Design

Describe your plan of action and how each of your four chosen competencies will influence its design and implementation. For this capstone, I have chosen to work on an intensive behavioral intervention to address the severe behaviors that we are seeing among our incoming kindergarteners, then to a secondary degree the continuing behavior issues in both 1st and 2nd grades. The overarching competencies that I chose for my capstone focus are Personal Effectiveness and Reflective Practice. The pathway for this capstone is the Instructional Leadership Competency of Coaching and Mentoring. Within the Foundational Competency, my focus is on Collaborate Purposefully. I had to begin this process by gathering a lot of data, taking surveys, interviewing teachers and parents, and working with colleagues to even pinpoint and identify the primary underlying issues (Artifacts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12). Then I worked this last year to build a behavioral team of strategically chosen professionals to serve as the driving force behind the change we hope to implement. Empowering these various members proved challenging, but after doing a lot of research, I recommended several books for the members to read, or summarized several books to provide effective strategies knowledge, and skills to these individuals. Several of these books included: "Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown, "The Influencer" by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, and Switzler, and "Lost and Found" by Dr. Ross Greene (Artifacts #13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, & 19). It also included providing the ALSUP checklist and process for identifying lacking skills and unresolved problems in students. Finally the team was introduced to the Second Step Curriculum of lessons. These members were also informed that we would be pairing them with primary teachers to work as a support system for them. We also worked in tandem with a mentoring program initiated by our Indian Education For All coordinator Jyton Birdfaraway to help work specifically with our Native American population, which statistically is one of the highest risk populations in our district.

How successful was your plan of action at addressing the challenge? Which stakeholders and practice or program were impacted? How do you know (site evidence)? The members of this team were very strategically chosen and includes Clay Herron: Administrator, Shasta McCory: Interventionist, Karissa Gordon: PAX Sustainability Coach/2nd grade teacher, Zandra Hubbs: 2nd grade teacher, Amber Griffith: Jumpstart Teacher/Kindergarten teacher, Vanessa Bailey: Primary Special Education, Echo Jamieson: PTSA parent/ mother of 5 students, and Chad Jackson: School Counselor (Artifacts #20, 21, & 22). I also have routinely consulted with Robin Cormier, the district behavior specialist (Artifacts # 3 & 4), and Tanya Kirschman (Artifact #23), school counselor at Highland Elementary. I also approached all our kindergarten through 2nd grade teachers to see if they would be willing to participate in this intervention and allow me to do daily lessons in their classes, be connected with a mentor or partner staff member, and help to keep necessary data throughout the intervention. We have kept minutes on the meetings that we have had thus far in the behavior group, and have extensively sought the input of these critical stakeholders in the design, scope, and sequence of this endeavor, as is reflected in the minutes of these meetings.

How were your four chosen competencies used in the implementation of your project? In order to identify and the behavior problem, I considered many data sources like office referrals, attendance records, SABRS data, and interviews with primary teachers. There were many for this intervention the entire certified staff were given a Disruptive Behavior Survey in October of 2019 (Artifacts 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12). It was incredibly telling of the needs for higher levels of intervention to address disruptive behaviors in the building. On a 1-10 scale, where 10 means "absolutely essential for the school to have higher levels of intervention for behaviors the average was 8.3 out of 10. Also 47% of the staff chose 10 as their response. In addition to this data, I was out at recess duty every day with the PE teacher. We tracked interactions with students at recess according to the 3 tiered behavior intervention model for the school (Artifacts #24 & 25). These interactions were also recorded according to grade level to compare necessary reinforcement, redirection, and instruction needs according to grade, which overwhelmingly demonstrated the behavioral needs of primary students to be nearly 4 times as many as our intermediate students. For the first month of the school year, there will be weekly meetings with the behavior team, weekly meetings between mentors and primary teachers, and also between the principal and counselor and each primary grade to identify highest needs students, behaviors, and develop appropriate plans of action. The identified students will participate in small group reinforcement of each lesson, each day.

What obstacles, if any, did you encounter? How did you address them?Following the model outlined in "Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown (Artifact #15), the group will candidly describe what is working and what is not working in the intervention. Since this is the first attempt of any type of behavioral intervention with this type of scope and sequence it will take many perspectives, input, and collaboration to be able to identify and accurately gain a picture of the effectiveness of the multi-faceted project. This expectation of feedback will be engrained in the structure of the group. This will free every member to have equal input and voice in terms of the intervention. One of the biggest obstacles to the success of this intervention will be the ability of staff to work with parents. I have consulted with Robin Cormier extensively about how to work with families in a partnership and make families feel cared for, and build relationship with them. Without parental support, many interventions and efforts by the staff will be ineffective. I anticipate this to be the biggest obstacle to a successful modification of behavior for many students.

Given the outcomes, describe any changes you might make to the Capstone project plan of action. In order to determine the success of this intervention we will rely on surveys completed by parents, staff, and teachers. We will also track data using the SABRS format. Other data sources will be recess interaction data, office referrals, attendance records, student mentoring programs, teacher mentoring programs, etc. We will also have a room called the Quiet Room that is supervised by the counselor, principal, or PE teacher. This room will be for students that are incapable of being in the classroom. This room will provide data about the most severe behaviors in the school, including frequency, duration, and intensity of behaviors. This data along with perceptions, behavior team meetings, teacher and parent input, should create an extremely comprehensive picture of the effectiveness of the intervention.