According to John Hattie’s Visible Learning research, Collective Teacher Efficacy is one of the single highest-impact influences on student achievement ($d = 1.57$). At its core, it’s the collective belief that our joint efforts directly drive student success. Simply put, it’s the idea of a team of educators moving in the same direction at the same time with the belief that all students can learn.

While you might be thinking, “Well, that sounds nice but is it true?” Can teams really see a significant impact on student learning simply by collaborating effectively with one another and believing in their students ability to learn? I can confidently say that after many years in education—as both a classroom teacher and an administrator—I truly believe that not only is this true, but it is absolute magic when you see it happen. I have watched numerous departments in education, and when teams are moving in the same direction with the same purpose, everything else tends to fall into line. Their assignments are stronger, deeper, more rigorous, and aligned to the standards. Their assessment practices go beyond just giving tests to sharing data, analyzing it collectively, and creating targeted next steps for intervention and enrichment. And finally, when teams are truly aligned, you can tell by the way they talk about their profession and their students. They not only deeply care about the success of their students, but they truly believe that all students can learn. And when they share that belief with the students, the students start to believe it themselves, too.

Developing strong PLC teams takes time (and trust) to develop. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a combination of building relationships, understanding the curriculum, and working collaboratively together. However, it is absolutely doable and, like I said, it’s magic when it happens.

A simple way to begin strengthening your PLC team to build toward Collective Teacher Efficacy is ensuring that the time they have to collaborate is clear, purposeful, and organized. In our district, every Wednesday is “PLC Wednesday” where teams meet to curriculum plan for future weeks. This meeting time is where the magic happens—most of the time. However, if teams do not pre-plan for the meetings, come up with agenda topics beforehand, and give a clear direction for the meeting, it can quickly fall into off-topic conversations without any driving force for effective curriculum planning.

To strengthen PLC meetings, the easiest way to do this is to design clear, organized PLC agendas that list the topics, questions, and eventually, the running notes of the meeting. If a clear agenda is prepared ahead of time, then the likelihood of the meeting staying on task and focused greatly increases.

5 Reasons How PLC Agendas Help Drive Efficacy

Beyond just keeping a meeting on track, here are five big ways a structured agenda directly builds and protects Collective Teacher Efficacy on your campus:

• Translates Belief into Daily Action: Collective Teacher Efficacy is the shared belief that teachers can impact student learning—a structured agenda provides the time and space to put that belief into practice every single week.
• Keeps the Focus on Student Impact: By anchoring every agenda in the 4 Critical PLC Questions, teams spend less time on administrative logistics and more time on high-impact work like evaluating instruction and analyzing assessment data.
• Builds Shared Ownership & Accountability: When team members co-create agendas, rotate meeting roles, and assign action items ahead of time, it transforms meetings from top-down mandates into true collaborative partnerships.
• Creates a Record of Collective Success: A rolling agenda acts as a living archive of student growth and teaching wins, giving teams visible proof over time that their joint efforts are directly driving student success.
• Protects Collaborative Energy: Clear time limits and structured protocols prevent meetings from devolving into vent sessions, respecting teachers’ prep time and leaving them feeling accomplished rather than drained.

4 Steps (and a Workflow!) to Get Started

Ready to get started? Here are four practical steps to implement rolling PLC agendas on your campus or in your teams:

Step #1: Build a PLC Agenda Template 

Every team should have a PLC agenda that is specific to their team. Create a simple template (or use this one) that can be used continuously. A rolling agenda (a single continuous document) is best as that will serve as a living archive of conversations throughout the year. Adjust formatting as needed for each individual site.

Here’s an easy example that you can use right now:

(View)   (Copy)

Administrator Note: For administrators, it is essential that you are out at PLC meetings every week so that you have a good pulse on how your teams are doing. In our cabinet team, we split up the departments at the beginning of each week so that one administrator and one counselor visits each department. In case we miss any discussions while floating, there are designated sections for “Questions for Admin/Counselors” to respond to later. Then, the next time our cabinet team meets, we read through the agendas, add comments, and answer questions directly.

Step #2: Share the Agenda Before Each Meeting

The agenda for the PLC team should be shared before each meeting so others can add discussion topics as needed. Most likely, this involves the department chair creating the agenda and sharing it out each week. Everyone’s voice is important—so make sure it is heard!

If you look at the example below, you will see that the agenda shared in Step #1 has been expanded to include some discussion topics for the PLC meeting. By creating the document and adding the agenda items ahead of time, it will make the meeting more purposeful and focused.

(View Pre-Meeting Document)

Administrator Note: For administrators, create a single landing page where all of the agendas are linked so that you—and everyone else—can access them easily. It can be very powerful and collaborative when different teams read through each other’s notes to support cross-curricular learning.

Step #3: Cover the Agenda & Take Notes During the Meeting

By allowing everyone to contribute to the agenda beforehand, there is a clear sense of ownership that every team member has on the discussion items. Ensure all items are covered, and if time does not allow, simply move those remaining items to the top of the next agenda.

During the meeting, assign someone to be the designated notetaker. Taking active notes not only memorializes the conversation to be referred to later, but it actually helps maintain the flow and direction of the meeting. In the teams that consistently take notes on their agenda items, there is a noticeably higher level of engagement from all team members, which directly accelerates the push toward Collective Teacher Efficacy.

If you look at the examples below, you will see that the original topics are still included in the agenda but notes have been added in blue. This makes a clear indicator of what has been discussed during the meeting.

(View Post Meeting Document)

Step #4: Review the Notes and Reference Them in the Future

As a team, these notes should be reviewed at the start of future meetings and referenced as needed to ensure the team is meeting their action items. Because it’s a running document, teams can easily scroll back to track past student progress, review curriculum pacing decisions, or quickly onboard new staff mid-year.

Administrator Note: Review the notes weekly during your leadership or cabinet meetings (like your admin and counseling team), leaving comments, replies, and answers to any open questions. Taking this small step signals to your teams that you are genuinely invested in their work, responsive to their needs, and ready to offer support.

Final Takeaway

While these are simple steps—and maybe even seem like a simple idea—the impact on building Collective Teacher Efficacy is one of the foundational steps toward driving student impact. If you partner structured agendas with the core PLC process, the possibilities for your school culture are endless.

As a school leader, it is essential that we highlight all of the positive things happening on our campuses. There is no easier way to do this than through social media.

Well, actually, let me walk that back – it’s not that easy. It takes a ton of work, creativity, and time. But the payoff is a massive reach that truly engages students, families, and our community. After all, if you don’t write the story of your school, who is going to do it for you?

One of the greatest barriers to consistent social media is simply finding the time to gather content. As an administrator, one of my goals is to be in classrooms every week, visible at lunch every day, present before and after school, and at as many campus events as possible. However, reality gets in the way. Between site or district meetings, putting out fires, and the simple fact that I can’t be in two places at once, we needed a solution to increase the volume of photos and videos we were getting.

The burden couldn’t just fall on a few people. If we could get everyone on staff to easily pass along the awesome moments and classroom wins from their day, it would allow our entire team to help write the narrative of our school.

Enter… Google Photos!

Since we are a Google for Education district, the easiest way to get our staff to share pictures was to create a shared Google Photos album. The setup is incredibly simple:

1. Create a Google Photos album.

2. Add a couple of starter photos.

3. Go to “Options.”

4. Turn on “Collaborate” and “Link Sharing.”

5. Share the link with your staff!

From Collection to Creation

Receiving the content is only half the battle. The next step is finding a way to streamline how we actually build the posts for social media and our newsletters. On our campus, we primarily use Instagram and Facebook. Almost every photo dropped into that album gets its own individual spotlight post on our social feeds. Then, to wrap up the week, we pull a handful of those same photos to feature in our weekly parent newsletter.

When it comes to social media, consistency is everything – the more regular your posts, the higher your reach and engagement. While we have a healthy stream of content on our pages, I’ll be the first to admit I could be better about spacing it out. Right now, I tend to do a mad dash and upload everything on Fridays or over the weekend. Spacing things out naturally is definitely one of my big goals for next year!

That being said, creating the actual posts doesn’t take nearly as much time as it used to.

Enter… Google Gemini! (Or your AI of choice)

To speed up our social media workflow, I started an ongoing chat with Gemini. I kicked off the conversation with a very specific system prompt to set the ground rules:

Let this chat serve as a way to help me create social media post texts for [Insert School Name]. Use our hashtags and no other ones: [Insert Hashtags] Don’t use emojis. Make it upbeat, but keep it sounding like a human and keep it student-centered.

You might be wondering about the “no emojis” rule. I don’t have anything against them personally, but to me, a wall of random emojis is a dead giveaway that a post was generated by AI. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine, but feel free to tweak that rule for your own style!

Once that chat history is established, I just feed it a quick bulleted list of details about the photos our staff shared. Gemini does the heavy lifting of drafting the text, and it has cut our creation time exactly in half.

If you want to see this workflow in action, I’ve put together a short video below showing exactly how to set this up, along with a few extra tips and tricks:

3 Big Ways This System Has Transformed Our Campus

In a nutshell, looking back at how this combination of Google Photos and Gemini has shifted our workflow, these are the three biggest wins for our site:

• It crowdsources our culture: Instead of a single administrator trying to capture every moment, our entire staff acts as the eyes and ears of the campus. We get a massive, diverse window into different classrooms that we never would have captured alone.

• It eliminates the “blank page” fatigue: We all know the feeling of staring at a great photo and drawing a blank on what to write. By feeding the raw context to Gemini, we get a solid, student-centered draft in seconds, saving immense mental energy.

• It keeps our story consistent and authentic: Because the collection process is frictionless and the writing process is optimized, we can show up consistently for our community. It allows us to focus less on the mechanics of posting and more on celebrating our students.

If you are looking for a way to save time while still keeping your school’s community connected, I highly recommend giving this workflow a shot.

How does your school handle social media content collection? Do you have any favorite prompt tweaks you use to keep AI sounding human? Let me know in the comments below!

Building trust on a school site is one of the most important things we can do to make real movement happen. Without trust, it is impossible to cultivate a positive school or classroom culture. Without a positive culture, we can never truly empower our people or ignite their passion. And without passion – from both educators and students – learning will never move as far or as fast as we want it to.

Education is incredibly hard work. To get the best out of it, everything starts with trust.

There are a multitude of ways to build trust on a school campus. Yet, there is one guaranteed way to either earn or burn trust with the people you serve.

Communication.

Whether you are a principal leading a staff of adults or a teacher leading a classroom of students, effective communication earns you an immense amount of capital. Conversely, failing to communicate consistently will quickly (or slowly) watch that trust burn away.

Before I break this down, I want to be entirely transparent: I am far from perfect at this. These are things I have to intentionally work on every single day, and some days are definitely better than others. My hope is always that my staff sees that ongoing effort. Education is incredibly hard work, and to get the best out of it, everything—and I mean everything—starts with trust. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t have trust, we will never truly be able to move our people forward, whether it’s our staff, our parents, or our students.

Let’s break down the six communication pillars that dictate how we earn or burn trust on our campus every day.

1. Communication is Consistent and Visible

Trust cannot be built from behind a desk – whether that desk is in the front office or at the front of a classroom. We have to be present and among our people.

• How to Earn It: Be intentionally visible by getting out as often as possible. For leaders, make it a point to be present during those critical transition times – standing outside before and after school, walking the campus during lunch, and actively getting into classrooms every single week. For teachers, the focus is on maximizing your proximity by greeting students by name at the door or taking intentional time during class to get to know them individually.

  • Pro-Tip: Track your micro-connections intentionally to ensure no one slips under the radar. Leaders can keep a weekly staff roster on a spreadsheet for quick two-minute check-ins, while teachers can use a laminated seating chart or checklist to ensure they have a quick, non-academic conversation with every student by a specific day of the week.

• How to Burn It: Becoming a ghost in your own building or classroom. When you isolate yourself, you miss the chance to truly know your people.

2. Communication is Timely

There is a quiet danger when staff or student questions go unanswered. Unanswered emails and ignored messages send a loud signal that their needs are not a priority. When people are left hanging, they might try reaching out a second time, or they simply start to worry that they’ve done something wrong. But over time, that confusion turns into a sense of defeat, leading to total disengagement where they completely stop trying to connect with you. They decide it’s easier to struggle in silence than to face another ignored message, and once someone stops reaching out, rebuilding that bridge is incredibly difficult.

• How to Earn It: Respond within a reasonable window. You don’t have to answer within minutes. Complex issues might require some thought or research. If a delay is inevitable, send a quick placeholder: “I want to make sure I give you the right answer. Give me a bit to look into this and get back to you.” However, remember that a placeholder is only half the commitment – true trust is earned in the follow-through. Make it a strict personal priority to actively circle back and deliver that answer as timely as possible once you have the information. True timeliness means you don’t let days pass or force them to follow up again; you proactively close the loop the moment you have the clarity they need.

  • Pro-Tip: Once you send that placeholder, immediately mark the message as unread or use the “snooze” feature. Marking it unread keeps the message bolded at the very top of your inbox as a visual anchor every time you look at your screen. Alternatively, snoozing the email allows you to temporarily clear the clutter and schedules the message to pop back into your feed at a specific, reasonable time when you actually have the margin to give a thoughtful response.

• How to Burn It: Workplace or classroom “ghosting.” Forcing your staff, parents, or students to follow up multiple times just to get a basic answer kills momentum and mutual respect.

3. Communication is Clear

Borrowing a core truth from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead: clear is kind. Your people should never have to guess what success looks like. But being clear isn’t just about handing out clear assignments; it is also about having the courage to hold clear conversations when something isn’t going well. While it can be tempting to beat around the bush or soften a tough message to avoid discomfort, being vague is actually unkind. True kindness means providing the absolute clarity people need to learn, adjust, and grow.

• How to Earn It: Paint a crystal-clear picture of expectations. Use Brené Brown’s concept of “Paint It Done.” Instead of just communicating the mechanics of a task or assignment, describe exactly what a successful end product looks like. Leaders do this when delegating a new campus initiatives, projects or events; teachers do this when introducing a rubric or project. Slowing down to share the complete context, timeline, and purpose eliminates hidden assumptions.

• How to Burn It: Shifting targets and ambiguous directions. Responding too quickly without thinking through potential roadblocks ahead of time breeds massive frustration.

4. Communication Balances Feedback with Encouragement

Feedback is the engine of growth, but it must be paired with genuine encouragement to keep people motivated, positive, and willing to try again.

• How to Earn It: Balance critique with celebrating wins. The “sandwich” method (Positive – Feedback – Positive) works beautifully for routine evaluations or student grading where steady growth needs to be acknowledged. However, it is important to recognize that there is also a time and place where conversations simply need to be entirely direct.

  • Disclaimer: If there is a serious issue or an ongoing problem, circling back to #3 and remembering that “clear is kind” is your best approach. People absolutely need to know exactly where their areas of improvement lie, and in those specific accountability situations, you might not be able to balance the encouragement piece as much. Being upfront and honest in those tough moments is its own form of respect.

• How to Burn It: Only showing up when something is wrong. Offering nothing but criticism while ignoring steady growth ensures that your students will tune you out, while your staff will become discouraged.

5. Communication is a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

True communication is a two-way street that requires active listening followed by collaborative problem-solving.

• How to Earn It: Slow down and fully focus on the person speaking to you instead of just planning your next response. Ask more questions than you provide answers. Leaders use coaching questions to help teachers find their footing; teachers use inquiry to guide students to their own “lightbulb” moments. Guide your people toward their own solutions by listening deeply.

• How to Burn It: Being visibly distracted by a screen during a conversation, or dominating the room so completely that others feel shut out of the conversation.

6. Communication is Transparent

When people understand the reasoning behind a decision, a timeline, a grading policy, or a shift in strategy, buy-in skyrockets.

• How to Earn It: Be radically open about the “why.” For leaders: Explain the data or district shifts driving a new campus policy. For teachers: Explain the purpose behind a specific assignment or classroom rule. Even when you cannot share every detail due to confidentiality boundaries, being open about why decisions are made builds deep respect.

  • Pro-Tip: Check out Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why, for an excellent dive into developing and sharing your why with others.

• How to Burn It: Operating behind a curtain. Keeping the “why” a secret leaves a vacuum that people will inevitably fill with gossip, anxiety, or resistance.

The Takeaway: Every interaction on a school campus is an exchange of trust. Whether you are leading the school or leading the classroom, keeping your communication visible, timely, clear, balanced, collaborative, and transparent builds a foundation strong enough to handle any challenge the school year brings.

Which of these pillars comes most naturally to you, and which one is your biggest “work in progress”? More importantly, what am I missing here? What other communication habits do you rely on to keep your campus or classroom running smoothly? Let me know in the comments below!

Over the years, the pathways into the teaching professional have diversified, meaning many new teachers are entering the classroom with varied levels of traditional student teaching experience. Regardless of their background, the transition into their first classroom requires targeted, intentional support. This reality highlights the critical need for high-quality professional development that equips these educators to build successful, thriving classrooms right from the start.

Because of this shift, our team has regularly reflected on how we can provide the highest level of support for these new educators. Often, it comes down to a fundamental objective: building their teacher toolbox. When we meet with our new teachers, our goal is to help them acquire a variety of strategies they can use in almost any situation that comes their way. But it made us think: if they haven’t had the traditional opportunity to see a live classroom in action, how do we provide them with those essential opportunities to observe best practices and veteran teachers?

Enter… New Teacher Classroom Walkthroughs!

Last year, we allocated professional development funds specifically toward supporting our new teachers through a targeted walkthrough initiative. (We actually did this sitewide for a different purpose, but more on that in a future post!) Three times throughout the school year (once in each of the first three quarters) our new teachers spent a full day visiting classrooms both on our campus and at neighboring sites. Guided by our instructional coach, they observed numerous educators and debriefed afterward to discuss actionable takeaways.

However, to design a truly successful walkthrough day, you must have a specific focus and clear direction for what is being observed and discussed.

Because these were brand-new teachers, we narrowed our focus around classroom management, utilizing a Tier 1 Intervention Checklist we developed several years ago as part of our Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) for student well-being. During each walkthrough cycle, teachers focused on two specific strategy domains. As they visited classrooms, they took notes on those exact strategies in action. They spent the first half of the day observing, and the second half reviewing their notes, discussing the strategies, and mapping out concrete ways to implement those ideas in their own rooms.

As simple as this sounds, we truly believe it was one of the most impactful professional development opportunities we offered all year. Here is why it worked so well:

First, it allowed new teachers to explore a variety of instructional styles. Every teacher has a unique personality, and they need to find the style that fits them best. For example, I have worked with phenomenal educators who are quiet and introverted. When we hire a new teacher with a similar disposition, we intentionally pair them with or have them observe those specific veteran classrooms so they can see success modeled in a way that feels authentic to them.

Second, teachers walked away with an immediate action plan. I have always been a firm believer that professional development is only beneficial if participants can walk away with something they can implement the very next day with minimal initial lift. This format guaranteed exactly that.

Finally, it fostered meaningful connection. Starting at a new campus can feel incredibly isolating. This initiative gave our new teachers a dedicated day to spend together, collaborate with our instructional coach, build relationships, and share ideas, creating a much stronger campus support network.

After all, we can’t expect our new teachers to build thriving classrooms if we don’t give them the tools (and the community) they need to construct them.

Share your best ideas for supporting new teachers in the comments below!

Can I tell you a secret? I have a love-hate relationship with the summer on a school campus.

As a school administrator, my days extend quite far into the summer. That’s okay – I knew what I was signing up for. Yet, it’s such a weird experience on a campus. On the one hand, it’s lighter and quiet. There is time to think, plan, and recuperate. On the other hand, it’s eerily quiet and lonely. It’s so strange to go from 100 mph to residential speeds in a few days. Mostly, I greatly miss our staff and students. That being said, I have greatly come to appreciate the time to slow down, think, and plan for the future.

As a part of the planning process for next year, our team is making some big pushes toward increasing the amount and quality of professional development on our campus. We will be making a huge push with amplifying our PLC’s and pushing writing across the curriculum. In addition to this, we will have a variety of staff meetings, optional PD’s, and district PD’s in which our staff can participate. To help organize all of this information, I developed a simple “Professional Development Calendar” with all of the trainings, dates, locations, and links to upcoming PD to keep our staff informed.

Here’s a quick example of what it looks like:

(View) (Sample) (Copy)

As you can see, the calendar is broken into four sections:

• Staff Meetings – Monthly staff meeting with a specific sitewide focus. This year, it will be on “Amplifying our PLC’s”
• Academics – PD specifically aimed towards improving our academics. This year, we will be offering writing PD’s, continuing our learning walks, and a Rookie Rap for new teachers.
• Student Well-Being – Any PD for our SEL & PBIS goals to support teachers as they navigate the ever-changing behaviors of our students.
• District PD – Any PD being offered by the district office.

If for some reason one of my amazing teachers is reading this PD, I know that none of this is new information but please note these dates are all simply examples and may not be accurate. Your “legit” version is coming soon!

As with anything, I always want to make sure the “why” is understood when developing, creating, or implementing something new. While this PD calendar has a low impact on staff, the “why” is quite simple but still important. Clear, accurate, and timely communication is always appreciated by school staff. We have a lot of amazing opportunities happening on our campus. It’s important that our staff can easily access these trainings and plan for their year.

Finally, as a leader, the goals for the year must be communicated to your staff. As simple as this calendar might be, it is another way to remind our staff of our sitewide goals for the year. After all, how effective are your professional development and goals if it is unknown by your staff? Simply sharing this calendar is another way to increase the awareness of our goals for the year through visually seeing the professional development that is offered to support it.

How does your school share their important events and/or dates with staff? I would love to hear about it, so share in the comments below!

Hello friends! I know – it has been a while…but that’s life.

I am so excited to share a great tool with you today that will make your teaching easier and more enjoyable while increasing the rigor in your classroom. It’s called Brisk for Teaching, and it’s an AI-powered platform that helps you create and deliver amazing and effective learning experiences for your students.

Brisk for Teaching is a Google Chrome add-on web-based tool that helps you create lessons and quizzes, deliver personalized feedback, and detect authenticity using AI. With Brisk, you can:

• Generate and customize content that matches your curriculum, standards, and objectives
• Create multiple choice, short response, and long response quizzes and assessments
• Provide instant and personalized feedback and guidance to your students based on their performance and progress
• Analyze and visualize your students’ data and insights to track their learning outcomes and identify their strengths and weaknesses
• Create questions based on the different levels of DOK

Brisk for Teaching is super easy to use and works with any device and browser. You can also integrate it with your existing tools and platforms, such as Google Docs, Google Forms, and more.

To show you how you can use Brisk for Teaching in your classroom, I have made a video that walks you through the main features and functions of the tool. You can watch the video below or click on this link to view it on YouTube:

Thank you for reading and watching. Happy teaching!

Once we established our positive behavior expectations, our PBIS team’s next big goal was to create a sitewide behavior intervention flowchart. In this flowchart, the goal was to:

• Clearly define the difference between minor and major behaviors
• Outline a process for minor and major behaviors
• Create consistency across the entire school

We found a TON of great resources online that guided our conversation. We started by looking at a variety of flowcharts to see what would best fit our needs. Once we found the style that we liked the best, we created a template and began adding in our own information. Here is what we created:

(View) (Copy)

As you can see, the behaviors were added to the center and differentiated by minors and majors. By aligning them side by side, it helped teachers to understand the difference between a minor and major behavior in each category (ex: disruption, defiance, etc.). On each side of the behaviors, there are the interventions that are put into place for students when a minor and/or major behavior occurs. Minor behaviors can escalate to major behaviors if repeated, sustained, and/or the minor interventions have already been implemented.

Here are some best practices we had for implementing this flowchart:

Run it By Leadership

Once this was created, we took it to our leadership team for feedback. This is SO important! Don’t forget to run big decisions like this by your leadership team and staff.

Align with your Referral System

Currently, we use a combination of PBIS Rewards and Infinite Campus for logging behavior incidents on campus. In PBIS Rewards, teachers log any minor and major behaviors. The minor behaviors stay in PBIS Rewards but we move over the major behaviors to Infinite Campus so that future schools can also see these behaviors.

In PBIS Rewards, we aligned the categories (ex: disruption, defiance, etc.) to the system as the “problem behavior”. In addition to this, we aligned all of the interventions (on the far left and right side) to the “redirections” section. By doing this, it created consistency across referrals and further implemented the flowchart.

Train Your Staff

Implementing a sitewide, behavior intervention flowchart was a huge change! It was something that our teachers asked for to create consistency but there was a lot of training that was needed up front. First, we trained teachers on the flowchart and what each step meant. Afterwards, we trained them on PBIS Rewards and how to use the program to log and track the behavior information.

Shift from Discipline to Interventions

One of the biggest shifts for our staff was the difference between “interventions” and “discipline”. The left side (the minors) are interventions. They are strategies that are done in the classroom to intervene and prevent future behaviors. It is an opportunity to reteach and help students grow. The right side (the majors) are considered discipline. Discipline is something that is done by administration (ex: class suspension, referral) in response to repeated, sustained, or severe behavior incidents. There are still interventions that are done by administration (ex: Check In/Out, Behavior PTC’s, BIP’s, etc.) However, we wanted to shift the mindset from “progressive discipline” to “progressive interventions”. It was a big shift and we are still growing in this area.

Currently, we are one quarter in to fully implementing PBIS. It is WAY more than I anticipated and I know that this is going to be a several year journey. If you have any PBIS stories or best practices to share, please do so in the comments below!

As you may have been reading from my previous posts, our site has been on a journey to improve student behavior through a tiered and systematic approach. Specifically, we have begun implementing a variety of Tier 1 strategies from the PBIS model. During our first year, our goal has been to:

1. Create a positive reward program
2. Create sitewide positive behavior expectations
3. Create a sitewide behavior intervention flowchart

These are three big goals…but we are hoping that they will also bring big changes!

One of the most important parts of implementing a Tier 1 PBIS program is creating sitewide positive behavior expectations. These expectations should become the language of your site when talking about appropriate behaviors on campus. For instance, instead of creating a list of things that students shouldn’t do, these expectations focus on what students should do. In addition to this, the behavior expectations should be location specific. Expectations should be created for all areas on campus, such as the classroom, gym, cafeteria, office, etc. Here is a quick example of our behavior expectations for our classroom and cafeteria:

To get started on developing your sitewide positive behavior expectations, here are my Top 5 Tips:

#1: Develop with Your PBIS Team

First and foremost, you must have a PBIS team that can help you develop these behavior expectations. These people will help drive the conversation and help you develop these expectations. You truly cannot be an island in this process – you need the input!

#2: Create Your Acronym

Create an acronym that will become the motto of your site. As you can tell, ours is RISE which is Responsibility, Integrity, Service, and Excellence. Our behavior expectations are completely based on these four words and it is the foundation for our positive behavior program, too.

#3: Determine Your Locations & Get Input

Our PBIS Team determined that we had 10 places on campus that would benefit from behavior expectations:

• Classroom, Library, Cafeteria, Quad, Locker Room, Office, Hallway, Bathrooms, Technology, and Wellness Center

Since these are such diverse areas, we also created a Google Form where we sought input from employees that worked in these specific areas. After all, they understand the expectations far more than anyone else!

#4: Create Your Expectations

Once you have created your acronym and determined your locations, I highly suggest creating a Google Slide or Doc to brainstorm the behavior expectations with your PBIS Team. I believe it took us about 2-3 meetings about 1-2 hours each to develop all of these expectations. Honestly, it was tough at first but then we started to fall into a pattern and it went much quicker.

Again, these expectations should be focused on what students should do, rather than what students shouldn’t do. Also, try to keep them short and sweet. No more than three expectations per category and keep the sentence short.

#5: Take to Your Leadership Team & PLC’s for Revisions & Input

One of the most important parts of implementing positive behavior expectations is receiving input from your leadership team and staff. Once we developed these expectations, we took them to our leadership team for input and they took it to their teams for further input. We received some great ideas from these teams and made adjustments accordingly.

#6: Create Your Posters!

Here’s the fun part…design your poster! I know that people just love a matrix or rubric…but that is SO hard for kids to read! Try to create something that is eye-catching and easy to read. If you are struggling with this, you can make a copy of ours by clicking on this link:

Copy of RISE Behavior Expectations

If there is any final advice I would give, it would be to take your time and get plenty of input. I was highly encouraged to do this by leaders that I greatly admire and it was some of the greatest advice I ever received. While it is important to create a quality program, it is crucial to get input to create buy-in with staff.

Has your site created positive behavior expectations? If so, share in the comments below!

Last month, I shared the start of our PBIS journey in hopes of improving student behavior through a tiered system of support. Over the last quarter, we have been piloting our PBIS program to determine if this is something that we want to implement in the following school year. As I mentioned in my last post, I was apprehensive about implementing PBIS in our school. However, our pilot has been so successful that I have become a believer that these systems (when implemented strategically and effectively) can make a huge impact on student behaviors and, ultimately, student learning.

Below, I will be sharing our first steps – the foundation – of our PBIS program. Specifically, the focus will be on Tier 1 of our PBIS program because this is the area where we were lacking the most support. So…here we go!

Step #1: Forming Our PBIS Teams

Implementing a PBIS program is a huge undertaking. To get started, it was critical that we pick the right people to be a part of these teams. Our teams are broken up into two groups: PBIS Core Team and the PBIS Team.

Our PBIS Core Team is a smaller group of educators. The Core Team is responsible for the guidance of the implementation of the PBIS strategies. This team regularly meets to evaluate the BOQ (more on that below) and determine the direction of the larger team. The Core Team consists of the following people:

• Vice Principal
• School Counselor
• SEL Intervention Teacher
• iMTSS District Coordinator
• District iMTSS Psychologist

Our PBIS Team (AKA, our RISE Team) is a larger group of educators that helps with developing the ideas, creating structures, and the implementing of PBIS strategies. The PBIS Team consists of the following people:

• Everyone from the Core Team
• All Admin from the Site
• 5 Teachers (Different subjects/grades)
• Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)

We have been incredibly fortunate to have an amazing group of educators on this team. I am constantly amazed by the ideas that come from this group as we develop our PBIS program. Without the right people in place, I do not believe we would be making the progress we are currently on our campus.

While our PBIS teams our developing this program, everything that we do is taken to our Site Leadership Team (AKA, Think Tank) for input. These are the leaders on our campus, therefore, their input, insight, and approval is of the utmost importance. After this, Think Tank takes this information to their departments (AKA, PLC’s) for more input. Finally, the PBIS team gathers all of the input to add to the PBIS program.

Step #2: Reading the Book

Over the years, I have started to become a bit skeptical about educational books. I have found that they are often written from a place of theory, rather than real-life application. A lot of time I read these books and think, “When was the last time this person was in a classroom or on a school campus?”

This is not how I feel about the PBIS Handbooks – which is AMAZING!

Our focus this year is through implementing Tier One supports at our school, so our team has only dived into the Tier 1 Handbook. However, there is SO much in here that it will probably take us a year to properly implement all the ideas and strategies. The book is practical, clear, and gives teams an easy guide on how to get started. If you are planning on implementing a tiered PBIS system in your school, I highly recommend these books.

       

The Benchmark of Quality (BOQ) helps PBIS teams examine their Tier 1 implementation by identifying current strengths and weaknesses. In addition to this, it also provides guidance and support for creating better PBIS systems within a school. The BOQ is embedded within the PBIS Tier One Handbook, however, you can find it for free on their website: PBIS Champion Model System.

Since I am a spreadsheet person, I took the BOQ from their website and turned it into a spreadsheet that automatically tabulates a school’s total score. In addition to this, I created a section where teams can add ideas and next steps during the planning process. If you would like a copy of this, click on the Google Sheet icon to the right or this link: Tier 1 – PBIS Assessment & Next Steps.

When we went through the BOQ, I was amazed at how much we have not done. While this may seem discouraging, I found it exciting. There were so many ideas, strategies, and structures that could be put into place to support students. Even if we scored low, we could easily see our next steps. At the end of scoring our BOQ, we picked the top 3 areas of growth. From there, we analyzed what we were doing, what could be improved, and piloted some of these strategies during the 4th quarter. Now, we have a very clear plan and vision for sitewide implementation during the next school year.

Right now, I am so excited for the next school year and to see how we continue to develop our PBIS program. If you have done this at your school site, please share in the comments below any tips, tricks, or strategies!

Back in December, I experienced one of the most struggling and discouraging moments in my educational career. It wasn’t one particular thing that happened that caused this moment. It was a million little things that led to a feeling of discouragement and a moment where I truly questioned whether or not I was in the right profession.

As we began the transition back from distance learning, I had this false hope that everyone would be so happy and grateful to be back on campus that student behaviors would be minimal and our greatest area of concern would be the loss of learning from the 18 months of quarantine. I was so wrong. Yes, the loss of learning was (and is still) a huge concern for anyone in education. However, I did not anticipate the amount of social, emotional, behavioral, and mental concerns our students had and would continue to experience due to the pandemic.

In my role as Vice Principal of discipline, my area of focus is on student behavior. Yes, that often means progressive discipline in the form of detentions, suspensions, et cetera. However, I also spend a lot of time trying to help students understand what they did and how to make better choices in the future. To help with this, our site has implemented a variety of strategies, such as suspension alternative programs, SEL classes and programs, behavior intervention plans, lunchtime support programs, counseling, and so much more. Despite this, I found myself feeling like all these programs and strategies were not enough. Our students were still struggling. I felt discouraged. I truly felt like nothing we did mattered because we were already doing everything we could. As a site, we had a very structured, specific, targeted, and tiered support system for students when they got in trouble. What else could we do, right?

The feeling of discouragement lasted for nearly a month. Then, one night, as I was getting ready for bed, I spent some time asking myself…Well, what haven’t we done? If I slow down and stop thinking about what we have done and started asking what we haven’t done…would there be something there for us to explore?

It was in this moment of reflection that I realized exactly what we weren’t doing. Everything that we were doing was reactive. We were responding to the behaviors after they occurred. While we had all these great programs to respond to behavior concerns, we were doing very little to prevent behavior concerns, especially on a sitewide level.

So, I started researching proactive approaches to behavioral intervention for students and the #1 word that kept popping up in my search was…PBIS. To be honest, I felt completely uninterested in this idea. In secondary education, I feel that there is a negative connotation associated with PBIS. Personally, I felt like PBIS was a thing that schools do to bribe kids to behave better. I felt it was grounded in nothing of substance – just simple bribery. However, I challenged myself to explore the idea since it seemed to be the most common system I continued to run across in my research.

During this research, I came across a book by Jessica Hannigan and Linda Hauser called, The PBIS Tier One Handbook (Amazon). I have no idea why this book grabbed my interest. I am sure it was partially due to the nearly 5-star ratings that it had on Amazon. I think the word “handbook” grabbed my interest because it sounded like it could have a practical implementation plan. Anyways, I immediately bought the book and began reading it that night.

And guess what? I was absolutely hooked. I read 25% of the book that night. Granted – there are a lot of pictures and graphs in this book…but it was so good! Many times, educational books are grounded in theory and not practical applications. That’s all well and good until the rubber meets the road and you quickly realize that the author clearly has no idea how schools actually operate. This is not how I felt with the PBIS Handbook. I felt like it was grounded in real-life applications that modeled effective leadership for a successful implementation of a school-wide PBIS program. In addition to this, it contained a Benchmark of Quality (BOQ) that allowed PBIS teams to evaluate where their site currently is, where they need to go, and numerous ideas and strategies to help thjem team get there. More importantly, it was not a system simply about “bribing” students as I incorrectly assumed. Instead, it was a systematic approach to implementing schoolwide structures (ex: clear discipline procedures, positive behavior reward system, schoolwide behavior expectations, etc.) that would have an impact on all students and staff.

Friends – there are so many more positive things that I could say about this book but…that is a story for many future posts. Today, I really wanted to give you the “why” behind the start of this journey, plus a little taste of how we got started. I am so excited for our students, teachers, and staff as we begin this journey. I have an amazing team of educators that are helping us to develop our PBIS program because there is no way that these systems can effectively be implemented on the shoulder’s of one person. I am so excited (but a little nervous) and hope that PBIS will be effective and make a positive change for our students. After all, there is only so much academic progress we can make if we do not first attend to the social and emotional needs of our students.

Over the next few months, I will have several blog posts focusing on the implementation of our Tier 1 PBIS program and I hope you choose to follow (and join) us on this journey!

To explore all of the books in the PBIS Handbook series, here are the links to their pages on Amazon: Tier 1 Handbook, Tier 2 Handbook, and Tier 3 Handbook.