The Principal's Handbook

Resetting Tier One Behavior After Winter Break
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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. I.

Welcome back to the podcast.

Today we are talking about resetting tier one behavior supports after winter break. Okay, and I love this topic because January is a great month for resetting. [00:01:00] We, hear all about January being the reset month when it comes to new you, , is January refresh.

Restart everything, and it's the same at school. It's not a new school year, but it's still a great time to just refresh and restart. You have just come from most places. Take a two week holiday break and you can come feeling refreshed, renewed. Everybody is just feeling better after the having that holiday break.

It is really important to think about resetting these expectations and what your tier one behavior supports look like as you start the new calendar year. Because, , the number one thing I hear from principals all the time when I talk about my eight to four principal blueprint is I'm staying after every day late because.

I'm Spending so much time putting out fires with behavior, or they say things like, I can't be the instructional leader I wanna be because I'm interrupted so many times throughout the day because of behavior. And I will say that [00:02:00] if behavior is taking up the majority of your time as a principal, you are not alone in that.

There are a lot of principals facing that. , At the beginning of the school year, I was facing that as well and it was very frustrating. I felt like I couldn't get anything done. I was not being the leader that I wanted to be. ', Because I'm in a new building and just trying to get everything sorted out.

We do PBIS as our tier one behavior supports, but it needs some tweaking and things like that. And so. Yeah, it was really frustrating when behavior is taking up the majority of your day. And , , so what I really encourage you is if that's the case, we need to get down to the root issue.

And if it's more than, if you think about the tier one triangle, if it's more than. , 20% of your kids that are having issues with behavior and not following expectations, then you have a tier one behavior problem. And so it's really important, even though it's not the beginning of a new year. But to reset in January because you [00:03:00] can't continue the rest of the year like this.

If you're like me, where we end school at the end of May, you are going to have a very long end of the year if you are waiting till next school year to put something in place. And so January really is the perfect time for a tier one reset to come back into the building. And reset, like it's the first day of school.

So I want you to just take a second to reflect on the first half of the year, how did it go when we're talking about behavior and you know, was behavior an issue? Is it something that you're putting out fires all the time? Where were you putting out fires? Was it certain locations? , Why were you putting out fires?

Why was there so much behavior? Was it a certain group of students, a certain grade level with certain teachers? If you have data on that,, that's amazing. You can really dig into the data, and talk about that. And I have the tier one behavior blueprint, and in it I actually talk about how to dig into data with your tier one team because.

You really [00:04:00] should be meeting with teams, figuring out what is the root cause of the behaviors and where they are happening. So you really want to know what your problem behaviors are going into the new year, and then thinking about January, like I said, as a reset to reteach expectations. Just reset staff for the next part of the school year.

Because for us, mid-January is when, , the semester break is, so we're halfway through the school year. I know for some people the semester break is into December, January, so it's just a great time to ,, reset. And after having a break and coming back, if expectations aren't actively retaught, then students fill in the gaps themselves.

They decide what those expectations look like. So we need to be very clear. On what the expectation is and making sure that , staff and everybody in the building is teaching that to students. And I'm not just talking elementary in my district. They do this for high school where they [00:05:00] will have students practice the expectations because it is our job as professionals to make sure that they understand.

We never want to just assume kids know. And so we wanna make sure that we're practicing and reteaching expectations. So I'm going to talk about three steps for resetting your tier one behavior systems. So step one is what I'm talking about, reteaching expectations. So if you already have three main expectations, so in my district, it's respectful, responsible, and in control.

In another district I was in, it was safe, outstanding, accountable, respectful, whatever those main expectations are, make sure you have them and you're reteaching them in all the common areas. So, , hallways, cafeteria, bathrooms, recess, every area you can think of, dismissal, arrival, that you're reteaching what those expectations look like.

Make sure that staff are modeling that or having kids model that. [00:06:00] Maybe your team has made videos or you have posters. I like to use like slides where I show pictures of kids following expectations and showing that I talk about what the voice level should be, , and what that looks like to follow the expectation.

I keep it very simple with only three to five expectations, and I try not to put. Like under respectful, only one to two things. Under respectful, under responsible, only one to two things, and in control only one to two things. But because before you know it, you end up with all of these rules and expectations that nobody remembers what they are.

So if you can just keep it to a simple three to five total, it really does help for each common area, for everybody to remember what those expectations look and sound like. Okay. So make sure that you have those expectations, you're modeling those expectations, , and you're practicing them throughout the building.

Now, if you don't have clear [00:07:00] expectations, and I will say we started the year where we had expectations. But we weren't clearly teaching them in all areas of the building. It's okay. It's never too late. I think I started like October because I was still getting a grasp with the PBIS team on those expectations and coming up with the rules under the different expectations.

, So if you don't have clear expectations, that's okay. It's never too late to get them into place. So choose your three school-wide expectations, safe, respectful, responsible, whatever that is. Start thinking of where you wanna apply them. Maybe just start with that with lunch, or start with that with the hallway or the bus, wherever your biggest problem area is, and teach those three expectations and come up with some simple expectations slash rules under each one.

That you can go through with kids. So it's never too late to get those expectations, but it's really hard to have consequences for kids if we weren't clear about the [00:08:00] expectations. So I always say like, it's hard to issue a consequence if I didn't teach what the expectation is, or if I didn't make sure that staff were teaching what the expectations are.

So make sure that you're setting kids up for success by reteaching or teaching for the first time. Those expectations and you have them very clear and very consistent. You wanna make sure everybody in the building knows what those expectations are and they're focused on teaching them. And again, it's not just telling them one time, it's constantly reteaching.

I go through expectations on the announcements for our kids. I pick one area of our, , behavior matrix, go through that, and I talk through them on the announcements as well. And I have examples of that. In my, , tier one behavior blueprint, if you check that out. I also have the tier one toolkit where I have a free behavior matrix that you can check out as well.

You can get in the show notes. But having that, and I have it posted by the, , speaker for the announcements, [00:09:00] and I just go through one area each day. Alright, so that's step one. You wanna reteach those expectations. Step two, after you're reteaching it, you want to make sure you're reinforcing the positive.

Okay, you don't wanna make this complicated. A lot of times I think people make this really complicated, so find a way that you're going to reinforce the positive. So there's different ways that you can do this. In my last building, we did tickets. I really liked the tickets. We just printed and copied tickets, gave them tickets.

Kit could write their name, put it in a bin for a drawing. It worked out really well, and we would give a lot of tickets at the beginning of the year. A lot of reinforcement in January because we used January like the beginning of the year to reset. , And we would then back off once students got into the routine and were just following those expectations.

In my current school, we use Palm, so they kind of use it like a class community bucket that they get, like a reinforcer, they get a palm for being respectful, and then , they put it in the class [00:10:00] bucket. So that's the reinforcer. , In our lunchroom we do like dabbers, where we do, it's really to mimic the palms, but it's just on the wall where they get.

, A dobber to indicate a palm, and then when they fill up their, 20 palms on the wall, then they get a price for that different lunch. So , that's our reinforcement system that we have for lunch. So.. Having some sort of reinforcement and making sure that we're remembering to give them the reinforcement and we're being clear about what the reinforcement is thank you for walking in the halls.

Thank you for being respectful. Thank you for being responsible and, , completing your homework, whatever it is. , And just remember that reinforcement is part of the feedback process for your tier one behavior supports. It's not bribery, it's not giving suckers out to everybody. It's not like this constant candy thing.

I'm trying to think of what , misconceptions I hear about PBIS. It's like, oh, kids get in trouble and come back with a sucker. It's not about reinforcing bad behavior. It's about just [00:11:00] having those simple reinforcers that help students know that they're making good choices and they can earn something positive.

Okay, so really thinking about how you're going to reinforce the positive. Hopefully you have something in place. But I will just say, we wanna make it simple because if it's not simple, it's not sustainable. So make it super simple. And also think about how you're reinforcing adults as you go back to school.

It's a new year, we all like reinforcement. So are you shouting staff out? , You could shout them out. Newsletters, staff meetings. , I do a ticket system where we can. Write a little ticket as a thank you, and then they get in a drawing and I buy just cheap gift cards to pass out at staff meetings.

. Schoolwide classroom acknowledgements. Tie directly to the expectation. You notice , , classes who are doing good things, just any schoolwide recognition. When you're shouting out kids, when you're shouting out staff. It just creates this culture altogether of focusing on the positive and shifting [00:12:00] away from consequence only thinking.

It's not saying that we don't give consequences. That's a misconception of PBIS and tier one behavior support, but. Really shifting more to the positive. If teachers are giving Dojo points, it's getting away from all the negative dojo points to are we focusing on the positive Dojo points? So thinking about the positive,

so that's something I want you to think about is , how are you and staff reinforcing the positive in the building without making it super complicated? And the third thing is resetting adult consistency. So it's so easy to get away from consistency when it comes to teaching expectations, when it comes to reinforcing expectations.

It's very common. So we as the principals have to lead staff into that consistency. We have to remind them, , because if adults are inconsistent, it's really confusing to kids. And so we wanna make sure that the adults are consistent in teaching expectations and in reinforcing them. , We wanna make [00:13:00] sure that.

Staff knows that it's okay for something else to go so that they can take time to teach behavior expectations. Because I think a lot of times teachers feel guilty of not getting in content to teach expectations, and I totally get that. But you have to , give them that permission and remind them how it's going to save them time later by putting in the time now.

Also, it's a great time when you think about consistency , to remind staff, what are the classroom managed behaviors? What are the office managed behaviors? What does that look like? What does it look like to refer a student to the office? It's a good time to remind them that if they are referred to the office that you know, you then get to pick the consequence because they've, , decided to refer them to the office.

, So now you're taking over the situation and you pick the consequence. . It's a good time to coach teachers on handling behaviors. Looking for patterns where students have the most behaviors. Are they engaged in their learning? If not, let's look at what engagement [00:14:00] looks like. Let's look at how we're giving kids opportunities to respond.

In my, , tier one behavior blueprint, I have a whole module on student engagement as it relates to discipline and student behavior, because I think so often kids stop listening because they're not engaged, they don't have those opportunities to respond.

They're just expected to sit and listen. And I don't know about you, but I don't have the attention span for that anymore. My attention span used to be great, but now with everything being instant, I feel like I can't sit for very long without having to respond or, , some sort of engagement activity.

That's something to think about when you're thinking about adult consistency, and then also with adult consistency, thinking about supervision. So if you have adult supervising recess, lunch, before or after school duty and you're seeing behaviors in those areas.

What does supervision look like? Are staff members actively supervising or are they not paying attention? And just expecting that kids know that they're out there, right? So we need to make sure that adults are also [00:15:00] consistent in that supervision, because that's going to help really reduce those behaviors and increase kids following the expectations.

So again, it's really important that we get all adults on the same page. This is something that's really hard. It's not going to happen overnight. , But just constant conversations on the importance of the adults teaching expectations, reinforcing those expectations, and really it comes down to their mindset about.

Tier one behavior supports and focusing on the positive. More than the negative. Now, one thing I have to say about my tier one behavior blueprint that I'm so excited when I created, I created it to actually have many PD sessions for each module that you can do with your staff.

It's embedded throughout, but I just have. 10 minute activities that you could do at a staff meeting to help your staff actually change their mindset and learn some different skills when it comes to the behaviors for tier one, , in a quick pd, because I know [00:16:00] that that's a true challenge. You're trying to change your staff's mindset.

And it can be really challenging. And there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to PBIS and when we think about what Tier one behavior looks like, because a lot of times we think about it as being very reactive and consequence driven and focusing on the negative, but we've gotta flip that. And make sure that we're focusing on the positive.

We're teaching those expectations, we're reinforcing the good things that we're seeing, and we're being consistent. However, it's still okay to give consequences and making sure staff knows that, and then what that looks like when it's an office managed behavior and when it's a classroom managed behavior.

I hope that this helps you. Feel like you're resetting for the new year, and you just start January feeling refreshed and ready to help support teachers to have better tier one supports across the building for behavior, so that you have more time to lead and have more time for instructional leadership and feel like you can get more done during the day [00:17:00] without just dealing with behavior all day.

All right. If you love the show, if you're listing on Apple, please scroll down in your app, leave a review. I'd appreciate that. That's how other people find the show. Alright, I hope you found this helpful, and I will see you on the podcast next time.