After the annual PBIS Leadership Forum held this October, I caught up on some of the sessions I missed by watching the recordings. I came across a presentation called “Youth Speaking Up About Inequity: Their Experiences Through Their Own Voices” given by Dr. Felicia Singleton and Marcus Jackson. The two of them presented on the ways they have engaged and uplifted students’ voices in their county to address the systems contributing to the inequities students experienced. Specifically, San Diego County Office of Education hosted a series of student panels, moderated by university students, and attended by adults from around the region. During these Zoom sessions, students shared openly about the challenges they’ve faced as members of marginalized communities. Their commentary was honest, authentic, and brave, even when their truth was hard to hear as an adult.

We had to know more about what it was like to organize these discussions and about the impact they’ve had since. So, we invited them to join us today!

Dr. Felicia Singleton is the Director of System of Supports at San Diego County Office of Education. She works with schools and districts on the implementation of equity-centered, multi-tiered systems of support as well as restorative practices and social emotional learning.

Marcus Jackson is an Executive Consultant and Content Lead for the San Diego South County Special Education Local Plan Area’s (SELPA) Equity, Disproportionality, and Design team. He consults with districts about their climate and culture as well as the implementation and sustainability of their multi-tiered systems of support.

For more information about Felicia and Marcus’ work, check out these links:

• San Diego County Office of Education Student Support Services
• San Diego South County SELPA Equity, Disproportionality, and Design Team
• Student Experience Panel Playlist

In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re talking about stress – specifically the stress so many adults in education feel right now. Our guests are Susan Barrett and Dr. Kimberly Yanek from the Center for Social Behavior Support at Old Dominion and the Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. Together, they will share tangible strategies for tackling problems at the system level that contribute to the stress so many in education feel right now. They’ve even got some solutions to start implementing today!

For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this episode, check out these links:

• The Burnout Epidemic by Jennifer Moss
• Guidance and resources for supporting schools during and after crisis from the TA Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports
• Resource mapping activity (aka Initiative Inventory)
• Practice Brief: Building a Culture of Staff Wellness Through Multi-Tiered System of Supports

Every October, you can expect us to talk about the October Catch – a way for your school-wide teams to use referral data to identify students who might benefit from additional supports. The October Catch is the first step in a process to get students the resources they need when they need them. What comes next? How does a student’s name end up on a Tier 2 team’s meeting agenda? How do you know which intervention is a good fit?

In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re talking about Tier 2 teams and the foundations of decision making at the Tier 2 level. Joining us in this conversation are Drs. Erin Chaparro and Ginny Joseph.

Dr. Chaparro is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon. For more than a decade, she has worked with districts and schools to implement multi-tiered systems of support for literacy and PBIS. She works with states across the country consulting on explicit instruction, PBIS, implementation science, and the education of English language learners. Among her many projects, Dr. Chaparro currently leads the development of an online training for Tier 2 data teams using a framework called Team-Initiated ProblemSolving (TIPS).

Dr. Ginny Joseph is the Coordinator of PBIS and Mental Health at Orange County Department of Education. She trains and supports school teams implementing a multi-tiered framework for behavior supports. Her experience ranges from function-based support planning, to using data to drive decisions, to planning behavioral support for small groups of students.

For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this episode, check out these links:

• An overview of the TIPS model
• TIPS Meeting Minutes Template
• Tiered Fidelity Inventory

You are teachers. Stress comes with the territory. However, the stress we’re under this year feels different. It’s more complex. There are multiple sources of pressure and there isn’t an end date on the horizon. It’s one thing to handle the stress that comes and goes in a typical year; handling chronic stress is something else entirely. The pandemic has compounded the effect stress has on your students, to the point where you’re likely to see more unwanted behavior crop up in your classroom this year.

In this month’s Teach by Design, we offered up some ideas for how to combat the stress levels in your classroom. In this episode of Expert Instruction, we’re diving a little further into the topic.

Today, we’re talking with Dr. Geovanna Rodriguez, an assistant professor of school psychology at the University of Oregon about how to manage the stress happening in your classroom this year—both your students’ and your own.

Find out how creating safe, predictable classrooms means creating a space where your students feel confident enough to leave their stress at the door. Dr. Rodriguez also shares how important it is to take care of ourselves and how her own perspective on “self-care” has changed over the last year and a half.

The last year and a half brought a lot of lessons, maybe the most important of which is the way we build relationships with each other. Now is the perfect time to talk about going beyond welcoming students and start creating radically welcoming classrooms.

In this episode of Expert Instruction, our guest is Saki Malose, a research assistant from the University of Oregon’s College ofEducation. Saki is an experienced educator and scholar. In her current project, the Inclusive Skill-building Learning Approach (ISLA), Saki works as part of a team of researchers helping schools implement an instructional approach to exclusionary discipline practices like suspension and expulsion. She shares how she creates classrooms that welcome students and offers up the strategies she teaches so others can do the same. For more information about radically welcoming spaces, checkout Dr. Christopher Emdin’s conversation from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Activate Series.

After a weird year like we had in the 2020-21 school year, we wanted to take some time to showcase the things that went better than you thought they’d go. We reached out to our PBISApps community and asked you to submit your wins. Some stories appeared in our Teach by Design article this month; the rest you’ll hear in this episode.

We sat down with three schools from across the country to hear more about how this year didn’t stop them from creating community and building relationships in spite of the distance. ‍

• Horace Mann Elementary School, Oak Park, IL: Linda Chrystall shared how she modified their school’s Check-in Check-out point card to work better for students engaged in distance learning.

• Elkins Park School, Elkins Park, PA: Shareese Nelson, Stephen Suplick, and Brian Wallace gave us examples of all the ways they went above and beyond to encourage their students to feel connected as part of the larger school community.

• Thurston Middle School, Springfield, OR: Cindy Bonar, Andy Price, and Brandi Starck talked about the weekly show they started during the pandemic as a way to jumpstart relationships between students and staff.

We want to thank everyone who submitted success stories from this past year. We hope these experiences inspire you to try new things to create the kind of school where every student feels engaged, supported, and excited to learn.

​May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health America is using this May to build upon last year's "Tools 2 Thrive" campaign by sharing “practical tools that everyone can use to improve their mental health and increase their resiliency regardless of their personal situation." Susan Barrett and Dr. Brandi Simonsen from The Center on PBIS jumped right on top of the theme and started a social media campaign called #SchoolWellnessPBIS on Facebook and Twitter. With online spaces flooded with resources around how to support mental health in schools, their goal was to curate a list of tips and resources for incorporating positive mental health strategies in the classroom. After sharing a few of their strategies in this month's Teach by Design article, we wanted to invite them to the podcast to talk a little about the inspiration behind the campaign and why they feel it's so important to talk about mental health in schools right now.

Our conversation includes ideas you can implement today to support students, teachers, and create a community focused not just on self-care, but collective care. As Susan shared, "How do we take care of each other? How do we slow down and build a sense of community...and ecosystem where everybody is thriving?" Sounds like a goal we can all get behind.

• Susan Barrett serves as a Director for the Center for Social Behavior Support (CSBS) at Old Dominion University and she is an Implementer Partner with The Center on PBIS. She assists with large-scale implementation of PBIS, partners with researchers to evaluate the impact of PBIS on students, school staff, and school communities, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Positive Behavior Supports. She also co-leads a PBIS and mental health expansion effort called the Interconnected Systems Framework. In her research, Susan explores topics ranging from large-scale adoption of PBIS, to mental health, to the adoption of evidence-based practices in schools.

• Brandi Simonsen is a professor of Special Education with tenure in the Department of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education and the Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Education and Research at the University of Connecticut. She is also the Co-Director of The Center on PBIS, a Co-Principal Investigator of the National Multi-Tiered System of Supports Research Network, a Senior Advisor to the National Center on Intensive Interventions (NCII), and an editorial board member for the Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Her areas of interest and expertise include positive and proactive professional development supports for teachers, and applying PBIS in alternative education settings.

For more information about the resources mentioned in this episode, check out the following links:

• Resources for Supporting Schools During and After Crisis
• Supporting PBIS Implementation Through Phases of Crisis Recovery
• Advancing Education Effectiveness: Interconnecting School Mental Health and School-Wide Positive Behavior Support
• Habits of Effective Classroom Practices

In this episode, we’re joined by three experts who share with us their experiences using PBIS to guide them through the crisis of the last year.

Jennifer Bouckaert is the District Supervisor of Culture and Climate at Southbridge Public Schools in Southbridge, MA. She is a licensed School Adjustment Counselor and has worked in Southbridge for about six years supporting PBIS implementation within the district.

Kitty Clemens is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the Associate Director at Cedarhurst School. Cedarhurst is a therapeutic middle and high school serving students from all over Connecticut who have social, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Kitty has been at Cedarhurst for 18 years, originally running the clinical program and more recently in a general administrative role. She was involved with the initial PBIS implementation at Cedarhurst 12 years ago and has been a member of the PBIS team ever since.

Luke Borowski is the Behavior Program Manager at Cedarhurst School. Luke has been with Cedarhurst for 13 years and is a true believer in the benefits PBIS brings to both students and staff in his school. He has a master’s in special education, enjoys sports and outdoor activities, and spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Be sure to check out their school and district websites for more information about the good work these experts are doing in their schools.

Cedarhurst School Website

Southbridge Public Schools Website

In this episode of Expert Instruction, we're joined by Renee Mitchell, the visionary behind the I Am M.O.R.E. project. (M.O.R.E. stands for Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday.) I Am M.O.R.E. came out of Renee's work helping students at Roosevelt High School write their personal essays for scholarships and college applications. One year, of the four Portland students awarded $16,000 scholarships, three came from her class. That's when she realized something: there is power in students telling their own stories. By reframing their hardships as assets, and validating their experiences, her students began to say, "My story has meaning. By sharing myself, I can support and help someone else." Renee watched how the process of "owning their stories" transformed how her students moved through the world, with their shoulders back, believing their dreams were possible.

The I Am M.O.R.E. project is an important reminder of how we can all find our purpose...even from our lowest moments.

To find out about everything Renee is up to these days, check out these links for all the details.

• Renee's Website
• I Am M.O.R.E. Homepage: Check out videos of students sharing their stories, read more about the history behind the project, and connect with Renee and her youth leaders.
• Spreading the Black Joy Virus: Born out of the I Am M.O.R.E. spirit, this is a campaign Renee started to celebrate the resilience, creativity, and joy found within the Black community.

In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, our guest is Dr. Erik Girvan from the University of Oregon School of Law. Dr. Girvan's research focuses on how sterotypes, attitudes, and other biases might impact the decisions you make in schools. He joined us to talk specifically about implicit bias: the automatic, unconscious associations we make about people and their social roles. Addressing the way these biases make their way into our school policies and procedures is exactly the kind of work we need to do in order to create supportive environments.

During our discussion, we talked about how to know when our implicit biases are most likely to affect our decisions. These moments are called vulnerable decision points and they're most likely to happen when we are under pressure, stress, fatigue, or without much specific information. If that doesn't describe the reality we live in right now, I don't know what does. So, what do we do when life feels like one big vulnerable decision point? Dr. Girvan has some ideas to get you started.

For more information about the resources mentioned in this episode, check out the following links: 

• Using Discipline Data within SWPBIS to Identify and Address Disproportionality
• Links to Dr. Girvan's recent research and contact information