Leadership Project

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted students' ability to interact with others due to school closures. During the pandemic, students paused the learning of social skills via these common interactions and formal schooling for 18 months. Because of the pandemic, teachers had to implement COVID restrictions and protocols that completely change their classroom dynamics and required them to use different approaches to classroom management. As a direct result, students are exhibiting a higher volume of behaviors that are not culturally aligned with these new school settings. This context is important because historically, students of color are disproportionately referred to the office for discipline because the behaviors exhibited by these students are not culturally aligned with the school setting.

At CWC WV we strive for equity and disrupt systems that may be inequitable. This school year, we have been receiving a high volume of behavior referrals which is concerning because our school only goes up to second grade. We examined our referrals and recognized some inequities. Our school currently has 173 students enrolled at our site. The following chart shows the diverse demographic of students at our campus by ethnicity in the 2020-2021 school year. According to the data chart, half of our school’s population identifies as white. The other half identify as either Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, or two or more races. This data is important because it allows us to see the equity gap in the referrals we have received this school year. When looking at the demographic of students being referred for behavior, only 27% of the students are white and 73% are students of color. Of that 73% of students referred, 64% of them were male students and 36% percent were female students.

The pattern and trend that I have identified are that students of color are being referred for behaviors that don’t align with those seen as culturally acceptable in the school setting at a higher rate than students who are white. In order to collect qualitative data, I will conduct empathy interviews with students to get a sense of how they feel about how they are being treated at school by students, teachers, teaching associates, and administrators. I will also conduct surveys with open-ended questions with families to see what students' home lives are like. Lastly, I will conduct empathy interviews with teachers to see what their experience was in school and what behaviors they saw, and how they were dealt with. This research will advance equity and break down barriers because it will shed light on the lack of awareness of how we replicate injustices that cause students of color to be disproportionately referred for discipline and ultimately, special education assessment plans.

Given the unique challenges of the pandemic, as the Director of SEL, I formed the Student Culture Team. With our school still being in its infancy, we are still creating our norms and expectations. For this reason, many of our staff members are eager to analyze the root causes for behaviors and create a structure for how we support students' social-emotional needs. My team plans on engaging our community partners through the data we collect during an inquiry PDSA (Plan Do Study Act) cycle. We will provide our teachers with the data during professional development. We will engage our teachers with research to support our change ideas. In order to engage our community, we will also share the data and change ideas with them during family learning nights, principal’s council meetings, and our bi-weekly newsletter. Finally, in order to engage our students, we will implement student-centered change ideas. We will also conduct empathy interviews and surveys to learn what students think about the change ideas and structure that currently exist. Our leadership team includes a diverse group of community partners. The team is made up of Caitlin McCraken (RSP teacher), Kyle Newsome (2nd-grade teacher), Rachel Raab (1st-grade teacher), Kari Laux (2nd-grade teacher), and myself, Andrew Lopez (Director of Social Emotional Learning). The scope of our team's work began by determining potential root causes for the social-emotional needs we are seeing by using various forms of data. The team will examine the root causes and develop some change ideas that we will implement and study.

Data and Evidence

Before we We began by collecting data by having all staff collect baseline behavior data using Behavior Incident Tracker. We predicted that staff members would fill the trackers with many Tier 1 and Tier 2 behaviors. We also predicted that most Tier 2 and office referrals would be for male students of color. Our staff kept track of behaviors for two weeks and then we held a staff meeting to share our findings.

In the meeting, we learned that our staff had difficulty deciding which behaviors to record as Tier 1 or Tier 2 behaviors. Some staff members didn’t turn in the sheet. The sheets that were turned in were inconsistent. We reviewed the data that was collected and gave staff members the opportunity to share any other behaviors they were experiencing in order to determine trends and patterns for behaviors. Some of the trends and patterns we determined were:

Inconsistency of what behavior makes up each tier.
Inconsistency of how to address certain behaviors
Behaviors are addressed inconsistently during instruction and playtimes
Teacher threshold for behavior varies
Instructional blocks are too long
Playtimes are unstructured

Common Behaviors

Hitting
Shouting out
Non-compliance
interruptions

Behavior Incident Tracker

Before I put a team together to create a fishbone, an area that I thought we could target was our recess structure. I created and had the instructional support staff team that I supervise implement a new recess structure (Play Zones). I decided to create play zones that were compliant with our new covid protocol and restrictions.

Simultaneously, I introduced and implemented another change idea which we called Active Citizens (Student Leaders during recess). My belief was that having peer role models would decrease tier 1 and 2 behavior incidents during recess because 2nd-grade would have a smaller group of students and support staff would have more support.

After conducting observations and interviewing teachers and instructional support staff, behavior incidents during recess had decreased. The younger students were excited to have older students in their area. Our Active Citizens need more training on helping lead games and relationship building.

I then developed a Student Culture team that consisted of various colleagues from different grade levels and positions in order to do some Causal System Analysis to determine the root causes of our behavior problem. Our team took the trends and data from a previous professional development with our whole staff and combined it with our experience and created a fishbone diagram for potential root causes. Some of the potential root causes for behavior were that instructional blocks were too long, playtimes were too unstructured, student expectations vary school-wide, students’ social skills have been impacted, and covid protocols are creating and making behaviors seem worse than they actually are. We also determined that some of the causes for behaviors are that teachers are unfamiliar with age-appropriate expectations, the curriculum we use, a problematic bell schedule, lack of set time for collaboration between staff, students cannot regulate their emotions, lack of shared expectations, lack of professional development for behavior. As a group, we have decided that the first cause we're going to address is the problematic bell schedule.

The first change idea that we created and implemented to address our problematic bell schedule was a new bell schedule and recess/lunch recess structure. We chose this idea because we thought that this will decrease the instructional time between recess and lunch which will decrease the amount of tier 1 and 2 behavior incidents in class. Within this new schedule, we changed the structure of recess by creating two recesses will decrease the number of students out at recess and increase the amount of support staff supervising.

The new schedule was received very well by the teachers. Teachers shared that the day feels more spacious and that they’re able to get more down in the mornings. They also mentioned that instructional times are more appropriate for our students' attention span. The shift to two recess blocks also decreased behavior incidents. The support staff mentioned that having more support has made it easier to manage the play spaces.

With the new schedule, we realized that we had an opportunity to redesign the recess schedule with a rotation of set recess spaces because we had fewer classes out on the playground. Together with the instructional support team that supervises students during this time, we co-created new play areas. We believed that with this change the number of recess and lunch incidents would decrease because the student engagement during playtime would increase.

Through informal interviews, students and support staff have shared that they are really enjoying the new recess and lunch schedule. Students shared that they like that they get to play in a different area every day. They also shared that they would like to play in any area that they want. The support staff has mentioned that recess is great but that lunch is difficult because there is less staff.

The next change idea that we introduced and implemented was a new mindfulness program in our 2nd-grade classes. Our prediction was that this mindfulness program would decrease the number of behavior incidents because 2nd-grade students would learn strategies to cope with emotions. Our belief was that this program would reduce the number of tier 1 and 2 behavior incidents.

Our 2nd graders have been participating in a Mindfulness program once a week for several weeks now. Since the implementation of this program, we have received fewer behavior referrals from the 2nd-grade classes. The program has taught our students different emotional coping strategies, as predicted.

Another potential root cause we decided to address was the lack of professional development and collaboration for and between staff members. The RSP teacher on our team, along with other members of our Special Education department, led our instructional support staff through a Functions of Behavior Professional Development. We predicted that this PD would provide our instructional support staff with a better understanding of behaviors and provide them with strategies they can implement, proactively. It would also provide them with strategies for responding to behaviors.

After conducting interviews during one-on-one check-ins and looking at the feedback from the PD, our instructional support staff shared that the PD was helpful. We also learned that there was some growth mindset work we had to do with some staff members. Overall, staff members found the scenarios informative and helpful.

Foundations of behavior WV/EV Copy

Our Student Culture then decided that in order to provide support and training for behavior, we need to understand what behaviors our staff considered minor and major. We conducted a whole staff professional development where we introduced the Minor and Major Behavior Chart. We had our staff discuss and begin to create a shared understanding of what they consider minor and major behaviors. Our staff was separated into groups where they discussed minor and major behaviors they see in their roles at the school.

After reviewing each group's chart as a team, we found trends for minor and major behaviors. While reflecting on the PD, we shared that our staff was able to have great discussions about how their lived experience and identity influenced what behavior they categorized as major or minor.

Minor and Major Behavior Chart

Minor and Major Behaviors.pdf

Our Student Culture team continued to work on the Social-Emotional Support Chart. We made changes to the chart and shared our reasoning with the staff. We shared why we were making this an intervention chart rather than a behavior chart. In order to co-create this chart, we had our staff work in groups to come up with interventions for major or minor behaviors that will decrease the number of office referrals.

Some of our staff gave feedback and shared that they were moved by the change in wording to intervention rather than behavior because it took away categorizing children and instead focused on how we were going to support the student social-emotionally.

Student Culture PD 3/11

In order to address the lack of collaboration and meaningful PD, the student culture team decided to introduce another change idea called Social-Emotional Development (SED) Coaching for focus behaviors. Our belief is that SED Coaching will provide teachers support for focus students who need more social-emotional support and reduce the number of minor and major behaviors by creating a plan for their social-emotional development as a team.

We have rolled out two rounds of SED coaching for students we considered focus students based on office referrals and our RSP’s observations. Our teachers have expressed that the sessions are helpful and provide proactive strategies to support their students' needs. Through the coaching sessions, we have also seen our focus students make social-emotional development because of their teacher's support.

Our team spent more time working on and finalizing our Social-Emotional Support Chart. Our belief is that Teachers will have a guide and shared approach on how to respond when students don’t meet the school-wide expectations.

We finalized our Social-Emotional Support intervention. We presented our plan to the whole staff and in an inquiry type PD and developed and came to an agreement as to what we believe are major and minor unwanted behaviors and interventions.

In order to include our community partners in the process, we held a workshop at our Principal's Council (ELAC) meeting. We explained the Unicorn Expectations and Social-Emotional Support Chart we created and asked them for feedback to see if we need to add or remove anything from them.

After sharing, we received positive and informative feedback from our parents. They shared their excitement about having a shared language they can use at home. They also shared things that we could add to our chart. Our next step is to do more workshops to take a deeper dive into the Unicorn Expectations and Social-Emotional Support Chart

Student Culture Update

Our student culture team has put a plan in place to make sure that we continue to provide spaces for collaboration and inquiry. For the end of the year, our plan is to provide our staff with professional development on the Unicorn Expectations. We will share the expectations that the team has started and get feedback. We will also begin to create a school culture rotation plan on how we will share the expectations with our students. We also mapped out several professional development sessions that we need to have during the summer to ensure that our staff has a shared understanding of our social-emotional support process. Finally, we also decided on what professional development our staff will need at the beginning of the school year.

Findings

The Student Culture has been making great strides in reducing behavior incidents at our school. One change idea we had to revise was our recess procedures. With the implementation of our new bell schedule, we had to create new procedures because we now have two recess time slots. The student has had several successes throughout the process. One of the biggest successes is our new bell schedule. We have received great feedback from teachers, students, and the supervision staff. The bell schedule has had a positive rippling effect on our recess protocols. Having two recesses allows for more support staff coverage and more space for our students to play. Some other successes we have had are having very productive meetings, receiving buy-in from teachers on change ideas, and time slots to deliver PD to share the work we create. With these successes have come some challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of time for meetings. Our meetings are so productive but they are too short. As a team, our next steps are to create our School-wide expectations and finish developing our restorative intervention flowchart. To ensure that we are able to complete our work, I’ll need support or assistance in creatively making more time for our team to meet.

The Student Culture team revised some of our change ideas because we realized that we needed to spend more time creating shared expectations and interventions for behavior school-wide. We conducted professional developments that allowed us to understand what staff considered minor and major behaviors and the types of behaviors they were experiencing in their respective positions. It was a challenge because everyone had a different threshold for certain behaviors depending on their identity, work experience, schooling experience, and positionality. Once we got a better understanding of trends from our staff we realized that the social-emotional support chart that we created was focusing too heavily on the children’s behaviors, rather than the intervention practices of the teacher. This led us to revise our approach by simply changing the questioning from “Is the behavior minor or major?” to “Is the intervention minor or major?” We came back to the staff with our revision and their combined trends of minor and major behaviors and explained our reasoning for the change in language through a school-to-prison pipeline lens. Then we had our staff begin to think of the types of interventions we are already putting in place or could put in place to support our students proactively and reactively. We quickly realized that in order to create the interventions we needed to create school-wide expectations. Our next steps in the process are to conduct a workshop for our community (Staff and parents) on our school-wide expectations and social-emotional support chart to teach them how we plan on using it and get feedback. We also realized that in order to implement the school-wide expectations and social-emotional support chart we need to create Staff PD for specific interventions in our Social Emotional Support Chart. These PDs will provide our staff with a clear understanding of the intervention approaches our school uses that are on our chart. We also need to create SEL lessons for our Unicorn Expectations. These lessons will create a shared language and understanding of school-wide expectations that all community members will know. In order to make this happen, I need to work with my principal to put these PDs on our professional development blocks before the end of this school year and during our summer institute.

My Identity

My planning and implementation approach was shaped and molded by my identity. As the son of two immigrants who taught me that creating a community of care pushes everyone forward, I have a strong belief in community. Because of this belief, I use the Socio-Cultural Learning Theory approach in my implementation and planning. Socio-Cultural Theory drives equity because this approach acknowledges that every member of the school community brings expertise and knowledge to the table through their unique identities and positionality. It also encourages social interactions and culturally organized activities that shape development. It allows people to make meaning through their apprenticeship and participation in a transformative process. This approach allowed me to create a community of practice. We all shared an interest in addressing the disproportionate number of referrals for behavior at our school for EL, neuro-diverse, and BIPOC students. Having this shared interest empowered us as agents of change to determine the root causes of our problem. Through our dialogue and shared group knowledge, we created and implemented change ideas that improved our school culture. It also made me make sure that we included all of our staff in the process. Letting the Student Culture lead professional development in an inquiry style allowed for all of our staff members to feel included and valued. Having had teachers who took time to build relationships with their students made me make sure to create opportunities for our staff members to understand and learn from each other's identities.

Final Thoughts

My vision is to be an equity-driven social justice leader who improves teacher learning and development and provides equitable student learning and achievement. I believe I can achieve that by creating a community of care amongst parents, students, and staff that promotes radical collaboration. I believe that we are stronger and better as a community. Through a distributive leadership approach, I want to use my community members' strengths and expertise and create opportunities for them to use them in roles that will promote equitable student learning and achievement and improve our community’s school experience. Through cycles of inquiry, I want to create spaces that challenge my staff to look at systems that have been historically promoting systemic racism or systems causing inequities at our school and disrupt them by collaboratively reimagining and designing new structures by creating a culture of inquiry. As research shows, social-justice educational leaders are concerned principally with addressing and eliminating marginalization in schools. (Ishimaru & Galloway, 2014) I want to build a radically collaborative culture where teachers and leaders work together, observe, provide feedback to, and coach one another. I know that the implementation of my vision will take several years to be fully implemented and that I will have to transform people's mindsets along the way. By keeping my focus on community, I believe I will be able to bring them along and create a school culture that makes everyone in my community feel seen, heard, and represented. I believe that representation is vital. For that reason, I will ensure that the curricula that we use align with my vision, and sociocultural learning theory approach, and are reflective of my school community. My ultimate goal is to develop equitable opportunities for all the children and families I work with, regardless of their socioeconomic status, ethnicity, cognitive and physical ability levels, and access. My inquiry and implementation were heavily influenced by the sociocultural learning theory.

Thinking Forward

In a time filled with the uncertainty and disappointment of a global pandemic, racial/social unrest, and political division in our country, many inequities for marginalized communities within our educational system were brought to light more than ever. The pandemic exacerbated the lack of access to technology, inequality in accessing healthcare and related services, and highlighted disparities in family support and structure. In order to challenge the prevailing beliefs about marginalization to disrupt systems of power and inequities in schools, transform the culture of schools (norms, attitudes, and behaviors), and promote powerful and inclusive learning, it is imperative that we radically adapt and change our educational system by creating an Institutional Culture of Care that addresses the inequities as a result of COVID-19, and transforms urban education into a system that provides every student the learning opportunities needed for an educational trajectory that leads them to attend and persist through college and beyond. There is no better time than now to transition into a school community that aims to provide an environment that reflects effective and inclusive communication, explores curiosity and risk-taking, and embraces collaboration amongst all roles, groups, and community members for the betterment of our students.

As an equity-driven social justice leader, I believe I can address the equity by creating a community of care amongst parents, students, and staff that promotes radical collaboration. I believe that we are stronger and better as a community. Through a democratic and distributive leadership approach, I will use my community members’ strengths and expertise and create opportunities for them to be utilized in roles that improve our community’s school experience. I will lead the work for social justice by creating and implementing opportunities for cycles of inquiry using the awareness of marginalization in order to continuously improve the conditions for groups that are marginalized. This inquiry approach is a never-ending improvement cycle. I believe that the work is never over. As an equity-driven leader, I have to continuously look for inequities within our school system. Through a sociocultural learning theory approach, I will create space for all of my staff to participate in determining what groups are being marginalized.