Behavior Management

How Friendship Woodridge Elementary Decreased Suspensions by 81% With LiveSchool

Discover how LiveSchool helped Principal Craig transform school culture, improve student behavior, and foster positive relationships in just two years.

The Liveschool Team1 min read

On this page

The Problem

“Our culture was a bit chaotic – not a zoo, but you could tell that transitions were messy, social interactions weren’t always positive, and our relationships with parents had room for improvement.”

The Solution

Principal Craig made it his number one priority to address these school culture challenges by working collaboratively with his team. Based on the hard work of the team, student behavior and school culture would look totally different just two years later.

The Results

Friendship Woodridge spent a lot of time discussing the importance of proactively teaching behavior expectations and positively reinforcing behaviors. Although they had high expectations for students, they recognized that students need encouragement and support to change their behavior. The approach has been extremely successful, with out-of-school suspensions dropping by over 80% in just two school years.

Your School's Turn

There are three key takeaways from FWE's success that all school's can benefit from:

1. Identify the Problem as a Team

If there's a repeated issue with behavior or culture in our community, we get together and discuss it. We don’t run from it or hide it – we work as a team to address it head on.

2. Develop Positive Expectations

To stop a negative behavior, we develop positive expectations that everyone can get behind. We focus on what scholars should do so that there’s never an opportunity for negative behavior.

3. Create a System to Reward Students

Our students respond to praise, congratulations, and rewards. We work with our students to identify rewards and events that they are genuinely excited about. Then we celebrate together.