Behavior - Things I Do

Please take a look at the "Behavior" page section of this site that outlines my philosophies and has the forms and logs and everything that I use to help with behavior intervention.

12) Tweaking behavior weekly as needed. Looking at behaviors that are being mastered, and perhaps other behaviors that weren’t so pressing before. Slowly getting the student to step their game up.

15) Having a meeting to start off the new school year and set up some parameters based off where we ended the previous year. Maybe no contingency plan at the beginning, but let them know that we will jump on one soon, and spell it out for him

16) Making double-sided copies of weeklies. This is a cool way to save paper. It may have other uses to ;) ( I don't know what that means, but I wrote it once so...)

52) Have teacher tell me or email me if a student is acting out of line and he will do the lunch or after school detention. This is to ensure that there are immediate consequences

-this is also in addition to whatever consequences are given by the school or the teacher

68) Probation cats and struggling Resource cats and Detentions:

- I have prepared the document (on Moodle) that outlines and is called “Progression of Consequences”. This outlines the escalating degrees of consequences.

- I typed it up because some students liked to know exactly what would happen when. It’s complicated, and a work in progress, but it’s effective.

60) Consider having school doctor give meds to students who are having a tough time taking them at home

61) Take the phone away (and computer, etc.) if they have bad weekly and give it back when they do good. How many times have I seen Ale with his phone after he was supposed to get it taken? This means YOU!!!!!! There are times when you can’t leave it up to the parents to take all the electronics.

- what I have come to do is recommend it at first…then if things happen (i.e. see kid using it in front of school, see Whatsapp messages going, etc.), I tell the parents I recommend they drop everything my way. If it keeps going we will make an administrative decision

72) If cats get a bad weekly they are with me every break and lunch the following week (progression of consequences?)

22) Shoot emails to parents that have the study plan and ask them to help their child follow it at home for difficult classes like science

76) I have the To-Do forms that they fill out each day. One of the focuses is on things that they can do that is addition to what’s in their agenda (i.e. study! Plan for a project, etc.)…

- I also attach things to do or help them (i.e. a Graphic organizer for essay)

- I write notes during the day on there for cats (if something occurs to me)

- I follow up with things like signatures, certain teachers, and have them turn certain study things just into me.

!!! I should stay up on the five days and then give a pass….it would be effective

* I have done this as a progression of interventions and when they get a GPA of around 75 we stop……but greatly enough, just last week for example, a student asked to do these again after we stopped, so it can be useful. Franklin also asked to get his hands on a copy after he already had graduated.

75) Have situations where some kids have a card that teachers must check off when they get a warning…….

….that way they don’t keep saying they warned them 100 times. It would be good for the student to know and for me too

- this is the DAILY that you were using with Manuel (see Moodle)…it’s helpful to see it every day, and to track it on that excel spreadsheet that you made to mark how he did

- This is mainly, at this point, to ensure that the teachers are following along with the game plan. You may have to add things like “sat in seat away from distracting peers”

94) Have a weekly just for me and the parents and consequences based on that. This means that the weekly will just be me checking the things that they are suppose to do (i.e. enrichment, daily, agenda, etc.).

97) I do the “progression of consequences”…Click that link in quotes for a whole page of information….you know the deal.

20) Whilst giving punishments and consequences and messing these kids up a little bit….continuously remind them that we are trying to help them study (To-Do sheets), stay organized (agenda), stay on point (losing a phone)., etc. I think it really helps them when they know what’s up

23) Have “Weeklies” for many of the kids. This is for me to keep track of and show parents they are doing enrichments, to-do’s etc. It’s for the parents to be looking at grades and it’s for an informal way to hook students up or give them consequences

38) Keeping track of Daily behavior monitoring with Xcel spreadsheets:

45) Dailies

Okay, so you need to describe how you break down the dailies to the kids and how that fits into the "log" (i.e. there are 5 days you see your teacher in a cycle…so your day 3 for one period may be on a day 5 in the cycle, but on your daily you need to put “Day 3” because it’s the 3^rd day of the cycle that you saw this teacher.

What else? You start the consequences that if the end of every cycle they don’t a given percent of positive marks (i.e. 80%), then they get Saturday school. It can go up from there in terms of immediacy of consequences.

You also make sure to have a short discussion with the student if you notice that they got a negative mark while you are marking the daily in the log on your wall.

48) The high school secretary who does detention offered to email me and let me know when cats got detention…..I think what happens is that I told her that their detention is necessary, they must do it, and then they miss mine and have more consequences

49) Stay on top of parents and urge them to do THEIR job. There is only so much that we can do:

Sample Email to a parent with struggling student:

You have to be consistent with (blank) at home, and be firm. He has 40’s in three of his classes and he just spent a weekend partying and still has his new iPhone. He will never stop failing in school if nothing happens at home when he is failing. His time at this school is coming to an end, but I’m just letting you know for the next years. You need to be on him every day and every week. I still remember when I told him about how I was going to try to make a deal with you and him to buy him a new iPhone and his friend asked him in Spanish if he thought he was going to do the deal and get the phone. I remember now what he said. He said that it was “obligatorio” that you would buy him a phone, whether he was doing good in school or not. That is the feeling he has, so there is no reason for him to do better. He fails classes, doesn’t study, doesn’t do his homework and then he has an extravagant 3 day weekend partying. There is no way you will see a change if this continues. We can only do so much at school, it’s on you guys at home.

62) You need to jump on struggling students a little quicker. The problem is that you have this progressive way at approaching students and interventions and everything, but they are falling behind and too quickly they are in a pickle (academic probation). You need to stay on top, take it all (i.e. computers, free time, etc.), have them earn it back ;)……this means more cats using “to-do sheets”, dailies, weeklies, meeting with parents quicker and getting support, etc. You did this this year and saved two kids from getting kicked out and helped another girl go from almost hitting probation to almost hitting honors.

68) I have a list on my day planner on Wednesday for who will have Saturday school this Saturday. I try to finalize by around then or Thursday and then send list to the secretary. If there are kids after that I just let her know to add to the list. But a lot of the kids are on the list for things done the previous week.

- kids can give me 4 detention passes to get out of Saturday school…I collect them by Friday, and then on Monday when I get the list from the secretary of who attended and how their behavior was, I can just let her know they were all good.

71) Email at the beginning of the process or school year to the teachers of students on a weekly. Send them an attachment with the weekly, have a form letter (see files) explaining the process and what they can do, that I’m the first person in the line of defense, Etc.

72) Meeting notes for serious meetings (i.e. about behavior problems) are sent to all teachers. Outline next steps. Attach forms (i.e. new daily or weekly).

74) Some students that have a real tough time with things will have situations where I will say that every tardy equals a consequence in the progression of consequences. Or every 0 that they receive on an assignment equals a detention or wherever they are in the progression of consequences.

91) One of the few means I have to keep the students in check is to have detentions. Pretty much every break, lunch and at least an hour after school (after enrichment) I have some students serving detention.

- I play a coin toss game to give them the opportunity to take off detention times, or leave early. Sometimes I will give them a coin toss to see whether I drop them in the office or let them go early when I don’t feel like staying after school

- this is a good tool and it coincidentally gives you more time with the students to do things (i.e. interventions, monitoring, etc.).

- it is easier for me because I am single and can stay after school, but at the very minimum the breaks and lunches can work out, Saturday school is run by the school, and the secretaries are here until four pm and may be willing to house the students

68) It seems that increasingly that any kid on dailies, or to-do sheets or anything will find themselves with a weekly that goes home. They help the parents and keeping the connection between what they are doing here and consequences and rewards at home

- example: I might have a kid that is doing dailies and I want them to use an agenda. So I get an old ‘weekly’ from another kid, ‘save as’, and then I just add those two things that we do, tell mom to expect this weekly on Fridays, punishment and rewards can be contingent, and then I add the kid to the weekly log list on my wall