8 with 8

Did you know that PBIS can give you a major leg-up when it comes to preschool licensing and Step Up to Quality? Today we discuss some ways in which the PBIS framework not only creates safe and secure learning environments for our youngest students, but sets preschool programs up for success with their regulatory and quality programming requirements. Two birds - one stone... or rather, one highly effective and impactful evidence-based framework!

Co-Hosts: Michelle Smith and Stacey Smith, SST8 Educational Consultants

Additional Resources

Ohio Preschool Licensing Rules

The last two years have been trying for educators: Staffing shortages, limited access to substitute teachers, students whose learning, development, or behavior is off-track due to the pandemic, financial shortfalls... Every corner of the educational system is feeling the strain. In a recent survey 78% of educators feel physically and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day. Is there hope for a shift in education? Is there anything we can do about it?

Co-hosts: Frank Gant, SST8 Educational Consultant and Kim Labriola, Summit ESC Community and Family Partner Liaison. 

Additional Resources

SST8 Google Folder with Educator Burnout presentation and resources

What is 'quiet quitting'? Inside the viral trend sparking controversy (4min Today Show segment)

Professional Quality of Life (proQOL; survey)

Did you know that the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murphy, issued an urgent advisory statement on youth mental health? Increases in youth mental health needs were observed even prior to the pandemic, with 1 in 3high school students and half of female students reporting in 2019 that they experienced. persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. This was an overall increase of 40% from 2009. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically reshaped the mental health landscape. It’s clear that schools have a lot to deal with these days. That’s why this week we are talking with some local mental health leaders who can show us how PBIS helps to support districts’ mental health needs.

Co-Host: Heidi Kerchenski, SST8 Educational Consultant

Guests: Kristin Fazio, Summit Educational Service Center (SESC) Director of Student Services and Wellness Initiatives; Kim Labriola, SESCCommunity and Family Partnership Liaison

Additional Resources

Summit Educational Service Center (agency website)

Interconnected Systems Framework Brief (Project Aware Information Brief)

Ready, Set, Go, Review: Screening for Behavioral Health Risk in Schools (Toolkit for selecting MH screeners)

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration defines trauma as the response to an “event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful, or life threatening, and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.” Trauma can result from a single event or it can result from multiple traumatic events over time. Potential traumatic events include, but are not limited to accidents, child abuse and neglect, bullying, medical illness, parent/caregiver death, inconsistent parenting due to mental health/alcohol or drug issues and more. The sad fact is that educators are becoming more and more familiar with trauma in the classroom because we are seeing it more often in the students we serve. Today we'll discuss how specific PBIS classroom practices can help us create a system of support that is ready to address these needs.

Co-Hosts: Heidi Kerchenski and Mike Kaschak, SST8 Educational Consultants

Additional Resources: 

Trauma Aligned Classroom Practices Crosswalk-Midwest PBIS

Integrating a Trauma Informed Approach Within a PBIS Framework

SST8 Canvas Catalogue: PBIS Effective Classroom Practices (free account required)

We're continuing our focus on the many connections PBIS has - or should have - with the rest of educational practice. This week, we’re hitting another pretty obvious connection: social emotional learning (SEL). Join us as SST8’s own Rachel Undercoffer discusses practical considerations for aligning social emotional learning with the PBIS framework, why that matters for our students, and how that can make our work as educators a whole lot easier.

Co-Host: Rachel Undercoffer, SST8 Educational Consultant

Additional Resources

ODE: Supporting Student Wellness Toolkit

USDOE: Supporting SEL, Behavior, Mental Health Needs

Welcome to the first episode of our new season, where we’ll focus on the many ways that PBIS - AKA Positive Behavior Interventions and Support - connect to and strengthen the rest of educational practice. This week, SST8 consultants Frank Gant and Mike Kaschak are going to kick us off with one of the most obvious - but also one of the most consequential - connections: school discipline.  More and more districts are realizing the unintended consequences of disciplinary removals - those times when students are removed from the educational environment - and looking to PBIS as a way to shift educators’ energies to teaching and encouraging desired behavior.

Co-Hosts: Frank Gant and Mike Kaschak, SST8 Educational Consultants

Additional Resources

Teach By Design: PBIS Apps (Website)

PBIS is everywhere and in everything! That’s what’s on our minds and in the research, in our seventh season of 8 with 8. You might think that SST8 would have nothing new to say about PBIS. After all, we have been aggressively supporting PBIS for over a decade! But once you see the power of this framework, you can’t help but see all of the ways that it strengthens or supports other educational priorities. Some of the connections we’ll cover this season are obvious: PBIS plays a big role in decreasing student discipline, promoting social-emotional learning, providing trauma informed care, and of course addressing student mental health needs. But what does PBIS have to do with curriculum and instruction? How can PBIS help you with preschool licensing? And, perhaps most important to our administrator colleagues: what can PBIS teach us about how to create a thriving workplace, overcome burnout, and onboard new staff?

For just about every challenge our profession is facing today, implementing PBIS can play a significant role in helping address it. So get ready for “8 Connections to PBIS”, 8 with 8’s seventh season - coming to your favorite podcast app or the Anchor website, starting next Friday, October 28th.

Additional Resources

Horner, R. H., Sugai, G., and Lewis, T. (2020). IS SCHOOL-WIDE POSITIVE BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTIONS AND SUPPORTS (PBIS) AN EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE? (Article) 

We are wrapping up a fascinating season exploring why it is that some educational practices continue to hang on, despite empirical evidence showing that they aren’t effective - or even do harm. This week, we talk to Drs. Persida and William Himmele, the authors of the great little book that inspired this season, Why Are We Still Doing That? What led them to write this book? What practices did they consider adding to the book, but didn't make the cut? Their combined wealth of experience makes them very knowledgeable and credible on the topic of evidence-based teaching practices - but what we loved about them was their down-to-earth, real life way of addressing these common challenges in our profession. We hope you enjoy hearing from them as much as we did.

Co-Host: Sarah Egan-Reeves, SST8 Educational Consultant

About Our Guests: Drs. Bill and Persida Himmele are both on the faculty of the Department of Early, Middle, and Exceptional Education at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. In addition, they have conducted over 500 keynote, featured, and professional presentations around the world, both inside and outside of the field of education. One of their major areas of interest is cognitively engaging learning experiences and they are the authors of the ASCD best-seller, Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner. Prior to their careers in higher ed and on the speaking, consulting, and writing circuit, Bill and Persida both worked within a classroom environment - Bill as an Speech-Language Pathologist and ESL teacher, and Persida as elementary and middle school teacher in bilingual and multilingual classrooms and later as a district administrator serving ELL students in a high-incidence district. 

Additional Resources

Why Are We Still Doing That? (book | ASCD study guide)

Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner (book | website/resources)

As we close in on the end of this podcast season, and the end of another busy school year, we’re continuing to challenge ourselves with the question: Why are we still doing that? (Also the title of a great little book by Persida and William Himmele!) In this episode, we’re looking at social studies - why do we continue to short-change it as an instructional priority? In this episode, SST8’s Sarah Egan-Reeves talks to two state and local leaders in the area of social studies: Jim O’Connor, President of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies, and Adam Motter, a Learning Specialist for Social Studies in Akron Public Schools. In this ever-changing and complex society we live in, it’s critical that students understand our past and present in order to be prepared for the future - and we know that high-quality social studies instruction is a major part of how our children prepare to participate in our society as adults… and we know that it contributes to improved reading ability and overall learning!

Co-Host: Sarah Egan-Reeves, SST8 Educational Consultant

Additional Resources

Ohio Council for the Social Studies

Sojourner Truth statue to honor Akron’s historic role in women’s suffrage movement (article | 2021)

Attack on Capitol, Inauguration Offer Real-Time Social Studies Lessons (article | 2021)

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! Yet, you can also go back to the 1970s, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness, and find there were concerns that there was too little homework. How much homework is too much? Not enough? Who should get it? What value does homework add? These are just a few of the questions that have been debated over the years. The topic is controversial and complex because seemingly everyone has an opinion about the benefits of giving homework. In this episode, SST8's Denise Ward takes listeners through eight perspectives from leading educational researchers - and then asks the people most impacted by homework - students - to weigh in with their thoughts on the pros and cons. 

Co-Host: Denise Ward, SST8 Educational Consultant and SESC Diversity Consultant

Additional Resources:

The Cult of Homework (article | 2019 | The Atlantic)

Is Homework Good for Kids? Here's What the Research Says (article | 2016 | Time Magazine)