Dede Garcia, is a veteran teacher  in her second year of Transitional Kindergarten at Washington Elementary. She began using token boards with some of her students who were exhibiting challenging behaviors. Dede worked closely with Brittney Jones, the behavior specialist around implementation. She also consulted with the former pre-school teacher Stacy Leitzke to better understand students. Dede  consistently uses positive descriptive feedback in order to help each student understand exactly what they are doing to earn the token. Brittney & Dede have developed a plan in which both teachers reinforce, recognize and reward the positive behaviors students exhibit. Dede’s frequent use of the token boards paired with clear, specific feedback has helped her students show significant reduction in challenging behaviors and growth in expected behaviors!

Shout out to the Dick Scobee team, including, but not limited to Kyle Ridge, Jila Bazrafkan, Patrick Lewis and Michaela Newton for developing a plan for student success in the general education setting. This team modeled the power of high expectations, consistency, perseverance and daily team communication! They communicated the expectations with the whole staff with specific directions for all adults in the building. The entire staff (shout out to you, too!) supported this team by following through with the requested adult behavior. The plan included multiple supports including scheduled breaks, if/then expectations, student choice and autonomy. Data was collected to show the team and the student the progress that was being made. This was a great example of the amazing things that can happen when a team of educators collaborate, problem solve challenges, develop student agency with firm boundaries, lots of mutual respect and hold to plan even when it doesn’t work immediately. 

Shout out to Shanae Nicholson, fifth grade teacher at Dick Scobee Elementary for teaching accessibility tools to her fifth graders as universal supports that they can choose to use any time to access content. What started as the need for an accommodation for one student quickly became a universal support for all. Through a short series of collaborative planning  and co-teaching sessions with the Mike Signal, Dept. of Tech, all of her students learned everything they needed to know about Co-Writer, including when and why it might be a useful tool for reading, researching and writing. Now she is looking forward to adding Snap&Read and speech to text to their learning toolbox!