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PBIS Journey to Genius
Are you in the process of developing your PBIS Framework? Are you wondering where to start? You are in the right place. Join Dianne Ferrell and Diane Ruff as they share the ups and downs of creating and implementing a top-notch PBIS framework that has empowered their school to achieve Ohio recognition as a PBIS Gold School for 4 years. They will also share current issues in behavior management and how PBIS can help with those ongoing struggles. We would love to hear from you! Email us
@ pbisjourneytogenius@gmail.com
PBIS Journey to Genius
Episode 6 The Power of Teacher Buy-In
Ever wonder what it takes to build a resilient and effective educational system? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Christine Hunt, a seasoned educator with 28 years of experience in our district, as we journey through her personal experiences, challenges, and rewarding moments. She enlightens us on her 'why' for choosing education as a career, a passion ignited by an influential third grade teacher, and her 'AHA moment' when she realized the pivotal role of student-teacher relationships in fostering success.
As we navigate through Christine's journey, we tackle the challenging task she faced when two schools in our district merged. Imagine merging two distinct behavior systems into one, sounds daunting, right? But our guest walks us through how they successfully created a unified behavior philosophy, implemented the Pelham behavior system, introduced 'Love and Logic' and even made 'Fun Fridays' a tradition. Get a first-hand understanding of how these intentional changes can transform a school's behavior management approach.
Yet, all these changes would be futile without teacher buy-in, right? Christine paints a vivid picture of how a consistent program, born out of a year of discontentment, resulted in teachers being more open to change. We discuss how this unity led to the creation of a unique framework for the district, strengthening relationships between teachers and administrators. We also unravel the process of setting up expectations and common goals, ensuring they are not just understood, but followed. Prepare to be inspired by how this collective effort resulted in an expectation of consistency across the entire school. Don't miss this powerful conversation, packed with practical insights and personal experiences!
Welcome to PBIS. Journey to Genius. Are you in the process of implementing PBIS? Are you wondering where to start? You are in the right place. We are here to support you. Stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. My name is Diane Farrell and I'm here with Diane Ruff, and we are two educators that have worked together for many years and we have put together a positive behavior interventions and support system. Pbis helped our school receive many gold awards and recognition over the years, and we're here to share our trials, tribulations and successes so that you might use these to help in your positive behavior intervention survey. We'll also share current issues in behavior management today and how PBIS can help with those ongoing struggles. So we are doing a podcast every week and Diane and I are here together. So what are we going to do today, Diane?
Speaker 1:Well, the last episode we discussed the valuable lesson of listening to the staff, and it is at the heart of making lasting change. A school's assets are the teachers and support staff, so we were learning to capitalize on the genius within our staff. Today, we welcome Christine Hunt, who has been in our district for many years and taught in the small building before being integrated into the large building. So welcome Christine. How are you?
Speaker 2:Good. Thanks for having me so every time we have a guest coming, we ask them two questions, and in our very first episode, diane and I did these. So if you want to know ours, you have to go back to the very first episode and then you'll learn our answer to these two questions. But the first question is your why? Why, christine, did you get into education in the very beginning?
Speaker 3:So my why started in 1983 when I was in third grade and I had a third grade teacher that I went to only for reading Barb Jamison, what's her name and I was in the top reading group but I was the lowest of the top reading group and so everybody was working through their little SRA books and they would do so many and they got to go put a sticker on the chart and they got to go to Dairy Queen and I never got out of Dirt Brown in the SRA books.
Speaker 2:I remember those colors. I remember those colors too. I remember those colors too, the lowest level you could be at.
Speaker 3:Why was it brown? Nobody knows.
Speaker 2:I know Dirt Brown, dirt Brown, yes, and then Lime Brown.
Speaker 3:And I was always in brown, so I was not going to get to go to Dairy Queen. And she saw me struggling, knew that I had potential, and she walked me up to the chart with the stickers on it and she said look, you need this many more to get to go to Dairy Queen. Everybody's going to get to go with you. I really want you to go with us. It's important to me that you come with us. It means something to me that I get to take you and I really want you to go. And that made such an impact on me. She bent every rule for me. She had me come up and do separate assessments and all those things and just so I could get there. I didn't do that stuff the other kids did, but I did what I needed to do for me to get there, to be successful. And I remember years later thinking, wow, I want to be Barb Jameson.
Speaker 1:I want to be her. Oh, that's awesome. That's my one. That is why I love that.
Speaker 2:That is awesome when one teacher makes an impact like that. I remember Barb Jameson too.
Speaker 1:I do too Cool, all right.
Speaker 3:So what's your AHA moment? My AHA moment has been throughout the years 28 years in education and at some point it clicked with me that I needed to do more to make connections and have relationships with the students and that trumps the academic side every time. So you won't get the academics until you get those relationships. And that was hard at the beginning of my career because you know, I knew I love teaching, I knew I love the subject matter. Teaching kids to read was super cool, but I couldn't quite make those relationships. And then putting so much more effort into making the relationships first and seeing the results and seeing how the kids then responded, that was just like wow, I wish I had known this from the beginning, wish I had practiced this from the beginning. So that's kind of been my a-ha ever since and the relationships with kids is what keeps me in it.
Speaker 2:So there was one of our sessions that we were talking about why an educator stays so long in one district and the longevity and how important that is whenever you're putting programs together. So Christine is an example of that longevity. She has been here for how many years.
Speaker 3:Christine. Well, in education, 28 years, 25 of those have been spent with yes so 25 years, a quarter of a century, in one district and she looks fabulous, and so we did talk about that.
Speaker 2:that's important when teachers want to stay in a district, and that longevity and what that looks like to make programs successful. So, just to know, we had Kendra you know, last week, mrs Peterson, who was 36 years in this district, and now we have Christine, who's been 25 years. So those are just awesome examples of teachers that have wanted to stay and make an impact here.
Speaker 1:And I love the whole relationship piece because I didn't even realize that either. You know, I maybe we're not taught that in college, but really it's relationship first, because once the kids know we really care about them, then they will. They will, like I've heard like walk through fire you know like they will go the mile to try to do what they need to do.
Speaker 3:And sometimes that's not intrinsic, sometimes that's something you learn along the way and you build on the way and like it's a continual, like I still try to build every year and get a little bit more of that relationship building every single year, yeah, and last week when we did or two weeks ago when we did nuts and bolts, one of the things we talked about, of the big things for PBIS, was relationship building.
Speaker 2:That that's a big part of PBIS to make it successful.
Speaker 2:So you're right on target, all right last week we interviewed, just to recap, mrs Peterson, who was a fourth grade teacher, and she was coming to us from the viewpoint of someone who was part of our big building. Remember this, these podcasts leading up to this about two buildings consolidating a small building and a large building and Mrs Peterson, kendra, was coming from the large building, 850 students and the majority of teachers. Well, christine is coming to us from the small building. So this was a small building, about 250, some students, probably about 12 teachers, maybe 10 to 12 at each grade level and coming together and what that was like.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, christine, when you was doing it, you did have an established discipline policy. At your other building we did when MIT did not have as much. So what was that light coming together and what were your frustrations? What do you remember?
Speaker 3:happening. So, yeah, we had that system out at West Elementary and I was fortunate enough to. I worked in Alliance for two years and they actually implemented the Pelham behavior system in Alliance at the building I was at. They then trained West Elementary. So by the time I ended up at West Elementary I'm like whoa, this is, I know this. I've been doing this. So really, only one year out of my career I've not had this type of behavior system, school-wide framework to work from. Wow.
Speaker 3:So when we came together, obviously I feel like this, this works for me and I know I've tweaked it for me and I know how to make this work because I've done it for a lot of years and had a building where we were all like total buy-in on that. So coming into a big building and meshing the two, where everybody kind of had their own ideas and their own systems, it was kind of frustrating for me because you know you want to say, hey, I've got this and it works and and let's try it out. But out of six teachers on my grade level, I was the only one from West Elementary and everybody had their own thing and some people had Very little, some people had a lot. It just depends on who and what, but nobody else on my grade level was doing anything close to the behavior system that we had been doing.
Speaker 3:It was and they didn't really know much about it today not much. We had begun to kind of talk about it a little bit as people had transferred from building to building, had brought little pieces of that with us with them. There was some talk about it, some elements were implemented, like on Friday here and there, or talk a little bit about fun Friday. So fun Friday is if you meet the behavior goals throughout the week. At the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, the last half an hour of the day at West elementary, the entire building shut down and participated in fun Friday.
Speaker 3:It was across multiple grade levels so, like we might do kindergarten first or kindergarten first and second, you could buddy up however you wanted. One person would be the task teacher who took the kids who had not met their behavior goals for the week and at that point they had to go and do some work or something. They weren't allowed to participate in the fun activity. Every other classroom had activities and we had a sign up sheet, sign up sheet. So maybe you would go to my room for an art project, maybe you would go to the next door teacher's room for singing or or some kind of a fun activities and maybe might go for like a gym activity or there were just different things, make and much all kinds of things like that, and kids could sign up for what they wanted to do every week and go to different classrooms.
Speaker 2:Participate in that, and I do too. So this is the very beginning of the acknowledgement system.
Speaker 1:Very beginning it was, and I do think I was third grade in this building, the big building when we came together that first year, I do believe we and third grade actually did do that. I remember kids signing up and I would have an activity yes, or a task or yes.
Speaker 3:we did that for a while, like we eventually got enough people on board that they would do at least that part of it. So there were little pockets of that, like I said on Friday being one of them, little pockets of that old behavior system from West that we brought with us, and that was, that was pretty widely, you know, received because not everyone had to do it though Didn't have to do it and people didn't want to take time out of academics some people didn't want to spend the money or didn't want to, just didn't want to participate.
Speaker 2:So then you have the kids that were participating and got to see kids doing it, and then kids who weren't participating in yeah, we're in a part of it, and then you know you had that inconsistency and so you know, and we did see the inconsistency here at the office level Diane, myself and Michelle, and so, and then, being in the RTI and also being in the PBIS, learning about PBIS, at this point, we knew we needed like a philosophy for the building.
Speaker 1:And so that's when we looked at the love and logic from Jim Fay and we said in our podcast last time that we're not knocking love and logic at all, it's a very good program. We were just saying that we probably didn't roll it out the best way. So what were your thoughts like when, you know, we came across that and we thought, because Diane and I in our defense, in our defense, you know, we, we wanted, we saw the need for everybody to be on the same page?
Speaker 2:Oh for sure, we wanted everybody to be on the same page because things were not working out like we wanted.
Speaker 1:And now I digress because I think maybe had we and I was an assessment or an administration then, but had we taken the time to if the administration would have taught us about your stuff at West, the name of that program and the philosophy behind it?
Speaker 2:and why.
Speaker 1:When we were bringing two buildings together. That may have helped us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see hindsight, I was 20, 20. It's always 20, 20.
Speaker 1:But you know, like so many schools do, this is where just this is what we're doing. We're putting everybody together, we're building one school and we don't. Administrators don't take the time to do that, which is why we're doing this podcast. So if you're out there listening. You need to take the time, but now I'm moving forward again.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when you you know what were your thoughts when you were handed those books, read it, and we're going to do it, and this fall yeah.
Speaker 3:Be honest. So it was not a lot of love for love and logic, and was it because because, diana, I have gone back and forth on it.
Speaker 2:Was it because of the program or is it because you were just given it and told to do it and not asked your opinion?
Speaker 3:It was both. It was both, it was twofold. If you didn't choose to read the book over the summer, we got it at the staff meeting right before school started, right, so immediately there was an uproar of I've already run off my behavior sheets, I already have my daily report cards printed, I already love all this stuff and I already have this whole system set up. And you want me to change in a week and how I'm going to do this, and I think it because it's gone around a bunch of times.
Speaker 3:The key phrase that kind of set everybody over the edge was we are no longer supporting rule violations or this or this or this or this from all of your separate plans, your separate systems, so whatever your separate system was.
Speaker 3:When you heard that was like, oh my goodness, now what? So when I send a kid to the office and I understood the frustration because You've got 30, some teachers in this building, all if you send a kid to the office, we need to know what your plan is, how they got here, what the next step is, and none of that's consistent. So that makes total sense to me that that would be so frustrating for the administration. So how it was presented, that put us all on our heels and kind of made us scramble a little bit, and for me I had no choice to but to kind of dig my heels in and go. Well, then I'm gonna have to do it in my own room because I couldn't find, I couldn't make it right in my brain and find a way to Do a complete turnaround in that short amount of time.
Speaker 3:So I thought, well then I guess I won't send kids to the office. So I guess I just won't because I know this and I know it works for me and maybe someday will do something different. But for now I got to stick with what I know, because there just wasn't time for me the part of love and logic that we weren't fond of. And I just had this discussion with my grade level. Everybody unanimously, unanimously agreed if they were here back then, that there were good parts in how you spoke to children and how you framed things and how you approach situations.
Speaker 3:And delaying To kind of you know, if you're upset with a child and you're kind of in that moment, this would kind of delay you a little bit and kind of, you know, make you think about what was gonna happen first. The issue is you got 21 little people up there and or 25 or however many, and to say to a child Something along the lines of you think about what consequence fits the behavior, and we'll talk about this later. I'm lucky if I can remember do lunch count? I'm lucky if I can remember. I just want to get ready home and one piece at the end of the day, so we would lose that and then like for our little guys, they can't remember at the end of the day why they got a poor choice.
Speaker 1:Mark be immediate.
Speaker 3:So for them to go. Oh, a half an hour ago even I did this and I don't know, it was just they couldn't do it and it Was frustrating for us, the management, and I guess we just didn't have there's probably a great way to do it, so you get really good at that and it's efficient. We just didn't have the time to, I guess, learn how to be efficient with it. So what we ended up doing? A lot of us, like I, stuck with my plan, but I tried to take bits and pieces of love and logic and apply that's what Peter's, that's what Kendra said yeah, she did she said I tried to embrace some of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and stuck with my thing. But what Diane and I said is from everything come is a reason.
Speaker 1:So, through.
Speaker 2:All of that brought pain, for sure, but it also brought the. Why bought the?
Speaker 3:brought the best thing, because now let's fast forward.
Speaker 2:Okay, we've gone through that year. Now we are calling everyone to the table because we know people are frustrated. We've had a year of this.
Speaker 1:It's very frustrating and and we're hearing about the framework yes, the PBIs framework, and so we're realizing that, okay, we now are understanding how to build a framework. Yes, and again, we realized at that point in time we could build a framework and it could just be the office. Or we could build a framework and have teacher input.
Speaker 2:Yes, so how did you feel what? What did you want to accomplish when you came to that first meeting?
Speaker 3:Well, there was no better time to get teacher buy-in. Then we're when we're coming from a year of Chaos and kind of discontentment, right. So we're all feeling like this was terrible and we need to do something different. And people, I think, who would not have normally had buy-in or even cared and just said do whatever. And then let me know what it is. Those people are now going oh my gosh, what do I do? This doesn't work for me. So we had buy-in like we've never seen and that was, I think, a key, pivotal moment for us. I don't think we would be where we are with PBIs had we not had that year of Discontentment to be able to set us up. For now we are open for something Anything. Give us a framework, give us something to work from yeah.
Speaker 3:And and let us help you build it and let us so. Then everybody had their opinions about how they wanted it to look and how we should. But you know, we basically took a lot of what we had then and we're able to kind of funnel it down into some some very core Key pieces.
Speaker 2:And did you think now teachers were open to a consistent Program now, whereas before I think they still want to hang on to their own stuff. But now they were like, okay, I'm open to, let's do something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a person has had that.
Speaker 2:Yes, the small building had that, the large building did not, yes. So now they're like, okay, pbis is asking it to be consistent. That is part of the framework is for it to be consistent throughout the building.
Speaker 3:And now teachers are like, yes, this is something we need so I think the West people were already going yes, bring something like this back, we've got this, we like it, we want it, we don't want to veer from it, we want to build on it. And I think other people that were discontent. We're just like oh well, if we had something that kind of worked, how can we? So people were jumping on and then we did make it our own. It wasn't like it stayed a West elementary thing.
Speaker 1:We did make it our own For MES yes, and so you know I, in being an administrator and only a few years in, at that point, I was looking for something for the consistency, because I felt like I was all over the place, too, about how do I deal with all this discipline. And so when we started hearing about the framework and that's what I love about a framework, it's not a manual telling you almost like the love and logic to this, this and this.
Speaker 1:But the framework is, we build it together and make it our own with these guidelines, and that's the first time that had ever been done at the large building.
Speaker 2:I know you at West your teachers had come together but you had a small group of teachers. Yeah, we did. But at MIT I mean, dyn and I have both taught there for many years this discipline system had come from the principle yes, like you know, we didn't have any say in that and it really was your own thing. That was more of a old-fashioned, you know type of way to do it. So coming together so let's because I know we've got don't have much time left. But when we came together on that matrix and you were a big part of that you came to the first meeting but then you kept into it, partly because I think you'd had so much input from West. You were, you know, and alliance, you said so when you came in that, how did you feel when you were starting to help make the expectations of the building and released time to do that, like you were given time to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's empowering. You know, you get to kind of help guide the ship. You're not just a passenger, like you said. And again, we all had our ideas, but we had kind of taken our major, you know, rules and we were able to kind of fit them into what would work. And it was just again, I just keep coming up with empowering it was very empowering.
Speaker 3:It was like, okay, I have a voice on this, I know what I would like to see it become, but at the same time there were a lot of other good ideas that we could kind of mesh into that. And so, you know, I think most people were kind of open to all right, this is a good idea, let's add this in, or we don't like this part anymore, let's get rid of this. But being able to do that as a staff and not just be told by the administrator or not just be have this, you know, put on you, that was, I think, another key selling point for it, because you would not have had people, even if you had initial buy-in, you would not have had people stay, work through the problems.
Speaker 2:If they were the part of it, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3:But, they would not have stayed, worked through it and become successful at it and then gone on to kind of drive that and continue to drive that with new staff members and bring new people on One of the things that you know we first talked about in the meeting, where we invited anybody and everybody to come.
Speaker 1:And we did get a lot of people that I think wouldn't have normally.
Speaker 3:Oh for sure, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Because they're like what's the office doing now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're going to be there, which was fine, because that's what we wanted.
Speaker 1:Yes, and we had about 25, 26 teachers, which I love. And the very first thing that I recall and maybe you recall differently is we talked about we had learned that we should have three big positive statements. Yeah, and you know, and we put out the ones we had heard Be safe, be responsible, be respectful and everybody at the table said, yeah, we like those, yes, we can get behind those. Then the second thing we talked about is we put up that matrix and we said, ok, what does that look? How do we want our kids to behave in the hallways? And you know, everyone around the table said, well, it'd be nice if they just walked quietly down the hallway.
Speaker 1:Do you remember that? Yes, I do. And then from there that kind of grew to. Well, what does that look like? They walk in a straight line, the teacher leads them, and then from there it led to the bathroom. Yep, you know. Do you want us to talk a little bit about that? Do you remember some of the discussion we had?
Speaker 3:about that. I do because, you know, first of all, a lot of us were coming with those five main rules and what we learned was all of those could fit into these three bigger categories. So that was part of it, and once we got that, it really was like again, I think, aha moments for lots of us when we're like, oh well, guess what? Kids don't necessarily know how to walk down Hall quietly. You think they should just be able to do this.
Speaker 2:We talked about that. They come to school with a lot less knowing behaviors.
Speaker 3:But we've been here forever, so we're saying they should know how to do this and they should, and we taught our kids to do it and they should, and that's not how it works anymore. So it's as simple as and that was a big like wow. It is as simple as. What do we do when they're walking in the hall? What do we expect? What should it look like? How do we make that happen? Ok, now, what should they do at the bathroom? Way down to the one? Pump of soap, three pools on the paper towel, five second drink or whatever it is like clear down to.
Speaker 3:So then it becomes a, not subjective, it becomes a. This is what it is. The behavior is expected across the board. The building believes this, I'm going to teach this. And then it just becomes a matter of teaching it and oh, we didn't do that right. We need to practice again. And oh, we're going to go back and practice that again. I talked to a teacher today that just said just today she had a little girl walking up and down the steps for three tries at lunchtime because she was jumping down the steps and it was actually really unsafe. She fell. So she's like no, go back and try that again. Go back and try that Third time. She got it right. Oh good, I'm so proud of you. We can go to lunch now. Like we didn't know that kind of stuff we did. It was so simple. It was simple.
Speaker 2:The behavior and we talked about the fact that OK, I know you're saying things like three pulls on the paper towel and some parents even may think that's dumb but the consistency and the fact we talked about this last week. We didn't go out and say, hmm, I want Christine Hunt to come and I want Mrs Peterson, karen to Peterson's to come, because I know they're going. We didn't do that. We said everybody can come. So by opening that invitation and everybody getting together and deciding on these expectations makes, and then the people would go back to their grade levels. They tell about those expectations. If they weren't happy with they're welcome to come. So with that we came together with that matrix that everybody agreed on and when that happens then everybody's willing to enforce it and practice it and it was amazing how many. It's an amazing aha, it really is.
Speaker 3:It's amazing how many places we could find commonality, where we could go. Oh guess what? You don't want your kids around in the hall either. You don't want them to act like this at an assembly. Exactly.
Speaker 3:That's what I saw, we all across the board were like, well, no, this is what we expect, and I would say 95% of us were on board with what we expected. It was just now how do we get there? We had to go a little bit deeper to decide what should that look like and what should our main key points of that be so that we can project these to kids? And, like you said, ok, the paper towels and the soap. Are we going to police that, like, oh my gosh, this is the end of the world? No, but by putting that out there, that creates an expectation for the child so that they are not standing there, you know, clicking on the paper towel thing till the paper towels are all over the floor. Or pump and soap and then splash it. Just, it sets, you know, the standard. We hit it hard at the beginning of the year and then we follow up on it. But basically, like you need to act within reason and here are your reasonable boundaries.
Speaker 1:So this is the genius of all of this. Yes, because I have heard schools talk to schools in the past and you know the committee will make the matrix and I say you need to let the teachers make open it up. You know have. If you're gonna do it after school one night, then have we did it during the day and we probably had lunch or something brought in I don't remember, you know, cause it was a day after school was out.
Speaker 1:We did make those days where we got subs and stuff, where we gave six hours and stuff. But, you know, stay after school one night and feed everybody but and invite anybody that wants to be a part of it and aid the educational aids, the teachers, because when they come around they all begin to see that we do have a lot in common and we do want the same thing.
Speaker 3:And that's the genius of this. Yes, I remember the conversation where we brought a bus driver in and the bus driver we just realized this bus driver was having the same problem with these kids on the bus that we were having here and it was something very simple, and by bringing her into the meetings, we were able to say, hey, here's what we do, here's what we need to.
Speaker 3:We need to expect this on the bus now. We need to expect to just lead to more and more of you know diving deeper into what that should look like, but we all pretty much wanted the same thing as far as how children should behave, right?
Speaker 2:So in this episode, we have discussed creating the why, and I think that's really cool because we have talked a lot about bringing these buildings together and why we needed this system and why it was ready to do it. So our last two episodes A Voice With a Choice and Creating the why we're showing bringing buildings together. So if you're in this process where you are consolidating buildings and you're trying to put together, we have talked about that for the past two podcasts so please look at our podcast, you know, if you're interested in that. We've had great representation Today is Christine Hunt and we've had a great time with her, and so we're gonna wrap this up today. Do you have any other points to share with us today?
Speaker 1:Not really just. You know your staff is your genius and you need to bring them together, whether you're even a building that's been around for a long time and you're just wanting to redo your, your PBIS but including everybody in on that matrix and the beginning parts of this, year Because the top down does not work.
Speaker 2:No, it does not. Top down. Work from the bottom up, create a solid foundation and have a majority buy-in. All right, thank you so much for staying with us on episode six, creating the why I'm Diane Farrell.
Speaker 1:And I'm Diane Ruff. And so next time, join us on our PBIS journey to genius when we discuss the beginning of implementing tier one. A year of beginnings.
Speaker 2:Thank you, bye-bye On the next episode of hydraulic painting research.
