Creating a Safe and Civil School: A Multi-tiered Approach

Creating a Safe and Civil School: A Multi-tiered Approach

Misbehavior in schools can disrupt the learning environment, and have a devastating effect on the safety and civility of a school. However, by implementing a comprehensive approach that includes clear school-wide expectations, explicit teaching of those expectations, incentivizing positive behavior, consistent enforcement, upholding consequences, and integrating social-emotional competency practice, schools can create a supportive and disciplined atmosphere where students can thrive and staff enjoy their work. This blog explores how these strategies, combined with progressive and restorative discipline practices, can effectively decrease misbehavior and build a stronger, more trusting school community.

1. Establishing Clear School-Wide Expectations

The foundation of a well-behaved school environment is a clear and complete set of school-wide expectations. These expectations should be:

• Specific and understandable: Clearly defined behaviors that are easy for students to understand and follow.

• Positively stated: Focus on what students should do, rather than what they shouldn’t.

• Visible and accessible: Displayed prominently throughout the school to serve as constant reminders.

• Stakeholder Consensus: Establishing these expectations should be a transparent process that includes representatives from all stakeholders to ensure collective buy-in.

2. Explicitly Teaching Expectations

Once expectations are established and agreed upon, it is crucial to teach them explicitly. All students should know what the expectations look like, sound like, and feel like. This can be achieved through:

• Classroom lessons and activities: Integrate teaching expectations into regular classroom activities. Explicitly teach the expectations at the beginning of the year, after long breaks off of school, and any time behaviors seem to escalate. These saturation lessons help keep students accountable and incentivized.

• Role-playing scenarios: Allow students to practice and demonstrate understanding of expected behaviors while the teacher gives positive, specific, and meaningful feedback on their practice and have students redo it until they achieve what’s expected.

• Visual aids and reminders: Use posters, charts, and other visual tools to reinforce lessons. Students should know what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like.

3. Incentivizing Positive Behavior

Recognizing and rewarding positive behavior can motivate students to adhere to expectations and creates a positive school climate. Effective strategies include:

• Immediate reinforcement: Provide instant positive, specific feedback for good behavior.

• Reward systems: Implement systems like points or Behavior Bucks that can be exchanged for privileges or small prizes.

• Public recognition: Celebrate positive behavior in front of peers through announcements or classroom rewards.

• Combination: One way to combine public recognition and rewards systems is to use Behavior Bucks where students can earn a Behavior Buck individually, but the rewards are tied to how many Behavior Bucks their classroom earns altogether. In this system, students can earn Behavior bucks from any staff member but their own classroom teacher. They take that Behavior Buck back to their classroom where they are celebrated by their peers, and the Behavior Bucks are collected, displayed, and counted to achieve rewards after certain amounts have been earned by the class.

4. Consistent Enforcement by All Staff

Consistency is key in maintaining school-wide expectations. This requires:

• A Unified approach: All staff members must be on the same page regarding rules and consequences, and everyone must constantly enforce them using progressive and logical consequences.

• Ongoing training: Regular reminders for seasoned staff and frequent professional development sessions for new staff to ensure everyone is effectively enforcing expectations. One of the most difficult responsibilities of the job that new teachers struggle with is having brave conversations with upset parents regarding their child’s misbehavior, so ensuring new staff is given support through professional development, feedback, and practice sessions is essential to their success.

• Clear communication: Maintain open lines of communication among staff to address issues and ensure consistent application of rules and so administration will know how to best support.

5. Social-Emotional Competency Practice

Integrating social-emotional learning (SEL) throughout the school day helps students develop essential skills such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Strategies include:

• Dedicated SEL lessons: Incorporate SEL into the curriculum with structured lessons.

• Mindfulness activities: Practice mindfulness techniques to help students manage stress and emotions. PE and Health are great times to incorporate mindfulness activities.

• Collaborative projects: Encourage teamwork and communication through group activities.

• Goal Setting: All students should set goals and keep them in a portfolio where they are encouraged to track their progress in Reading, Writing, Math, attendance, and SEL.

6. Accountability through Progressive and Restorative Discipline

When misbehavior occurs, it is important to address it through a balanced approach that includes both progressive and restorative discipline practices.

Progressive Discipline:

• Gradual escalation: Start with minor, logical consequences for first-time or minor infractions and escalate those consequences for repeated or severe offenses. Tracking student behavior is essential to equitably administering progressive discipline. A clear and concise structure that is easy to follow is a must.

• Firm, Fair, and consistent: Ensure that discipline is applied fairly and consistently to all students. It is imperative to have staff understand the progressive discipline model being used, what logical consequences are, and how to navigate through the system consistently.

Restorative Discipline Process:

• Reflective time: Provide students with time to reflect on their actions and understand the impact on others.

• Logical consequences: Implement consequences that are directly related to the misbehavior and aim to repair harm done and build empathy within the students, so they can understand how their actions affect others in their community.

• Restorative activities: Engage students in activities that help mend the broken trust within the community, such as peer mediation, peace contracts, behavior contracts, community service, or face to face apologies where they articulate how they not only articulate how they are remorseful, but they explain in detail how their actions affect those around them and their own reputation.

• Provide a multi-tiered system of supports: Get your school social worker involved in the process to ensure wrap-around services are provided. Many times misbehavior stems from a larger problem or trauma the student needs help dealing with properly. A solid responsive team to support students and families is essential for building a school culture that is caring, safe, and civil.

By combining these approaches, schools can create an environment where students feel valued, understood, and motivated in order to become strategic thinkers, collaborators, and life-long learners.

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