quick, very straight to the point expectations. They're easy to remember. I have those visuals with me sometimes when we can go over them. We model them, we role play them. That's so important. And that's really important in December when it just feels like.

Everything's unstructured. So that's the biggest thing is reteach and practice expectations. But don't just tell your staff that. And I know that from just recently, I am, in a new building and we were talking about, okay, teach these expectations. Well, they were panicking because they're like, we don't have time.

And so , one teacher told me is, Barb, you have to make sure to tell them what to take off their plate that week. And it was such a good reminder, , I had to say. Here's what you can take off your plate to be practicing these expectations. , But that was more when they were doing full lessons.

But even in these quick three to five minute rete [00:06:00] reminding teachers when they could be doing this, , , so just give teachers that reminder and give them permission on when to do that or give them ideas on when they can do that and what they can take out.

My second tip is to increase positive reinforcement and visibility. So the goal that I've always learned in PBIS as you want, four to one positive, four positive to one negative, which is very hard if you think about that. That is hard. I don't do that for staff. I'm guilty of not doing that for staff.

But another option could be even aiming for two to one. Having that positive to correction ratio where you're focusing on the positive. And I've had conversations with teachers about this. Sometimes when the good things are happening, we just teach. And kids need that reinforcement, even if it's been a while, but knowing like this is a time of year, they need that positive reinforcement.

That reminder that. Thank you for keeping your voice at voice level one and being very specific, reinforcing the [00:07:00] specific behavior, , we're responsible, respectful, and in control, so thank you for keeping your body in control. I like how your hands are to yourself, so giving them that positive reinforcement, but being very specific about what that looks like.

And I always say, you have to do this with kids who are behaviors or , who struggle to follow the expectation because otherwise you're just like constantly correcting them and redirecting them, and they're never hearing anything positive. And so sometimes you have to reframe that and sometimes you need to reset yourself because.

You just need like a second to notice that maybe you're just focusing on the negative. , , Or maybe you're helping a teacher do that. So that's a big thing. It's easier for me, I always say as a principal to come in a classroom and see the negative. 'cause I'm not with the students all day, but sometimes, , I'll say, Hey, go take a break.

. Let me, , lead the class, even if it's for five minutes. So the teacher can just take a second and reset themselves so that they can focus on the positive. Because if they're not regulated, it's really hard to [00:08:00] find those positive things to focus on with students. So that's one thing. Another thing you could do is have some sort of December incentive.

We do palms where students fill a bucket for palms. So you know, you could make them earn the price sooner. You could have a fun challenge where they're earning something different related to the holidays, like whatever that looks like for your building and your rewards, but really focusing on that positive is going to help a lot.

The other thing is making sure that there is a lot of visibility during peak times. If we know that kids are. More excited. There's less structure and there's gonna be more behaviors. Having more visibility, making sure there's more supervision in the hallway, maybe towards the bathrooms. At recess, wherever you can, having more presence is important, and especially you as a leader, just having that leadership presence, them, the students, knowing that the principal's there can help a lot too.

So keep that reinforcement and the visibility there. [00:09:00] And my third tip is protect the schedule and the non-negotiable routines. This is so important. So I always like to think about what are my non-negotiables during the day that I really have to protect? And so for one, we do CKLA as our , language arts program, but their skills block, which is our phonics block, is something that I always protect even if we don't have enough subs in the building.

That is the one area I was. Try to carve out an hour in my schedule to cover the skills block and be a teacher teaching skills, because my teachers switch for skills, and so if they don't have a sub, it messes up their whole skills block. So I'm like, if I can protect one thing in the schedule, it's the skills block or it's their core math block.

So what are those things? That you really want to protect. So maybe it is those core instructional blocks. Maybe it's morning meeting, maybe it's PBIS lessons, movement breaks, whatever that is. But you wanna remind teachers that [00:10:00] having as much structure as possible reduces behavior, stress, emotional dysregulation. I always think about when I subbed high school and I went into a social studies classroom and , the teacher would always leave a movie, and so the behavior was terrible in that room because one, they were used to just watching a movie, but two.

They weren't kept busy, they weren't engaged, and so they, there was no structure to the classroom and so I was just dealing with behaviors the whole time. So I always think about that. And I always have to say too, if we're showing movies when it comes to the holidays, and I used to, as a first grade teacher, we'd always have , Grinch Day and show the Grinch or , polar Express or whatever.

It's really interesting because now I notice that students have a hard time sitting during movies because I wonder sometimes how much do kids actually just watch the movie and not do other things? , And I'm guilty of this myself. So sometimes movies can cause kids, not that we should be showing a lot of movies, but to [00:11:00] not pay attention and focus and for misbehaviors to happen.

So just think about that, like how are we keeping kids engaged? How are we protecting the schedule, keeping them. In their regular routines as much as possible. So you could always send, those December non-negotiables as a reminder to teachers have a conversation at a staff meeting, but really brainstorm together, like how are we gonna keep kids engaged so that we can, , still keep learning because they're gonna be off school for two weeks.

And, I'm in a district, in a low income district that these kids need to be reading and practicing reading as much as possible. And if we're doing busy work. For three weeks before break, like they're missing out on so much core instruction. So what are those? December non-negotiables. , And reminding teachers to just stay in that routine, keep the structure, but you could have fun within that structure.

So help brainstorm with teachers, help have these conversations on what are the fun activities we are doing, but how are we gonna keep as much structure as possible? [00:12:00] An example of this is we're doing a music assembly. Where the high school choir's coming and performing for the students for the holidays.

The assembly is at one. So what routines are teachers keeping in place before and after that assembly. Okay, so really thinking about that so that they're not throwing off the kids whole day.

Some coaching questions. I want you to think about that you could ask your staff, where are you seeing the most dysregulation in your students? If so, if they're dysregulated and having a hard time and you're dealing with a lot of behaviors, what routine has been skipped most often lately? And what would consistency and more structure look like for the next 10 days or three weeks, wherever you are in December.

But really thinking about what that consistency would look like. So again, just to review, are three actions that you're gonna take to tighten things up before break? Reteach and practice expectations. Increase positive reinforcement and visibility and protect the schedule and non-negotiable routines.

Alright, so that is what I have for [00:13:00] you today. I hope that you find some of these tips helpful. Hold on. I know the month of December can be crazy, but just know that you got this and just know that I'm here supporting you. I'm in your corner. I just hope that you take this month of December, focus on those non-negotiables and support teachers to keep as much structure as possible.

All right, I hope you found some tips that are helpful, and I will see you in the next episode