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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 7 PBIS and the Magic of Data: A Tale of Changing Student Behavior
Have you ever wondered how data can be used to positively influence behavior management in schools? Join us for an engaging discussion with Becky Miller, Assistant Principal at Minerva Elementary, as we uncover the truth. With her admirable passion for children and love for data, Becky transitioned from the classroom to administration to take her mission to the next level.
During our enlightening chat, Becky opens up about the integral role of data in Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS). She provides an intriguing glimpse into the workings of Minerva Elementary, with an example of how behavior data helped identify patterns and reasons behind a student's daily meltdowns. This led to an effective action plan, highlighting the power of data. Furthermore, Becky shares valuable advice on the importance of understanding the "why" behind a child's behavior, and why relationship-building experiences reign supreme over monetary rewards.
In the final leg of our discussion, Becky illuminates her experience with data-driven decision-making in PBIS. She walks us through how it facilitated her in pinpointing the root causes of student behavior. Her insights stress the significance of a data-driven approach in creating a system of positive reinforcement and discipline based on evidence. If you're intrigued by how data can reveal crucial insights into student behavior, this episode promises to be a memorable one.
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. We are PBIS Journey to Genius and I am Diane Farrell and I'm here with Diane Ruff, and we are educators that have worked together for many years. We put a positive behavior intervention and support system together in our school system, which has gotten a lot of school awards and recognition. But now we're sharing our journey with you through a podcast every week. We're sharing our trials, our successes, so that we might help you in your positive behavior intervention journey. All right, diane, what were we talking about last week?
Speaker 1:All right. So our last episode we had our Christine Hunt in here and we talked a lot about creating the matrix and the three big rules. This week we want to talk about the importance of tracking behavior data. We're one of the main parts of the Tier 1 for PBIS and so we've got to be able to track that data. And here to help us discuss that is Becky Miller, and she is the assistant principal here at the Minerva Elementary, so welcome, becky.
Speaker 2:Thank you All right. So, as you all know, if you've been listening to us, every time we have a guest on, we ask why did you get into education and what was your aha that's kept you there? You're going to treat Becky the same way. So, mrs Miller, what is your? Why?
Speaker 3:My why certainly is I've always had a passion for children, whether it be because of having a big family oldest of six children, always babysitting. I've always loved school, so I did extracurriculars. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Did you play school when you were little? I played school when I yes, I tortured my siblings, my little, my little brothers, especially they were 10 years younger than I was. We did 4-H so I was a Cloverbud advisor. So I had my little Cloverbud and we would do our project.
Speaker 2:I didn't know. That's what they were called. Well, this is before.
Speaker 3:you're actually a 4-H-er. You're a Cloverbud first, all right. So yes we would do little units on sheep and pigs.
Speaker 1:So all the 4-H-ers out there, yeah, you know what a Cloverbud is.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know what a Cloverbud is.
Speaker 3:So just seemed natural You're a-ha, my a-ha, my a-ha. I can't believe it's been 29 years. So the two a-has were my first year of teaching. You know the overwhelming, the learning, a new system, a new programs, managing kids, managing parents, collaborating with my colleagues and then it just that all kind of fell into place and then you got settled into doing that and getting better and tweaking everything as you go along To your first, to my first year as administrator in 2010. So now you're switched gears. Now I switched gears. Instead of worrying about a classroom to manage, it was a building. I was assistant principal at that time but the overwhelming that first year overwhelming, meeting new faces. It was a large building, the power of collaboration with all of those teachers my principal for sure that was. You know that overwhelmed me. But then you look back and you think, oh my gosh, if I would have had something like what I know now with PBIS, I could have done it so much better.
Speaker 2:And this is why we talked to had Becky come in. Actually, the idea behind this podcast came from my daughter. So my daughter was talking to me, who's a teacher down in Florida, and we were talking about PBIS and I was talking to Diana about it and she's like what if you don't have the administrative support? You know, mom, what if you don't have it? And we talked in our earlier podcast that we were lucky to have that administrative support and I said, well, you know what drives administrators and that's data. So we decided to form a podcast about what will sell your administrators on PBIS being a great thing if they're not totally sold already. And that's data. So when Becky came to us, she said she was from a different junior. She was at a junior high before then.
Speaker 1:So before we go there, though. Go ahead. Why did you go into administration? Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 3:Well it took me out of the classroom.
Speaker 1:What took me out of the classroom? Because you were in the classroom for about.
Speaker 3:I was in the classroom for 15 years, weren't you 10, 12,? 15 years. Yes, 12 years, because we actually made the move.
Speaker 1:I think, at the same time, we pretty much we did yes.
Speaker 3:When I was teaching here, you were the lead mentor and I was a mentor at the middle school, but why I went into? Well, I mean, the opportunity came, I brought my data. I had data. We sit down, we had lunch, it all was with data. Like you said, or like your daughter was saying, what if the admin are?
Speaker 1:you know On board, yeah, and data drives decisions. Data drives decisions.
Speaker 3:Just by nature in my classroom what was data driven? And then it became for the building. I was the reading guru or the data guru for reading progress. Back then it was Lexiles. Everybody was all about the SRI. We take the SRI every. It was every month. So I had all that data and tracking and I had at risk kiddos that I was teaching in special ed so we made tremendous growth but I had all that data to support it so I had something to sit down with at. The interview was really what it was.
Speaker 3:So I had my little binder and so I was doing the leadership things already in my building with data that I thought I could you could take to the next level.
Speaker 1:I could take to the next level.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I just I loved the classroom. I was on board in the classroom.
Speaker 2:It kind of came unexpectedly and you just you know, and I loved the full circle of Becky because she went from an assistant principal, then moving on to a curriculum director and then moved herself back to assistant principal. Look at that. And now she's back with children again, which you know because as a curriculum, director, and that's why I left you left with adults. I mean you are helping adults.
Speaker 3:I miss the children, farrell. That's why I wanted to come, all right. Well, that's awesome, I did.
Speaker 2:Well, when Becky came to us because she came to us two years ago, this is your second year, right, and when you came to us, you had different systems at your old job. Now remember that was several years ago, because you've been a curriculum director here for how long, oh I was uh, how long, how many? Was it 12?
Speaker 3:No, I think it was nine, nine years, okay, so it's been a while since you were a principal. Oh yeah, 2010.
Speaker 2:But you did have systems in place back then, Of course you had to. So what were your choices of systems back then? What did you use?
Speaker 3:Oh, we do well, everybody used what was your office referral system like back then, do you remember?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3:Dazzle. Everybody used Dazzle at that time. Okay, Infractions and actions right, okay. So when an office, whether I entered the data or the secretary entered the data, it was an office referral write up and we had infractions, are what rules they break in the handbook? And the action was what was the consequence or what was the punishment in this?
Speaker 2:sense. Okay, I like what you say. What action did they break in the handbook? Were there listed behaviors that were meant an office?
Speaker 3:referral Dazzle was matched to our handbook.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it was speaking the same language, because we kind of talked in one of our earlier podcasts that that's one of the big things we did with PBS is put major and minor. We set those out Like what is designated as an office referral, what's the classroom? And that wasn't really clear, but you're saying it was clear.
Speaker 3:It was in terms of. That was our reporting system. That's where they went. Now, when I went there, I was following suit as the assistant principal to the gentleman who was the assistant principal, so he had, for example, the majors and minors. The building had brainstormed and had the majors and minors designated. There was a chart for that. I do. I do certainly remember that. So they knew, the teachers knew, and what was coming. We didn't have lots of kids down the office because teachers thought it was major. That was not the case. Everybody was pretty clear on majors and minors, I felt.
Speaker 2:And maybe that's more prevalent at a middle school, maybe Because she was a middle school and we're coming from the elementary world when that isn't as prevalent. As to what designates Cause we talked about how some teachers have different definitions of that.
Speaker 1:Compare that now to. You're out of it for a while nine years you come back, and so we have a system set up called Swiss and how to track the data. And then what? So compare the two like are they about the same as what you're used to or a little bit different?
Speaker 3:Or I think, in terms of the framework of reporting data out, I'm accustomed to, we would. I would do a discipline report every quarter and we could generate the list of infractions like the most you know, most role broken you know, disobedience or insubordination. Right, where did it happen? The bus or lunch? I could do that with the information, but, like today we had, but with Swiss, and this is my second year with Swiss today we had a discipline meeting or PBS meeting, and the report that we shared with the team today is very detailed, more explicit, more information.
Speaker 2:So before we get into that, Diane talk a little bit about what Swiss is and how we get it economically. So Swiss is actually. People don't know.
Speaker 1:A data driven program for schools, and the way we acquired it was through the county. The county at the time would train us in PBIS and then they actually said we were kind of told we had to use it at the time. Now I don't know if that's the case now, because we've been using Swiss since probably 2015. And it's one.
Speaker 2:S right S-W-I-S, s-w-i-s yeah, not like Switzerland, no. Just saying, and I don't remember what the acronym stands for but you got it more economically if you were a PBIS school, didn't you? Yes?
Speaker 1:we did and if we were trained by a person at SST-9, so that person from SST-9, county person came out, trained us and then we were able to get it very very economic.
Speaker 2:Is that still the way Do?
Speaker 3:we not it's like $500.
Speaker 2:Yes, which is a lot less than what it really is. I think.
Speaker 1:As long as you're a PBIS school, just so you know out there, and so if you're curious to know about this particular software, all you need to do is just Google S-W-I-S discipline program and it will pop up. I believe it's Schoolwide. Intervention System Maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, that's probably what it Nice, that's a good job, that's a good acronym, schoolwide Intervention System. I love it, gold star for me.
Speaker 1:There we go. So, yes, one of the big things that they taught us at the time, and is still very important, is not only knowing when the infraction happens, knowing when a child misbehaves. When is it happening? The time of day, the location, the day of the week so that you can really break that down and begin to really try to figure out a child. The whole reason to do that is to create an intervention for the child, which is what we said Swiss is all about.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, do you want to go ahead and then talk about yeah, talk a little bit about how you About the meeting today, since you've started using it, because you're new to it and what you like about it and maybe what you use today in the meeting.
Speaker 3:Well, the report I'm looking at here, that we brought and discussed today at the meeting, shows the average referrals per day, per month, multi-year. So we go back as far as 2019-20 school year. So there's a table that shows the trend line for the past five years. So on the first page here we are looking at for the month of October, November, so it goes by month. So you have all the months listed for the past five years and an easy little table. We noticed today that at our November meeting we are currently at 37 office referrals for the month of November, Whereas last year at this point last year we were at 75, the year before that, 95. So then you can see the trend data for that. We range from 70 to 90. In the month of November, However, we were at 37 right now.
Speaker 2:So right away, okay, so you see that data, it's 37. That's significant.
Speaker 1:I mean that's half. That's really significant and in a building.
Speaker 2:remember, we have 850 kids in this building, so it's a large elementary, second largest. So for 37 office referrals for 850 kids, that's wonderful. So think now, when you talk about that, what's different, what have you emphasized, put in place that you think might be making that happen?
Speaker 3:We had discussed towards the end of last year and then, as we reviewed last year, rolling into this year, putting a stronger emphasis on the 10 day reward. All the classrooms do a 10 day reward system. They keep track, not 10 consecutive days, but when a kiddo gets a 10 day reward they hit 10 good days, good choices, all green stamps. They get a and acknowledgement for that. And so we've increased that, building wide.
Speaker 2:A little bit more administrative support in that too, aren't you? Because it was a little bit in the past, wasn't it Diane Moore, the teacher it was, it was just more classroom teachers doing that, and so last year we thought what if the office jumps on board?
Speaker 1:To help, support To support, and so some of the things that we've implemented, that's really taken off.
Speaker 3:That's really taken off Well.
Speaker 2:Name a couple of those things you do that you're so busy doing now. Yeah, I'm running around like a nut acknowledging kids instead of discipline kids, but isn't it great that she's acknowledging good behavior instead of punishing poor choices?
Speaker 3:100%. So at the end of every day we do announcements and I receive texts. I receive emails from teachers. We're celebrating reading growth, whether it be Lexia, whether it be 40 book challenge, matter of the grade level. We're celebrating. We're shouting these kids out because that's being very responsible on working on your reading skills. So I'm giving shout outs for you know their academics math lift off extra math completions. They graduate from certain levels for math Facebook famous you know that's been a big one.
Speaker 2:They hit that 10 day reward.
Speaker 3:They hit a 10 day reward. They get to choose from different things. So Facebook famous is an option. They're posted on Facebook and then we do a Polaroid out here on the bulletin board. But the joke of the day, they love to come down at the end of our announcements each day and they just do a corny joke Becky started this last year.
Speaker 2:It's hysterical. She just picks a joke of the day and the kids get to do the punchline. It's hysterical.
Speaker 3:No, now the kids are doing the joke, Farrell. They come down and they have the joke. We have to filter it first.
Speaker 2:You remember everyone, I retired, so I am not here this year. So this is all the fun things that started to happen at the end of last year.
Speaker 3:So those are the ones I can think of right now that we do. But we just started telling what the acknowledgements like the we're telling the amount of or the numbers of acknowledgements that we do throughout the day versus a referral Right? So right now we just started doing this, probably the past five days, because we just needed to somehow capture this we were doing between 12 to 15 acknowledgements a day for appropriate behaviors versus, you know, three to five office referrals.
Speaker 1:So that's data, so and that's just scratching the surface, because we also one of the big ones that they really like is eating with a friend In our building kindergarten through fifth grade. They all eat with their classrooms and in past years we would let fifth grade, towards the end of the school year, begin to eat, you know, with any friend they wanted and not sit with their class. But now we stick with always eat with your classroom. We did that at the end of last year so that that 10 day reward becomes great big. I'm going to work really hard so I can choose to eat lunch with a friend. So that's not even included in your tallies so far. And then all of the ones that the teachers just have. You know kids pick to eat with their teacher. They pick to sit in the special chair or and do you see, all these aren't monetary rewards.
Speaker 2:So some of the things you know. The big drawbacks that I have heard about PBIS is oh, they just go to the office to get trinkets in it. It's a lot of money and it's just little, and that's not what it?
Speaker 1:needs to be.
Speaker 2:In fact, it's better to have experiences.
Speaker 1:Experiences and relationship building experiences, because even if they get to eat with that friend that's in another classroom, they're working on a relationship and you know they get that special seat in the cafeteria. Coming down to the office, it's really about the relationships.
Speaker 2:Plus, everyone sees that they have earned that. So like AIDS and cafeteria workers and other people like that can acknowledge them because they see that happening.
Speaker 1:And that's happening. So, you know, again, acknowledging we think the big difference here in the drop is the acknowledgement system, for sure and acknowledging both behaviors, the expected behaviors, and working on their academics both ways. And we are a leader in me school, so we're in our third year of leader in me, so we've kind of blended the two together, you know. So, creating leaders in through this in the school, in the classroom, and so and again that acknowledgement system. So we're gonna continue. We asked our tier one team today, if they, how could we report more of the acknowledgement system, because other schools use, like Dojo and that's an acknowledgement system.
Speaker 2:So you're seeing the data on who's all being acknowledged, or I think your daughter participated in another one, the PBIS rewards, which is a bump when you were talking about that other school and the beads in the idea. So PBIS rewards is the one where you actually have a downloaded app and then each child has a like a name tag that has their picture and a barcode on it, and then you bump them, so you take your phone which has the app on it, and if they're doing something well or you just bump them and then that data goes right to the office.
Speaker 1:And then you can see.
Speaker 2:Now, that's a system that you know we've talked about investing in, so it's an idea. It's kind of like Class Dojo, but it's for the whole building. Everyone would have the app on their phone and then bump them throughout the building.
Speaker 3:So that's just an idea.
Speaker 1:Another idea of that whole acknowledging case Everywhere doing good things, sure, so we could get into a whole another podcast on the acknowledgement system, and we will. That is a big deal, but today we just want to talk about you know, it's really important to look at your data every month and share it with your staff. So today we met with our PBIS Tier 1 team and shared the data, but then when we have a staff meeting, we share out the same data to everyone. The where my hope is, our hope is, is that the Tier 1 team will take it back to the grade level TBT, the teacher based team, because you give them copies of those reports.
Speaker 1:We do, but then I also think that it's really important that a staff meeting to continue to share out. So do you want to talk a little bit more about what we've learned from the data?
Speaker 3:this month. Yeah, the referrals by grade. We learned that for the month between October 18th and November 15th, grade one has the most office referrals, with 14, followed by second grade with two, and that's just by the grade. By the grade level, we have referrals by students. We have one. We have one little girl in third grade with six office referrals. She's leading the way and the other she's followed closely by a second grader with four, and there's names on here as well. But when you can go to each of these kiddos and drill down to see like I'm giving you the building snapshot of this with each of these kiddos, boy, you can drill down to see what the behavior is, where it's happening, time of day, what day of the week, specifically as we look at creating a plan, because they're both on behavior plans.
Speaker 2:That's what I wanna say. Why is that so important to know where it's happening and why? Because you're looking for patterns and you're looking for reasons. We all believe that children react to situations mostly for a reason, and so there's good in every single child.
Speaker 1:And so we wanna know what. Here's an aha. Yes, do it, and you'll remember that aha moment.
Speaker 2:Do the aha. I know what you're doing because you're looking at me.
Speaker 1:I know. So we had a fourth grader years ago, right?
Speaker 2:Years ago.
Speaker 1:When we first started, the Swiss and he was melting down at around 11 o'clock every day and we didn't even realize the time we didn't. We just go oh, he's melting down again, we get down, we get him out of class or we empty the classroom.
Speaker 2:He's under the desk.
Speaker 1:All the things. And so one of us thought why don't we look at the data? Yeah, let's look at the data. So we looked at the data and lo and behold, it was happening at around 11 o'clock almost every day in the classroom. Well, we come to find out when we talk to him about it that, first of all, our fourth grade has a very long time to be in class. They don't even Extreme long morning we eat lunch until one o'clock.
Speaker 3:I think at that time it was one o'clock.
Speaker 2:Now they do have a snack, but and they do get them up in the classroom, but it's still it is, it's still academic for many hours.
Speaker 1:Maybe he wasn't bringing a snack all the time.
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:So we determined, in talking with him and looking at the time, that he was needing a break. He needed to get out and walk around, take a break. So we actually assigned him to the custodian.
Speaker 2:He went to the cafeteria To help the custodian and help open up kindergarten things, just for like 10 minutes. Now he's a fourth grader, so he's good at that and he thought he was amazing. Yes, he was a helper, so he got a snack and he went to the kindergarten lunch and he helped open up things, which you know, if you're a kindergarten teacher, is very tedious.
Speaker 1:So he did that and he was only out of class for about 10 minutes, but when you think about all the meltdowns he was having, he was causing a big commotion in the classroom.
Speaker 2:That was probably lasting 10 to 15 minutes and that was when fourth grade was really having a snack and a transition time anyway. So he really wasn't missing that much curriculum. But it changed behavior.
Speaker 1:So the idea behind that is, when you're looking at data and you're looking at why Just by giving him a break Looking for the why, like you said, drilling down.
Speaker 2:And looking at that and without this seeing the time of day, we never would have put that together.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Never would have put that together as, oh my gosh, why is it always happening here? So that's one of the many reasons, and I know Diane was looking at me as soon as you were talking about that, because that's happened many times with different students since then, but that was our very first one.
Speaker 1:That was our aha moment.
Speaker 2:Aha, yes, and it worked, and so that was an even bigger aha. Yes, but you know, if you don't have this yet, because when I was talking to my daughter they don't have Swiss yet, so that's not there you can do this in your very own room. I talked about that. Start with how many times are you reprimanding children? Are you talking to children? Are you saying a student's name? Just make little marks, collect your own data, then put some PBIS things in place in your room.
Speaker 2:Do some acknowledgement systems things and see if your data changes. You can do this before and after data is easy to do just in your room.
Speaker 1:And then we always said, success is contagious.
Speaker 2:So if you do it and then your partner teacher sees that it's decreasing your referrals or your reprimands or you're even having to say a student's name, then if they do it, and then they do it, and they do it Now administrators are gonna start to think about this.
Speaker 3:If your dad is showing decrease, they're gonna wanna jump on that Well, and then also as we drill down, but for kiddos, like I'm looking right here for referrals by behavior for this time period, you know physical aggression and defiance for the two leading infraction I guess would be two leading behaviors. So when we drill down and look at it specifically to a kiddo and if it is, you know, physical aggression or defiance, we now do small group retaching.
Speaker 2:This is started just this year.
Speaker 3:Talk about that a minute Small group instruction for a handful of kids who are also struggling with defiance, for example. You know, because we look at their data, we look at repeat offenders. Oh look, we have two or three that are struggling with the same behavior. They shore up two or three times a week at 230 for about a 15, 20 minute lesson on, you know, being respectful, raising your hand before speaking. We do practice and we teach these appropriately. So that was something that was an aha moment to me. Imagine that we're a school right and we're teaching appropriate behavior as well.
Speaker 3:So that's happening. So that might be also part of the why we are significantly lower.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a second thing you've put in place this year and I think that's amazing that you are you know that's a tier two intervention. You know that's really awesome that you're teaching that behavior in a special time in a day, addressing the specific behavior.
Speaker 3:Where it's happening playground, classroom, bus, hallway it can be reenacted you know yes.
Speaker 2:Take them out there to physically show them, so that is super awesome. Well, we're about at the end, I know. So our message today was about data, data, data and administrators are driven by data, and if you can show that it's working, like Miss Miller, becky, thank you so much for coming today, and then that's a good way to get that into your school.
Speaker 1:It is, and then using the data to begin to correct those behaviors, to reteach the behaviors to the desired behaviors that we want teaching kids what it looks like and sounds like to be safe, responsible and respectful. And the data tells us specifically where to start. And so you know, data is very important. Again, we use the Swiss management system, but there's a lot of systems out there the Dojo, couple of other ones that will help you with that. Of course, if you have any questions, you can always email us at pbisjourneyforgenius at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:And we have recently established a Facebook page and an Instagram. So if you want to visit those, their pbisjourney to genius, Facebook and on Instagram, that'll give you highlights and captions of our podcast and then links to be able to access it and listen on your own.
Speaker 1:So thanks so much, and we want to hear from you, because we will yes, we will reach out back to you with your questions, your comments, but definitely thank you for staying with us.
Speaker 2:We are episode seven Data Driven.
Speaker 1:My name is Diane Farrell and this is I'm Diane Ruff. Join us next week on PBIS Journey to Genius. Seriously, 앉y 5.
