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| I call this the David White Bench - my SEL role model |
Our
Positive Behavior Supports strategies are in place and implementation is in full swing. I often get questions about the components of our PBS strategies and how each of the separate components fit within the larger PBS framework. Here's the breakdown of the overall PBS strategy that you hear our superintendent Dr. Carstarphen champion so eloquently in all she does. APS is on course!
PBS, our Positive Behavior Supports strategies plan presented last March to the APS board, is one component within our district's Strategic Plan. Specifically, the PBS work lies within the Academics Strategic Initiatives, but also fits very neatly with the work around Culture. And honestly, the skill sets that we work on within PBS permeate all we do.
Within our PBS strategies plan, there are four main areas of focus. Each campus has a
PBS team which helps guide the work as each focus area unfolds and/or as needs arise around supports. These campus
PBS teams, led by the campus administration, are key to success and fidelity to implementation. The four broad areas of focus for our PBS strategies work are
Foundational Supports, Wrap Around Supports, Restorative Justice/Practices, and the heart of all we do, SEL (Social Emotional Learning).
Foundational Supports
PBIS. Our team has been actively laying the groundwork for Cohort II of PBIS - 12 new schools brought on board this year.
And not to be confused with our overarching strategy work of PBS! Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a specific framework where schools are given tools to develop their own protocols and procedures and beliefs as they pertain to school and classroom expectations, core statements of behavior, and more.
PBIS is truly that underpinning for looking at your own school and classroom data and then developing those "systems" to ensure expectations for behavior, protocols to use for different situations, and more are in place.
It is the framework. Our
PBIS coach (and RTI coordinator) Deanna Rogers has been working with the GADoE to guide trainings and deliverables from the campuses who were chosen for Cohort II. Additionally, Deanna has been giving support to the Cohort I schools to ensure they are on track and have what they need.
Up next: Continued coaching support for Cohorts I and II (and collecting their evidence that they are indeed doing the work), with a spring look ahead to Cohort III. Plus, we will be moving this work to the SEL team for a more cohesive and manageable implementation for our campuses and to ensure we are showing the connections and how it all fits for those living the work each day in our schools.
No Place for Hate. Sponsored by the Southeast Anti-Defamation League, we recently participated in the FY16 NPFH kick off rally at Turner Field with well over 2,000 APS students pre-registered to attend (yep, that was the final official number given to me).
No Place for Hate is a common messaging we want our schools to embrace, ensuring all voices and all identities at our schools are welcome and included. It is a program that fits nicely within our goals of
PBS and also ties very nicely into Student Services related work such as our district LGBT committee, our new
Now It's Ours community task force around childhood and teen sexual violence, and more. We have our first district wide NPFH activities week on track for October, with campus counselors leading the work at each APS school - all have registered at the ADL site and are ready to roll with individual campus activities driven by their own data and need. Our vision is for every APS school to earn the NPFH banner by the end of the year, having demonstrated that through words and deeds they are embracing the message of Inclusion for All. Powerful. We'll keep you posted.
Up next: Each APS campus fully participates in their fall and spring activity NPFH weeks, demonstrate commitment to inclusive practices, and
Get Those Banners to Proudly Hang in their Schools!
Campus behavior trainings based on campus need. We have new Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA's) on staff now within Student Services and these folks have developed some internal tools (to be rolled out formally to principals this week) for ease of access to student behavior supports
and to request
campus trainings around such things as de-escalation techniques. The bank of deliverable trainings is a work in progress, but the tools are built, are live, and I hear, starting to be utilized.
Up Next: Adding to our bank of BCBA/other support staff trainings to include cultural responsive classroom strategies and more. A build out of robust tools in order to better serve our schools when needs arise.
Wrap Around Supports
Wrap Around Supports is exactly what most of us think it is - we offer supports to wrap around or fill in gaps for our families and students. Helping with basic life needs such as health care access, clothing, food, access to adult learning, and more. Some of the work we finished last year included a robust procurement process and the selection of
six external mental health therapeutic providers for each cluster. From the vetted list and a presentation by the chosen 6 providers, clusters then chose one cluster provider - something we felt was needed in order for the relationships between provider/school/families to be meaningful and long-term, for the work to be cohesive, and a better way for our team to support clusters by meeting with these providers periodically to talk real time outcomes. These providers are meant to be those extra layers of support as Tier III needs become evident and are also available for campus staff if they need to utilize supports as well. Great partnership so far and we are hearing that campuses are finding these new relationships valuable.
Up next: We are finalizing potential sites to build out possible school based health clinic pilots (4 strong contenders have been identified through campus and staff surveys/needs assessment/
space availability and viability/etcetera - parent surveys now rolled out to those potential sites!). We are also participating in another robust procurement process for Tier III Mentoring supports - identified by principals as a real need. Finally, we are participating in continued talks with external partners to see how we can continue to build the supports for our schools and families in order for our students to have all they need to thrive. All in progress.
Restorative Justice/Practices
We envisioned this piece as an answer to "What happens when students make mistakes?". As we've moved deeper into our own understanding around the work, we've found that not only does Restorative Practice fit nicely with our goal for restorative actions to happen for victim and offender when mistakes are indeed made, but also have found how easily the pieces fit within our other PBS work - such as the Restorative Circles so commonly used within SEL. We are piloting this work (
yes, for RJ, it is a pilot) in the Douglass Cluster this year, with a
full Douglass Cluster staff kick-off on October 8, plus also a deeper dive (thanks Chief Sands-Hall) at WestEnd Academy, Crim High School, and Forest Hills Academy at varied times and dates this fall. Additionally, our student behavior code was updated over the summer to reflect more restorative and progressive discipline practices and our internal district behavior forms have been updated
and are continuing to be updated to reflect the new direction we are taking (which will be reviewed and refined over the year as needed by our Behavior Code committee).
Up next: Building our capacity within our Student Services staff to deliver the work and also moving the work of Restorative Justice & Practices to the SEL team for a more cohesive and manageable implementation for our campuses and to ensure we are showing the connections and how it all fits for those living the work each day in our schools.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
We think of
SEL as the linchpin, the heart and soul of our overarching PBS work. This work comprises components of each item above and truly is our most robust effort around changing climate and culture at our schools, while also giving students the academic foundational tools needed in order to be successful each and every day. It is a big lift as you've most likely heard Dr. Carstarphen mention many times, but with the support of our national partner CASEL and through our SEL team, keeping a laser focus on the 5 competencies of Social Awareness, Self Awareness, Self Management, Responsible Decision Making, and Relationship Skills, we know this work can produce better outcomes for our students, while helping the adults in their lives build skill sets as well. Through this important work, we know we can improve both student and adult skills to better manage emotions when we are angry, frustrated, or disappointed with ourselves or with each other. We know we can improve both student and adult skills in the area of making responsible and respectful decisions - and knowing what those decisions will mean to ourselves and to others. And really, at the core of it all, we know we can improve the student and adult skill sets needed to build quality relationships within ourselves and with others. So we can get to the
us of us.
Our
SEL team, led by Kori Sanchez-Smith, has helped implement district level
SEL trainings this summer, provided all campuses with access to basic
SEL resources so they can begin some initial groundwork on their own if they choose, ongoing and intense staff/PBS team trainings for our Cohort I schools (Carver Cluster, South Atlanta Cluster, ALL Middle Schools, BEST Academy, CSK Academy), coaching support within the classrooms/schools for Cohort I schools, plus support/resources for programming within Cohort I classrooms - including first few weeks' Community Building lessons and soon to be implemented
Second Steps curriculum for Pre-K-8 classrooms at each Cohort I school. Plus, her team has facilitated trainings to such campus support staff as bus drivers, safety officers, and cafeteria workers.
LOTS of robust support that will continue and will grow.
Up next: Continued monthly trainings and work with CASEL in our Cohort I schools and (periodically) for district administration, training for our custodial staff, a build-out of crisis intervention tools for at-the-ready campus use, finalizing APS SEL standards and embedding those and core competencies within our academic curriculum docs (Teaching and Learning actively involved!), and
finally a look ahead to add 3 more clusters in Cohort II (while continuing to support Cohort I of course). A tall order to be sure, but if our capacity to do more with quality and with fidelity is in place, we will do more.
I'm sure there will be revisions to how we approach the work in the months and years ahead as we get continued feedback on how we are doing and how things are working at schools. However, we do envision a day in the not too distant future that we will have PBS supports solidly in place within our schools, clusters, and district. That's our goal, within the strategic plan work championed and guided by our Superintendent, our board, the Academics office, and our stakeholders. We're happy to carry out this important work for our students.
