The Problem

Imagine this scenario as a school leader: You and your team have established school-wide expectations. There is a rewards system in place for the students who consistently meet those expectations. 

Your Tier 1 structure provides teachers with the tools and resources to handle most of the low-level behavioral issues that arise. The staff is bought in and they are implementing the plan to perfection.

You’ve done all you can to eliminate distractions and remove behavioral barriers to instructional success. Your plan should mean that negative student behavior events are now a distant memory on your campus.

Except it’s not. There are still behavioral issues. Despite all of your best efforts, you are still seeing referrals stacking up on your desk. Worse yet, the issues seem to be totally random. 

Now what?

The Solution

Well, now it’s time to put on your investigator hat and dig a little deeper. You need to analyze the data and brainstorm solutions as Heritage Middle School does. 

Every school claims they make data-driven decisions…but Heritage really makes data-driven decisions. This year alone they have collected and analyzed nearly 1 million data points related to behavior.

All of that data analysis has turned into some real, tangible results for the school. The team at Heritage has used all of those data points to identify the patterns that weren’t in plain sight before. 

By doing so, they were able to get to the root cause of their issues. They then turned that knowledge into lesson plans to re-teach the targeted skills that students needed to improve their behavior.

And guess what…it worked. Students at Heritage have responded by earning enough positive behavior points to earn over 1,200 intangible rewards! To get a true understanding of how the team at HMS accomplished all this, we need to first meet the team.

Meet the Behavior Team 

The team at HMS is led by Dr. Reagan Allegri, their school principal. Reagan believes very strongly in establishing their program around three components: data analysis, student buy-in, and teamwork. 

To establish the teamwork needed to make the dream work at HMS they have created a set of roles and responsibilities that are transferable no matter who is on the team. These roles make sure their meetings are efficient, productive, and worthy of their staff’s valuable time.

Let’s take a look at the roles of the behavior team at HMS:

Facilitator 

The facilitator is responsible for setting the meeting agendas, keeping track of time during discussions, and publishing meeting minutes after they conclude.

Data Coordinator

If you're going to have discussions around behavior data you have to have someone responsible for collecting that data and presenting it to the rest of the team. 

In this case, HMS has made the job of data coordinator much easier because they use LiveSchool to collect and present all of the discipline data they need to drive these discussions.

Student Committee

The only real way to ensure student buy-in is to include them in the conversation. At HMS they have established multiple ways for students to be heard and be included in the improvement of their school.

In this case, the student committee is called “Eagle Express” because in addition to participating in data discussions, they are also couriers for the school store.

Publication Coordinator

The results of the discussions happening within the behavior team need to be shared with the rest of the staff. The Publications coordinator is responsible for creating slide decks that need to be shared as well as packaging any lesson plans that are going to be presented to students.

Incentive Coordinator

The best job on the team! The incentives coordinator is responsible for planning reward events, overseeing the school store, and presenting intangible reward ideas to the rest of the team.

Behavior Data Digs

The team has established a set of norms around their key function: behavior data analysis. They call the process “Data Digs” and the rules are designed to keep the discussion focused on one thing: solutions.

The process begins when the data coordinator presents the group with the raw data they have collected in LiveSchool.

The Facilitator then asks the team: “What do we notice about the data?”

That’s when the group begins to look for and identify trends within the information they are presented.

They have two guidelines designed to guide this open discussion portion of the meeting:

1. Be a problem solver - Not a problem describer

It is easy to look at discipline data and start reliving negative events. This is an emotional trap when it comes to finding solutions to your school’s behavioral issues. 

The team asks that all members remove emotion and focus on the data, and more importantly on solutions to the problems they see.

2. Pick a lane

You cannot devise a solution to every negative behavior data point you find. Your team only has so much bandwidth. Not only that but the rest of your staff will lose faith in the team if they are constantly getting new directions to attempt to solve every problem.

To get the most out of your efforts, focus on the behaviors that lead to other behaviors. You could think of them as dominoes. If you can keep that leading domino from falling, you’ll keep the whole line from following.

In more practical terms, consider a behavior event like student-to-student fights. Should you spend time planning ways to stop fights or should you look upstream a bit and address something like conflict resolution? 

The team at HMS looked at the data we shared above and identified the two most frequent negative behaviors:

• Staying on Task 
• Ipad Charged Before School

They also discussed the other less frequent behaviors like Following Directions, Respecting Others, and Collaborating with Peers. Given the current data, the team decides to focus on one issue and one issue only: getting those devices charged before school begins.

Why focus there? 

Because HMS is a 1 to 1 technology school, the team determined that students who didn’t have their iPad charged were more likely to be off task and would likely struggle to follow directions. 

In that scenario, you could also see how the student would likely get frustrated and might lash out towards others and cause difficulties collaborating.

The Results

Once HMS has identified a behavior to address it’s time to create an action plan. The plan will look like this:

1. The Publication Coordinator will create slides re-teaching the skill that can be shared with students in their homeroom classes. 

2. The Student Committee will work with Heritage’s Theatre and Broadcasting classes to create a short video showing students meeting expectations with student testimonials on the purpose and importance of meeting the expectation.

3. The Data Coordinator will monitor the rate of positive reinforcement to ensure HMS staff is looking for and rewarding students who are doing the right things.

4. The Incentives Coordinator plans, promotes, and manages an event designed to reward students for meeting expectations.

Your School's Turn

The rewards system at HMS is designed around culture-building events that both reward students and promote community within the school. 

Those events include:

• Scavenger Hunts
• Dodgeball Games
• Movie Screenings
• Basketball and Volleyball Tournaments

The events are the glue that holds the plan together at HMS. But it all starts with identifying problem behaviors that can improve the school's learning environment.

By addressing these root cause issues they have created a safe, respectful, and positive learning environment for all students.