Thursday, February 15, 2018

Systems for managing the consequence process in Behavior Manager

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

Systems enable flexibility

We define procedures in classrooms to make things go smoothly. The same applies to the process for managing consequences. The difference is that the process for managing consequences is a lot more complex than the classroom procedure for passing out papers or putting dictionaries away.

Using online systems to support the process of managing consequences offers teachers more flexibility than they had before. In the days of paper office referrals, there were two possibilities. You could either make up consequences or you could create simple rules to follow. Most schools, in the spirit of ease and fairness opted for the latter. That’s where policies come from like first offense, warning, second offence, detention, third offense, extra school, fourth offense, ISS, fifth offense, OSS. That’s problematic because consequences that are punishments like these tend to be ineffective for improving long term behavior. Students would often march right up the ladder of escalating consequences until they were suspended. And once suspended, they are missing more instruction time, falling further behind in their classes and becoming more likely to drop out of school.

Some administrations advocate policies of strict sequences of escalating consequences, arguing that by making the sequence mechanical, they are treating everyone the same. It’s important to be fair and equitable. However, another approach, and one that is likely to be more effective, is to treat everyone the same: with dignity and respect. This approach gives greater flexibility to teachers and administrators to exercise their judgement about what would be most effective for the student. Does that open the school to the possibility of bias? Yes, that’s possible, but with the much improved access to data, queries and trends available through online systems, we can readily detect and track down staff who are using their flexibility to not treat everyone with dignity and respect.

Key: Use the flexibility of online systems to increase effectiveness.

It’s better to have more flexibility. But flexibility means more complexity. Enter the online systems to handle complexity easily.

Here’s a simple example. Minor misbehaviors can result in an after school detention. But if that after school detention has to be served on Tuesday, it could be a problem for the student and his parent if the parent is counting on the student to be home right after school on Tuesday to take care of his sister. So, make it more flexible. Allow the student to serve the detention any day but it must be served within a week. That way the student can choose an afternoon when he’s free or, if arrangements must be made for the little sister, there would be time to set it up. It’s more complex but it’s no problem in Behavior Manager because the detention roll is generated automatically and the system keeps track of whether the student has complied with the deadline.

This same system also allows more flexibility on the number of after school detentions assigned. Since the system is keeping track, administrators now have the flexibility of assigning four or five after school detentions instead of one day of ISS. The system will keep track and the student doesn’t miss any class time.

Assembling the context for assigning consequences

Assigning an intervention is an important act. In many cases, one would like to take relevant information into account. What are the details of this incident? How many office referrals has this student had this year? How many this grading period? What interventions have been tried so far? Do they seem to be effective? What is the general policy for dealing with this behavior? For some behaviors, the state imposes consequences. Does that apply in this case? What consequence will I choose? Does it interfere with any pending consequences that have already been imposed but have not yet been satisfied?

A lot of issues can be considered when assigning a consequence. And there are many types of consequences that might be applied. In addition to considering the details of the student’s behavior history, the administrator may wish to discuss it with the student. After all, it’s the student’s problem, not the administrator’s. Perhaps the student should figure out how to solve it. That’s possible because of the wide range of options available to the administrator.

An important benefit of involving the student in solving the problem is that he makes the problem and the solution (intervention) his own. By making the problem his own, the student is correcting his own behavior rather than having a penalty imposed on him. Taking responsibility for the behavior and its consequences makes it more likely that the student will also take responsibility for his behavior in the future.

Data behind the scenes

When the administrator assigns a consequence, a number of things happen behind the scenes. Rolls, such as the detention roll, are updated. The referring teacher is notified that an intervention has been assigned. The incident and consequence automatically become part of the student’s behavior history and are incorporated into behavior dashboards and database queries. If it is an out-of-placement consequence, emails are sent to the student’s teachers requesting assignments for the student to work on while he will be out of class. Parents are notified and the notification is added to the parent contacts database.

All of this data keeps teachers and parents informed. And it makes data available immediately allowing data-based decision making so people have immediate information on status and trends. And that feeds into the opportunities for continuous improvement which will improve student behavior and student achievement over time.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Continuous Improvement

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

Schools and districts often bring in Behavior Manager with the goal of making things quicker and easier. And it does that. Many times, they keep addressing their behavior issues in the same way before Behavior Manager, but now, it’s online. Doing that misses a huge opportunity.

Behavior Manager collects and stores a lot of data. The data can be explored in a variety of different ways and it often reveals insights that were unanticipated.

Typically, when people look through the data available in systems like Behavior Manager, they are looking for the good news. What can I show my superintendent that will impress her? What will I show my staff? Showing off the good news feels good. And often that’s what the recipient wants to see. But there is something much more powerful to pull from data like this: where are the opportunities for improvement?

Many people are reluctant to look for opportunities for improvement because they think of them as problems and they think problems are bad. But if you’re going to do better than you’re doing now, it will be because you found a problem and fixed it. Identifying problems is good. Problems are where all the progress comes from. Problems are opportunities…the opportunities for improvement.

Finding opportunities for improvement is only half the job. The other half is finding and implementing the improvement.

How to explore data in Behavior Manager

Common behavior issues are described by the behavior dashboard.

The quickest way to get started with data in Behavior Manager is with the dashboards. Dashboards show a summary of the most commonly sought behavior metrics. The dashboard above gives a quick overview of behavior issues, where they come from and what has been done about them. The graphs suggest some immediate questions. Why do some teachers have a lot more office referrals than others? Are we providing the best interventions for those students who have the highest number of referrals? What about the out-of-placement consequences? Are there better interventions for keeping those students in class? What about the overall numbers? Should we be satisfied with these numbers? (Hint: no) If not, what are we doing about it? (Hint: you should be working an explicit behavior improvement plan)

 Another useful report is the behavior analytics report. The analytics report to the right is showing the number of out-of-placement days assigned in the school year until January 30. The numbers are compared for this year (red) to previous years (pink). The declining trend looks good. Do we know why it is declining? Is it random or because of something we’re doing right? Should we be happy with this year’s total or should it be half that? What are we going to do about it?

The civil rights dashboard displays key behavior metrics. It compares the percentages of special populations to the overall percentages in the school population.

The civil rights dashboard in this example shows that we need to understand what is going on with consequences  versus race. About 10% of our students are African American but 17% of the out-of-placement consequences assigned are African American. Do we know why?

The query and reporting components of Behavior Manager allow us to ask more specific questions of the data and drill down for more detail and to look for evidence for or against theories we may have.

Taken together, this data suggests opportunities for improvement. It also helps us answer the question, are the steps we’ve taken for improvement working?

Building a culture of continuous improvement

The most important shift is to develop the mindset that our goal is to always be improving. Improving what? Improving everything. And the fundamental metric to improve is student achievement.

Key: Be better than we were yesterday!

In order to improve the school, involve everyone with making improvements all the time. Make a common question be, how are we better today than we were yesterday? From lots of small improvements come big changes.

If a cynic answers, we’re not better today than yesterday, then ask about last week or last month. Pretty soon even the most resistant among us must admit that stagnation is not a winning strategy.

Keep in mind that not every experiment will work. Some attempts at improvement will fail. But it’s still a form of progress to keep trying. Remember Thomas Edison’s response when asked if he had failed to make a practical light bulb:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
-- Thomas Edison

Procedure improvements

Most improvements will be small. You might notice that when students pass papers to the person behind them that there tend to be little disruptions. One student just throws the papers over his head. Another jams the papers into the face of the person behind. You could reprimand or it may be better to change the paper passing procedure to pass papers to the right instead of to the back. If that procedure change helps, make it stick. The aggregation of many small procedure changes results in big behavior changes.

Encourage teachers to share their procedure improvements. A useful new procedure in one class is likely to be useful in others.

Data for insights into common issues

A number of questions are frequently asked in schools. Behavior Manager provides convenient data for insight into the answers. Here are some examples.

How many office referrals are made weekly?

Which students are the most common offenders?

Which teachers make the most referrals?

How are referrals distributed throughout the day?

Where to offences occur?

What are the most common offenses?

How many out-of-placement consequences are being assigned?

Are office referrals biased by race? By ethnicity? By gender? By English proficiency? By special ed status?

Are out-of-placement consequences biased by race? By gender? By English proficiency? By special ed status?

Are serious crimes being reported?

Are there allegations of bullying, intimidation or harassment? How are they distributed over sex, race, nationality and religion?

Are there weapons violations?

If there seems to be racial bias, are certain individuals responsible for it?

How do key success indices compare from the current school year to previous school years? Do the indices indicate improvement?

These questions and more are addressed in the dashboards, civil rights report and behavior analytics report. To dig deeper into these questions or to ask other questions, Behavior Manager includes query capabilities through the behavior population reports, behavior record query and behavior records by intervention.

“That’s funny…”

One of the great benefits of capturing a digital trail of events in schools, is that it can lead to facts and insights that would otherwise be hidden. How should we take advantage of this opportunity?

The science fiction and science fact author, Isaac Asimov wrote

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I have found it!) but “That’s funny…”

That is what the dashboards, reports, analytics, histories, drill downs and the rest are about. Some folks look at that sort of data and think of it only in terms of a snapshot of the status of the school. Yes, it is that. But more important are the opportunities for improvement that it may be revealing.

Here are some general questions to ask.

What are your most important metrics?

A few numbers will be the most important indicators of how your school is doing. What are your key indicators for concerning student behavior? Office referrals per week? Tardies? Out-of-placement consequences? Harassment complaints? The first step is to decide what is important to you and 1) start watching those numbers regularly and 2) make it a specific, scheduled task to take steps to improve them. If you feel that those key numbers are unimprovable, pick the set of next most important indices and improve them.

Does the data contradict your gut feel? In other words, is it funny?

If you’re looking to improve, you’re looking for surprises. If something looks funny, for whatever reason, follow up on it. These are often the sources for the greatest insights.

Keep in mind that you might be surprised in two ways. The numbers may be worse than expected. Or, you may be surprised that the numbers are better than expected. Surprisingly good numbers often point the way to your best opportunities for improvement. Whatever caused that surprisingly good result, identify it and do more of it!

Why are the aggregate numbers this high (low)? Why not lower (higher)? How can we make it lower (higher)?

Pick a data point. For example, pick the number of out-of-placement consequences assigned. Too often we look at a number like that and think that, if it is close to what it has been in the past, then it is okay. With the mindset of continuous improvement, the question should always be, how could we make that better, even if just by a little bit? Small incremental improvements add up to large improvements.

Is there a trend?

Look for trends by week, month, grading period and year. Do you see a pattern? If you do, what do you think causes the pattern? If you see no pattern, why not?

Am I seeing the effect I expected?

When you make a change, what effect do you expect to see? For example, if you’re implementing hallway sweeps between classes to reduce tardies, how much of a reduction in tardies do you expect to see? Are you seeing it? Is it more or less than expected? Has the improvement been worth the effort? What should we try next?

Are there correlations? Do the numbers for a subpopulation differ from the overall aggregate numbers?

This is what drilldown is all about. Compare overall aggregate numbers for whatever you’re investigating to the numbers for subpopulations. We do that in the dashboards for the most common metrics and subpopulations by race, gender, special ed, LEP. Do the differences suggest opportunities for improvement?

Don’t get too hung up on the data.

The goal is to improve. Ideas for improvement will come from all directions, not just out of the data. Solicit ideas from teachers, students and parents. But then figure out how you can measure the current baseline and then the effect of change. Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.

How to create and track improvements with Plan-Do-Check-Act cycles in Behavior Manager

It is best to think of improvement as a repeating process. It’s not just one-and-done, but each improvement is built upon previous improvements and provides opportunity for further improvements.

Also, improvement should be based on the scientific method. We should be specific about what we intend to change and what measureable effects are expected. After we try it, measure the results. Did we see the measured improvement that was expected? After trying this improvement, what should we do next? Implement the improvement? Try an alternative?

This approach to improvement is captured in the simple Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.

Plan – Assess the current situation and hypothesize how it might be improved. What can we measure before and after that would show improvement?

Do – Do the planned improvement. This is a test so implement it as quickly and easily as possible.

Check – Measure the data captured during the Do phase. Did you see the expected improvement? Why or why not?

Act – If the change was an actual improvement, then incorporate it into your process. If not, decide what to do next. Modify the plan and try again? Abandon this approach?

Behavior Manager includes a tool for documenting improvement opportunities and the PDCA cycles to test and implement them.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Teacher skills

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

Teachers create more effective classrooms when they prepare with the proactive big three: expectations, rules and procedures. In addition to these, they can also increase the effectiveness of their classrooms by developing skills for classroom management and skills for presenting engaging lessons.

Classroom management skills

Teacher training rarely provides the skill building needed to effectively manage a classroom. When teachers lack these skills, classrooms are not effective learning environments. In addition, a disorderly classroom can be extremely stressful for the teacher. Inability to effectively manage a classroom is one of the most common reasons that teachers leave the profession.

From the point of view of an inexperienced teacher, master teachers seem to have an effortless way of maintaining a well-run classroom. It appears to be almost magical. But it isn’t. It is based on a particular set of skills.

Teachers don’t need to suffer through presiding over chaotic classrooms. Classroom management depends on a set of skills that can be learned through deliberate practice.

Classroom Management Skills Practice in Behavior Manager

Behavior Manager includes Practice Classroom Management Skills, a game-like application that provides deliberate practice in essential classroom management skills in a real classroom: your classroom!

The teacher is given a skill to practice each day and marks her progress until the full set of skills become second nature. There are five categories of skills: rules and procedures, leadership, cooperation, interventions and mental set. Mental set is further broken down into emotional objectivity and withitness. This collection of skills is based on research on what makes some teachers so much more effective at classroom management than others.

Key: Skills are developed through deliberate practice. (You’re a teacher, you know that!) This application provides a framework for practicing classroom management skills, not just reading about them.

Below is an outline of the skills covered in Practice Classroom Management Skills.

·         Rules and Procedures

·         Leadership

o   Orientation and Goals

o   Authoritative Body Language

·         Cooperation

o   Wish for Someone's Good Day

o   Catch Them Doing Something Right

o   Learn Their Names

o   Talk Informally With Students

o   5 to 1 Ratio

o   Negotiate Difficulties With Class

·         Interventions

o   Reminders

o   Student Self-Assessments

o   Tokens or Symbols

o   Be Assertive

o   Be Consistent

o   Create a Discipline Plan

o   Class Circle

·         Mental Set

o   Practice Emotional Objectivity

o   Practice Withitness

§  Scan

§  Intervene Promptly

§  Use Names

§  Stop Instruction

§  Nonverbal Commands

§  Avoidance

§  Reminders and Warnings

§  Walk Around

Engaging instruction

In addition to classroom management skills, teachers must inspire students to engage in the class content. Engaged students are rarely problem students. While certainly some aspects of engaging instruction is an art, many aspects of it are well known. We’ve included a checklist of aspects of an effective lesson.

Just as pilots go through an extensive preflight checklist before every flight, we recommend that teachers go through the SCORE CHAMPS checklist for every lesson. Yes, it is lengthy. Yes, you may be an experienced teacher. But just as checklists have improved the safety of flight and the outcomes of medical procedures, SCORE CHAMPS can help you present more engaging instruction.

SCORE CHAMPS checklist

¾  Structure

o   Write and follow lesson plans

o   State objectives

o   Use graphic organizers

o   Provide mediated scaffolding

o   Use effective classroom management techniques

¾  Clarity

o   Provide explicit instruction

o   Prime background knowledge

o   Carefully design examples

o   Define vocabulary

o   Teach conspicuous strategies

o   Repeat important information

o   Use organization language (e.g., “First a…then b…)

¾  Opportunities to respond

o   Provide high levels of opportunities to respond to instructional stimuli during new learning and practice

o   Ensure high levels of correct responding

o   Use a variety of response formats, including choral responding and response cards

¾  Redundancy

o   Ensure repetition in teaching new skills

¾  Explicit instruction

o   Provide direct, teacher-led instruction

o   Incorporate elements of structure, clarity, opportunities to respond and redundancy

o   Provide clear feedback for student responses

¾  CHoices

o   Provide choices before and during academic tasks

¾  Assess the forms of knowledge

o   Determine whether instruction targets represent factual learning, rule learning, conceptual learning, procedural learning or problem-solving learning

o   Use instructional methods that are appropriate for the form of knowledge being taught

¾  Monitor student learning

o   Monitor students’ academic progress using frequent, objective data

¾  Practice

o   Provide sufficient practice opportunities that reflect the learning objectives, provide high levels of response opportunities and provide immediate feedback

¾  Success

o   Ensure high levels of success in academic tasks

The SCORE CHAMPS checklist is from Positive Behavioral Supports for the Classroom by Brenda K. Scheuermann and Judy A. Hall.

Avoiding boredom

One of the most common student complaints about classes is that they are boring. Using the SCORE CHAMPS checklist above will go a long way toward preparing to teach a class. Boredom is highly relevant to student behavior and classroom management because a bored student 1) is not learning and 2) soon starts looking around for more stimulation. Since the complaint of boredom is so common, here are a few ideas of things to do and not do specifically to eliminate boredom.

The Anti-Boredom Checklist

Do incorporate…

¨  Adventure

¨  Humor

¨  Challenge

¨  Fascination

Don’t make these common mistakes…

¨  Sitting too long

¨  Talking too much

¨  Speaking too softly

¨  Making the simple complicated

¨  Making the interesting uninteresting

¨  Talking instead of doing

¨  Directing too much, observing too little

¨  Slow pace

¨  Failing to adjust

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The proactive big three: expectations, rules and procedures

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

Expectations, rules and procedures can make dramatic improvements in student behavior in the classroom and throughout the school. Take the time to create, teach, review and hold students accountable to these essential components of student behavior.

Expectations, rules and procedures, for all the benefit they will provide, will not eliminate misbehaviors. They are likely to significantly reduce misbehaviors, but they are not likely to eliminate them.

When misbehaviors occur, it’s important to respond appropriately. We have already mentioned that your attitude is important. Don’t take student misbehavior personally. Maintain emotional distance from the misbehavior. Be consistent in holding students accountable for following rules and procedures. But then what?

Select consequences thoughtfully

Poorly selected consequences can actually encourage misbehavior rather than diminish it. First, consider why the student is misbehaving.

We behave the way we do for a purpose. In general, there is something we are trying to accomplish when we do something. Being aware of what a student is trying to accomplish with her misbehavior helps you select an appropriate consequence.

This idea is known as function of behavior. When a student is familiar with class or school expectations, rules and procedures yet still misbehaves, there may be a purpose to it. It also may be that he has just gotten sloppy with adherence, but if the infractions are repeated, consider whether there is another function behind it. Challenging behavior is often motivated by one or more of the following:

·         To obtain…

o   Adult attention

o   Peer attention

o   Preferred activity

o   Money or things

o   Or something else

·         To avoid or escape from…

o   Hard tasks

o   Reprimands

o   Peer negatives

o   Physical effort

o   Adult attention

o   Or something else

A student is disruptive in class. Why? It might be that he is seeking the teacher’s attention. Or it might be that he is unprepared and doesn’t want to be asked to do the work that is assigned. In the first instance, attention from the teacher would increase the likelihood of another disruption for more attention. In the second instance, attention from the teacher may enable him to do the assignment and thereby decrease the likelihood of another disruption.

How does Behavior Manager support function of behavior?

Behavior Manager supports office referrals for serious or frequent misbehaviors. Behavior Manager also provides behavior notes where a teacher can record behavior challenges that do not yet rise to the level of an office referral. If the challenging behavior persists, the teacher has the option of including the notes in an office referral, giving the administrator more context on the incident.

Key: Embed fields and reminders in the system to lead to most effective use.

In both behavior notes and office referrals, a field called Motivation/Function of Behavior is available to designate the student’s likely motivation or function of the challenging behavior. When a motivation is selected, a set of possible consequences is displayed that is unlikely to encourage the function of the misbehavior. Notice in the example that the selected Motivation/Function of Behavior is Gain Item or Activity. Interventions relevant to that function are shown under Consequence and Prevention. The teacher has checked the consequence Called Parents which has been automatically added to the note. He has also checked Preferred Items/High-Interest Items which, when provided for the student, may avoid another incident like this one. When checked, it too was added to the note. The teacher can then further elaborate on the incident in the text box.

Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence

A second way to consider the effectiveness of consequences is Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence or A-B-C. A-B-C is useful for identifying the conditions that may trigger an incident for a student.

·         Antecedent: events that occur before the incident that may set the stage for the incident

·         Behavior: the behavior of this incident

·         Consequence: events that follow the incident that determine whether the behavior will be repeated or not.

Note that the A-B-C model suggests that both the antecedent and the consequence of a behavior has an effect on whether the behavior is likely to be repeated. Teaching and enforcing expectations, rules and procedures are examples of manipulating antecedents in order to encourage desired behaviors. Selecting appropriate consequences relevant to the function of behavior is one approach to manipulating consequences for the most successful effect.

How does Behavior Manager support the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence model?

Behavior Manager includes an option to prompt for Antecedent, Behavior and Consequence in each office referral. When the option is activated, it also requires that content must be entered for each of the fields.

The prompts may be customized as desired by the school. In the example, the prompts also include setting events and duration.

Behavior monitoring

In a sense, behavior monitoring is the opposite of awarding merits. Behavior monitoring is for data collection to measure a student’s tough behavior problem so you can determine whether the intervention you’re using is being successful.

Imagine you have a student who shows frequent aggressive behavior toward other students. He shoves, kicks, pinches and spits on other students. The reprimands you’ve tried to stop the behavior have not been effective. What can you do?

For a difficult case like this, it’s best to first collect baseline data to quantify how bad the problem is. Count the number of times the aggressive behavior is exhibited in a period or a day. With quantified baseline data, you can now try an intervention and count the number of times the aggressive behavior is exhibited. If the aggressive behavior stops, you’ve found your solution. If the frequency is reduced, you’ve found a partial solution. If you have only a partial solution, try another intervention and start the counting again. Repeat until the aggressive behavior stops, or at least until you’ve found the best partial solution you can think of.

Obviously, monitoring data like this takes a lot of attention and effort. You wouldn’t want to do it unless it is absolutely necessary. You also need to be sensible. If a parent says to you, “That boy hit my little Billy and you did nothing about it!” You can’t just say, “Yes, I know. I’m just collecting baseline data. I’ll start doing something next week.” But for perplexing cases where the best intervention isn’t clear, Behavior Manager includes a behavior monitoring tool that helps.

How to do behavior monitoring in Behavior Manager

Behavior Manager includes a behavior monitoring tool. Because behavior monitoring can take some of your attention, the tool is designed to require the minimal amount of effort. One click records an event.

Key: Record monitored behaviors with one click or tap to minimize distraction from instruction.

The Behavior Manager behavior monitoring tool is simple to use. Teachers can set up behavior monitors for specific students. Since behavior monitoring takes teacher attention, you should limit yourself to one or two monitors per class at any one time. Select the student, the name of the behavior and a description. The description should be specific and denote observable conditions or events.

To record monitored behaviors on the one-click behavior monitor page, select the teacher and class. Any students in the class for whom a behavior monitor has been set up will appear on the list. To record an instance of the monitored behavior, click or tap the student’s name. The dropdown menu indicates the intervention that is currently being used. All monitors start with Baseline, but as you start using an intervention, click the new link and add the intervention. The dropdown will default to the most recently used intervention. Click results to see a graphical display of the monitor results, separated by intervention.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Being proactive to prevent problem behavior - Procedures

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

We can prevent problem behavior by teaching appropriate behavior. We organize and structure the classroom and the school so that students know how to succeed. Appropriate behavior is typically broken down into expectations, rules and procedures. This approach is foundational to Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which is widely advocated as the new direction in student behavior (see pbis.org).

Start by organizing and structuring the classroom so students know how to succeed.

Procedures: How we do things here

A procedure is a process for getting something done. Procedures aren’t specifically about avoiding misbehavior, although they do have that effect. Rather, they are processes for doing things smoothly and efficiently.

Creating and using procedures is one of the most effective means of reducing student misbehavior. And  procedures aren’t even explicitly about misbehavior! Procedures are just about efficient ways to get things done. That’s why they are so effective at reducing misbehavior. Procedures let students know just what they should be doing. There is less opportunity for students to goof off and get into trouble.

It’s important to note that procedures don’t imply soulless regimentation. They are simply statements of “this is how we do things here.”

Anything done repeatedly should be made into a procedure. Procedures save time and they avoid opportunities for disruptions.

Define a procedure and then teach it. Here are recommended steps.

·         Model how to do it.

·         Model how not to do it.

·         Have a student model how to do it.

·         Have a group model it.

·         Have the class practice it.

·         Start using the procedure regularly.

·         Give reminders of the procedure.

·         Insist that the procedure be used. If the procedure is not being followed, ask the errant student what the procedure is. If necessary, reteach the procedure. If a student resists the procedure, turn it into a rule including consequences.

·         If a suggested change will improve the process, go ahead and change the procedure but remember to reteach the new way.

You will find that students typically like procedures, especially after they have grown accustomed to them. Procedures are small bits of mastery, repeatable bits of excellence. People like being good at what they do.

Making procedures habitual results in permanent behavior changes. In contrast, reacting to behavior problems has only a temporary behavior effect.

Here’s a list of 30 classroom procedures found online (https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/30-classroom-procedures-head-behavior-problems/). The message is, you will need quite a few procedures and you might as well look around for procedures to copy rather than invent each one yourself.

1.       Entering the room

2.       Lining up

3.       Leaving the room

4.       Beginning the day

5.       Ending the day

6.       Taking out/putting away/caring for supplies

7.       Participating in group lessons

8.       Obtaining help with assignments

9.       Handing in finished work/homework

10.   What to do with unfinished work

11.   When and how to use the school restroom

12.   When and how to use the drinking fountain or sink

13.   When and how to use the pencil sharpener

14.   Being a classroom helper; learning a classroom job

15.   Getting into work groups

16.   Using the classroom library

17.   Handling seatwork pages

18.   Preparing for lunch

19.   Getting a tissue

20.   Lunch count/attendance

21.   Throwing away trash

22.   Turning in lost items

23.   Locating lost items

24.   Pledge

25.   Visitors in the classroom

26.   Fire drill

27.   Signals for attention

28.   Helping other students

29.   Organizing desk

30.   What to do during free time

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Being proactive to prevent problem behavior - Rules

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

We can prevent problem behavior by teaching appropriate behavior. We organize and structure the classroom and the school so that students know how to succeed. Appropriate behavior is typically broken down into expectations, rules and procedures. This approach is foundational to Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which is widely advocated as the new direction in student behavior (see pbis.org).

Start by organizing and structuring the classroom so students know how to succeed.

Rules

While expectations are broad and general, rules are specific, observable behaviors that apply in specific places and activities. Expectations and rules tie together in a rule matrix.

Rule matrix

The rule matrix ties together the expectations, shown as column headings, to rules that apply to specific places and activities, shown as row headings.

As with expectations, keep the number of rules that apply to a place or activity to a manageable 3 to 5. Teach them to the students and post them where appropriate. Review them prior to an activity until they become habitual. For example, if your class is about to walk through the hallway to another room, review the hallway rules. Your goal is to have the students succeed at obeying the rules, so a quick review can be helpful.

Your classroom will operate on many more than 5 rules, but for the sake of teaching, emphasize only a manageable number at any one time. After students have mastered a rule, remove it from the rule poster and replace it with another.

Positive consequences for adherence to rules

Probably the teacher’s most effective tool for teaching appropriate behavior is praise for students for following expectations. It might be specific praise, such as saying, “Thank you for raising your hand to speak, Judy.” Or it might be less specific like, “You have all done an excellent job of raising your hands during today’s discussion.” Praise can also be less explicit such as a wink, nod or thumbs up.

Recognition of desired behavior is especially important while students are learning the rules. It is far better to teach students to abide by the rules by first teaching the rules, then rewarding them for abiding by the rules than to teach rules only by catching infractions and applying penalties. 

Consequences for infractions

Consequences for rule infractions are important but they need not be negative. For example, if Judy is calling out answers rather than raising her hand to be called on, the teacher may say, “Judy, in this class students raise their hand and wait to be recognized before speaking.” When Judy then stops calling out and raises her hand, the teacher calls on her. Judy has been reminded of the rule, has been reinforced by being called on after raising her hand, and has not received any sort of punishment. But if she persists in calling out, a different consequence is needed.

Most activities in life have rules and the rules have consequences. In sports, the game must be played within a set of clearly defined rules. Violating a rule results in a penalty. Playing without violating the rules gives you the chance to win without the setbacks of penalties. In most cases, the penalties in sports relate to the violation. For example, in football, pass interference imposes the penalty of treating the play as if the pass was caught. The penalty relates to the offense. In basketball, fouling another player gives her a free throw. The penalty relates to the offense.

At their best, school rules work the same way. If a rule is violated, the student must be held accountable. A penalty may be imposed. It is best if the penalty relates to the infraction. For example, if homework isn’t handed in as required, the penalty may be detention where the homework is expected to be completed.

In class as in sports, it’s best to proceed without infractions and avoid the penalties that come as a result. Also, in class as in sports, the rules must be consistently enforced. If they aren’t, it sends the message that the rules aren’t important. Note that “consistently enforced” does not necessarily mean that every infraction by every student gets assigned the same penalty. Rather, it means that the teacher takes note of infractions. He doesn’t let them slide. He may choose to give a reminder in one instance and a detention in another when different circumstances require different responses. He shouldn’t act as though his rules are not important. If they aren’t seen as important to the teacher, they won’t be seen as important to the students.

Finally, in class as in sports, infractions should not be seen by the teacher or the student as retribution or punishment for an infraction. There should be no anger involved. It isn’t personal. Penalties are simply consequences of the infractions. By keeping students accountable without anger, the teacher avoids engendering resentment in the student.

The 5 to 1 ratio

In order to create a supportive climate, students should experience at least 5 positive interactions to each negative interaction. Some say 5:1, some say 4:1; the point is, significantly more positive interactions than negative interactions. The 5:1 ratio applies to individual students as well as to the class as a whole. In other words, some students should not get all the praise while other students get all the criticism.

Positive interactions include

• Positive feedback that the student did something right (e.g., “Thanks for raising your hand…”) or
• Positive interactions that do not depend on behavior such as greeting, hand shake, high five, smile or wink.

Negative interactions include

• Behavior corrections or
• Intentionally ignoring the student.

PBIS emphasizes that decisions be based on data. The 5:1 ratio should be measured. But you’ve got a class to teach. How will you keep track of the positive and negative interactions with students throughout the day?

How to track one-click merits with Behavior Manager

Behavior Manager includes the ability to track positive feedback for individual students. Merits can be defined and awarded for a variety of purposes. If your school uses a different name for positive feedback points, Behavior Manager can use your name instead.

Key: Minimize any distraction from instruction.

The key to a tool like this is making it useful with the absolute minimum amount of effort or distraction. Every minute that you’re using a tool like this is a minute of attention that is taken from instruction time. So it should be as effortless as possible. We figured that the theoretical minimum effort would be one tap, so that’s how it’s designed to work.

You can set up a page for your class with a set of color-coded behaviors that you want to recognize. Each student is listed with a set of color-coded checkboxes corresponding to the behaviors. If you wish to recognize student Christopher Allred for Teamwork, tap his yellow checkbox. The Merit will be automatically entered into the database. As you do, give Christopher a nod, wink, pat on the shoulder or verbal feedback to let him know you’ve recognized his good work. That’s it. One tap and you’re done.

The small horizontal bar below each name represents the number of merits that the student has been awarded. Be aware of students who are receiving merits. Make sure you spread recognition around the class fairly. Keep in mind that students with the most challenging behavior may be the ones that need positive feedback the most.

While you’re not likely to record every smile, wink or positive remark, you can collect data on positive and negative interactions.

Merits appear in each student’s behavior history along with misbehaviors. You can compare the merits to misbehaviors to judge your ratio.

Students can also get visual feedback from the merit Star Board. The Star Board is a page that can be projected showing the list of students with color-coded stars by their names, each indicating the category of merit that has been awarded. If you choose, the students’ names can be replaced by “secret identities” pseudonyms. Behavior Manager can randomly assign secret identities to students in a class based on plants, animals, birds, cities or vocabulary words.

Converting merits to rewards

Awarding merits to students for meeting expectations or obeying the rules is a form of recognition. Recognition for doing the right thing increases the likelihood that the student will continue to do the right thing.

Some schools prefer to make the reinforcement stronger by enabling students to earn rewards from accumulated merit points. Elementary students may earn a small toy. Teachers often hand out candy or other treats. Students may be allowed special privileges such as being able to sit in the teacher’s chair or be first in line for lunch. In higher grades, merits may be traded for access to activities or access to a special area in the cafeteria.

Earning rewards and privileges in exchange for desired behavior is fundamental in society. It is the basis for getting paid for doing a job. It is significant that a reward of this kind is something that is earned, not simply a gift from the teacher.

There is some controversy in schools over whether desired behavior should be traded for items or privileges. Just as adults usually stop working when they stop being paid, the concern is that students may stop behaving properly if the rewards stop. Ideally, reinforcement for desired behavior in schools should be teaching student to prefer proper behavior for its own benefits, not simply as a transaction.

Wherever you come down on the controversy about trading merits for rewards, if it is going to be done, there needs to be some accounting. A benefit of using online merits is that the accounting is easy.

How to exchange merits for rewards in Behavior Manager

Behavior Manager includes the merit reward ledger for teachers and schools who choose to offer rewards. Staff can define rewards and the number of merits required to earn each one.

Key: Avoid any additional burden on teachers to manually keep accounts for rewards.

Select a student and a dropdown menu is shown with all possible rewards. The ones for which the student has enough merits in her account are enabled for selection. Click one. The corresponding merits are “spent” and recorded. The student is given the reward. Any remaining merits are maintained in the merit balance, available for future use.

How students use smartphones in Behavior Manager

Most students in middle school and high school, and many in elementary school, have smartphones. The Behavior Manager app delivers information to students immediately on their phones, eliminating the need for paper in many cases. For example, some rewards can be specified as passes for privileges. A student may choose to trade merit points for the privilege of lining up at the front of the lunch line for three days. The reward will show in the app as shown below. When the reward expires, it will no longer appear in the app. Similarly, if a student is caught being tardy in the hall, the teacher can enter a tardy on her phone and a tardy pass will appear immediately on the student’s phone, allowing him to go directly to class, missing no more instruction time.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Being proactive to prevent problem behavior - Expectations

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

We can prevent problem behavior by teaching appropriate behavior. We organize and structure the classroom and the school so that students know how to succeed. Appropriate behavior is typically broken down into expectations, rules and procedures. This approach is foundational to Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which is widely advocated as the new direction in student behavior (see pbis.org).

Start by organizing and structuring the classroom so students know how to succeed.

Expectations

In order to foster appropriate behavior in school, we start with a small set of expectations of how students ought to behave. We want to keep the set small so they can be easy to remember. Select no more than five expectations. The expectations should be stated positively to emphasize how students should behave rather than the negative, things which students should not do.

The KIPP schools use two primary expectations: Work Hard. Be Kind. Note that those two expectations can arguably cover both the academic issues and the social/behavior issues.

An even shorter “set” of expectations, a set of one, was suggested in Teaching with Love & Logic by Jim Fay and David Funk. The book describes a teacher stating her one expectation and her one consequence.

Expectation: You can solve a problem any way you want, provided it doesn’t cause a problem for anyone else…The only problem is that I’m a person in the class just like you, so we have to consider what would be a problem for me as well.

Consequence: I don’t expect you to break the rules. But if that does happen, I’ll do something.

Is “something” too vague? What’s really important is not that students know the exact consequences of misbehavior or that the consequence is the same every time. More important is that students know that there will be consequences and that the teacher will be consistent, doing something consistently.

Most schools go into a bit more detail. The small set of expectations (3 to 5) typically are selected from statements like these:

These and other behaviors are desirable but there are clearly too many for a student to keep in mind. The Boy Scouts have a famous shorter list of desirable character traits that have been used for a long time. A scout is:

But again, the list is too long to be easily remembered. Pick 3 to 5 expectations. A typical set is

·         Be safe

·         Be responsible

·         Be respectful

If you’re creating a set of schoolwide expectations, circulate your list and look for at least 80% acceptance among the faculty. We will discuss schoolwide expectations more later.

These expectations will be taught to the students as the first proactive step toward desired behavior in school. But of course, 3 to 5 expectations to cover everything that happens in school is not very specific. We get more specific with rules.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager

This series of posts comes from a paper, Responsibility, Motivation and Engagement: How To Develop Learners Using Behavior Manager. It describes how Edclick’s Behavior Manager combines three essential capabilities.

1. Proactive PBIS tools to prevent student misbehavior
2. Reactive interventions and processes for misbehaviors to minimize loss of instruction time and keep students in school
3. Data and tools for continuous improvement

Student behavior priorities

The purpose of this document is to discuss ways in which issues of student behavior are changing. We will discuss specific ways in which Edclick’s Behavior Manager embodies the most effective techniques.

Shared goal: student achievement

The ultimate goal of all of the activity in school is student achievement. Student achievement is primarily measured by the mastery of knowledge and skills of the various courses they take. But underlying student achievement are the enablers of knowledge and skill building, collectively known as student behavior.

Student achievement is the result of responsibility, motivation and engagement

Do students take responsibility for their learning?

Are they motivated to learn?

Are they engaged with the learning process?

Issues of student behavior have been going through a transformation over the past decade or so. Research has been accumulating that indicates that there are more effective means of influencing student behavior than the way it had been done. Prior to the transformation, the prevailing attitude was that it was up to the student to come to school ready and eager to learn. If the student was an uncooperative or disinterested partner in the learning process, then a mild punishment would get his or her attention and get him or her back on track in the classroom. This was primarily a reactive model, reacting to misbehavior and assigning negative consequences.

That attitude has fundamentally shifted to a proactive model. Schools and teachers now make known ahead of time their expectations, rules and procedures. They explicitly teach expectations of proper behavior to students in an effort to avoid misbehavior. The attitude today is that if students are not taking responsibility for their learning, if they don’t seem to be motivated to learn or if they are disengaged in class, it is now the responsibility of the school and the teachers to make the necessary changes to instill in the students the enablers for learning.

Why did this shift occur? Is success even possible? And most important for our purposes, how can it be done in practice?

In response to an increase in school violence in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a trend in schools to be less tolerant of misbehavior and to impose a series of strict escalating consequences. But research results showed that stricter reactive discipline wasn’t working. Reactive consequences for misbehavior, typically punishments, were effective for stopping the misbehavior in the short term, but it often resulted in resentment. Punishment did not result in long term change to greater student responsibility, motivation or engagement. Too often, it didn’t lead to improved student achievement. Educators needed a better way.

If you’re not in class, you won’t pass

It’s essential for student achievement to spend the time in school actually in class, engaged in learning. Suspension from school is obviously a loss of instructional time for the student. But there are others, too. If a student is disruptive in class and is sent to the office, she has missed instruction time. If a tardy student is directed to go to a tardy table or the office to get a tardy pass to return to class, the student has missed more instruction time.

The most egregious example that we often see of a student missing instructional time for misbehavior is a student who is often sent to the office for being tardy. The punishments for tardiness may be increased as the tardy count increases, to a point when the student is eventually suspended for chronic tardiness. Punish a tardy student who misses instruction time with a suspension that misses a great deal more instruction time? A different consequence needs to be found that does not increase the loss of instructional time.

Ideally, we want to make maximum use of instruction time for each student. In general, that means minimizing the time spent dealing with behavior issues. Typically the most effective way to minimize time spent on behavior issues is to deal with them proactively.

Maintain an environment conducive for learning

The flip side of a student missing class for misbehavior comes when she is disruptive and becomes a distraction from learning for the rest of the class. Sometimes instruction time for one student must be sacrificed so that the rest of the class can get back to work.

We want to maintain a classroom environment conducive to learning. Rather than reacting to misbehavior, we want to avoid misbehavior and keep students engaged in their learning.

Spend as little time on behavior as necessary…and no less!

Students don’t go to school to learn how to behave in school. They go to do two other things:

1.       Learn the curricular knowledge and skills and

2.       Learn how to learn, which is to say, taking responsibility for their learning, developing their motivation to learn and developing the skills of focus, concentration, questioning and cooperation to keep them engaged with their learning.

Some teachers are resistant to devoting any time to teaching behavior. A math teacher prefers to teach math, not behavior. And they are right in that the curricular learning is essential to student achievement. But at the same time, the student’s success in learning her math may be impeded by undeveloped social skills or by disregard for the rules and procedures of the classroom which are designed to keep the focus where it should be: on learning. Some time spent on these “behavior” issues can pay big dividends in curricular learning.

All students will misbehave sometimes. If the teacher hasn’t prepared for this, more time is likely to be spent on reacting to misbehaviors than would typically be spent teaching and practicing desirable behaviors before problems arise.

In addition, students vary in the time and effort required to master behavior skills. While most students will pick up behavior skills with a little instruction and practice, others will need more attention and a small number will require extensive help. The school needs to anticipate these differences and provide additional support for those who need a little more help and intensive support for a few more.

The main goal is curricular learning. But enough time must be spent on behavior issues to make the curricular learning as efficient and effective as possible. In addition, keep in mind that much of a student’s most important learning, even curricular learning, will be done after your course is over. So the better a student can develop his skills for learning, the more successful his overall education will be.

Fix the student or fix the system?

The traditional view of student behavior was that misbehavior was an indication that the student needed to be “fixed.” The problem was hers. She was not properly fitting into the school.

The new view of student behavior is that students should be taught what constitutes appropriate behavior. Misbehavior, when it still occurs, is an indication that there may be a problem with the school or the teaching. It isn’t the student that needs to be fixed, but the school. Positive and proactive behavior strategies have been found to be more effective and efficient than reactive, punitive strategies. In addition, it is generally easier to prevent a problem than to deal with it after it has appeared.

It starts with making expectations clear and creating rules and procedures that make it easy for students to satisfy the expectations. If the school and its procedures are properly designed and communicated to the students, then the student behavior will be conducive to learning.

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Keywords: Responsible-Motivated-Engaged, Behavior Manager

Monday, November 13, 2017

How can we update our special ed and LEP students?

We have connections to several student information systems from which we automatically update student lists. However, many SISs do not include information about special ed, ESL/LEP, Section504 and other designations of interest in behavior management.

So, how can you get info like this into Behavior Manager? It's easy. Use the Student Import Wizard. (The Student Import Wizard can be found in the admin section under Customizing and Editing.)

Let's say you want to import a list of students who are special ed or LEP. Create a tab-separated text file with columns StudentID, SpecialEd, ESL. For both SpecialEd and ESL, enter a 1 for yes and 0 for no. It's convenient to start with a spreadsheet then save the file as a tab-separated text file.

Next, follow the steps in the wizard to import the file. It will update the SpecialEd and ESL fields and leave the rest unchanged.

A couple of special notes: If your StudentIDs have leading zeros like 0012345, the spreadsheet will remove them unless you format the StudentID column as Text (not General or Number).

If your import file has ONLY the special ed and ESL students in it, pay special attention to the question on the first page of the wizard: Are you archiving all students not on this list? Click NO.

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Keywords: FAQ: Behavior Manager, Behavior Manager, student imports

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Can you improve student behavior?

There is often a problem hidden behind a question like, "Can you improve student behavior?" The question seems to imply that it's the student who needs to be "fixed." That's not always the case.

I remember when I was in ninth grade my homeroom teacher was Mr. Posthuma, a first year teacher. The poor guy had absolutely no control in his classroom. I'm sure he must have been miserable throughout the day and must have been reluctant to return each morning. He must have been so disappointed to have spent years preparing to be a teacher, only to find this as his daily experience. Classroom management is often cited as the reason that teachers leave the profession.

But classroom management is a set of skills. Skills that can be learned. And once learned, the newly skilled teacher finds that his students' behavior has improved. So, were the students "fixed" or was it the teacher?

Our Behavior Manager product does a great job of helping make the processes of PBIS and traditional discipline work more easily and smoothly. But we felt there was something missing. Were we doing enough for poor Mr. Posthuma?

We recently added some new capabilities to Behavior Manager for Mr. Posthuma. First, when a teacher creates an office referral, the system now pulls up articles related to the student's behavior problem. If Mr. Posthuma is feeling exasperated or is just looking for some new ideas, he can browse through these articles that are specific to the immediate problem he's facing. It's sometimes called just-in-time training.

Another new capability in Behavior Manager is called Practice Classroom Management Skills. It's a gamelike system that teaches the skills of classroom management. But as any teacher knows, you don't master skills by reading about them. They must be practiced. And that's what Practice Classroom Management Skills does. It provides a way for deliberate practice in these skills with real students in real classrooms.

The system is gamelike in that it introduces skills in small steps and, as each is mastered, moves the teacher ahead in experience and levels. But the deliberate practice is not conducted in a simulation, it's conducted in the teacher's own classroom.

I'll bet Mr. Posthuma would have appreciated it.

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Keywords: PBIS, Behavior Manager, classroom mangement, Practice Classroom Management Skills, deliberate practice

Monday, November 6, 2017

Why do people hate their software? Why do people love their software?

We work with a lot of people who usually have strong opinions about the student information system (SIS) in their school district. The consensus: they hate them.

Why would that opinion be so widespread?

I've got a theory: they hate their SIS because it doesn't work as they expect it should. I think the root cause is that SISes are made mainly to satisfy the requirements for state reporting. They aren't made to make life easier for the user, unless that user would have been the one to do state reporting without an SIS! (Good luck!)

That's exactly the reason why we at Edclick have an opportunity which we serve with Behavior Manager. Dealing with issues of student behavior both through carrots (typified by PBIS techniques) and sticks (traditional consequences for misbehavior) involves a lot more steps than simply reporting student out-of-placement days to the state. And that's what customers like about Behavior Manager...it covers the entire process. It does what they expect it to do.

Is Behavior Manager perfect? Nope! And here's an example. Yesterday I got a call from a school where a teacher had used Behavior Manager to assign a student out-of-school suspension for nine days. And for out-of-placement consequences, Behavior Manager has a mechanism to collect the classroom assignments from the student's teachers that the student should work on during the suspension. Makes sense in the process of a suspension, and it's in Behavior Manager and people like it. So far so good.

But what the call was about was that the system had not emailed the assignments directly to the student and/or her parents. The collected assignments are available to faculty online but the student hadn't been informed. The software didn't work as expected and the teacher was unhappy. And you know what? The teacher was right. Despite the fact that assignments are usually collected for students with IN-school suspension where they are distributed to students by the faculty, sometimes they're collected for students assigned OUT-of-school suspension. Direct delivery to the student and/or parent makes more sense in that case.

They were right, we were wrong, so we fixed it last night. Class assignments can now be emailed to any suspended student with a simple click.

If software doesn't do what the user expects and if you care about making your customers happy, fix it. At least, that's what we do.

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Keywords: PBIS, Behavior Manager, discipline, carrots and sticks, process improvement

Monday, October 2, 2017

Behavior reinforcement: Is it personal?

Two strong principles of PBIS are to provide positive personal feedback for appropriate behavior and to collect data for databased decision-making. Sometimes these two principles are at odds. Recording data must be as unobtrusive as possible. We don't want to take the teacher's attention away from class or seem to diminish her engagement class.

One of the solutions for recording data is to do it all off-line. The teacher counts tick marks or behavior token tickets when the students aren't there. But that takes more time for the teacher. And the more time that's required for collecting data, the less likely it is that the data will be collected. If data collection can be integrated in with the teacher's activity during class, it's much more likely that the data be collected.

To minimize the time requirement for recording positive student behavior, we developed one-click merit points. This allows the teacher to give any of the students in her class a merit point for any of several expectations simply by clicking a box by the students name.

Behavior Manager includes a star chart that can be on display for the class throughout the class period. By viewing the live star chart, students can immediately see that they have been recognized for specific positive behaviors.

Consider an alternative. A teacher could hand a ticket to a student for positive feedback. By walking over to the student's desk and handing him a ticket, possibly along with a word or two of encouragement, the teacher has made a personal contact with that student. The personal contact enhances the positive feedback.

But with the ticket method, there is no record of the positive feedback. To make a record, the students might check in with a teacher at the end of class when the teacher could enter into a spreadsheet the number of tickets that each student received. But it's additional work taking additional time.

Can clicking on a button on a tablet be made personal? Sure. The teacher can do it through eye contact, a smile, a wink, a thumbs up or a positive remark. Or, like a paper ticket method, the teacher can walk over near the student, click the tablet, and pat the student on the back.

Making positive feedback personal is important. But collecting the data is too. Luckily, you can have it both ways.

Posted at 6:50 PM (permalink) 1 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: PBIS, star chart, positive feedback, merit points, Behavior Manager

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Edclick integrates with Aeries

Flower Mound, Texas, July 24, 2015 --Edclick expands the discipline capabilities of the Aeries student information system by integrating through the Aeries API.

Discipline Manager, Edclick’s top selling software program, gives extended capability to Aeries’s current discipline software by allowing schools to track referrals, tardies, sign outs and much more. Discipline Manager is a comprehensive, web-based, discipline management system designed to streamline the discipline process.

Originally created as part of a comprehensive plan to improve achievement at a Title I Texas middle school in 2005, Discipline Manager is now used in over 14 states across the country and expanding each month. 

The embedded interface with Aeries will allow Edclick software to easily import and export important local and state reporting measures.

“Edclick is extremely excited about the integration with Aeries because our software will expand to new heights as schools get real time updates of their student lists and are able to report state required information directly to Aeries.”, stated Ken Washam Director of Sales and Marketing at Edclick.

About Edclick

EdClick, formerly Harry Tennant & Associates, Inc., was formed in 1993 by Dr. Harry Tennant. Prior to forming Edclick, Dr. Tennant spent 14 years at Texas Instruments, was a TI Fellow, Chief Technologist of the IT Group and conducted research into various aspects of computing technologies. He was also selected as one of 100 Outstanding Scientists under age 40 by Science Digest magazine.

In 2002, Edclick started partnering with schools to meet the desire for more effective school related software. Each software product has been developed in close collaboration with school administrators and teachers.

Our goal is to continue making software for educator by educators.

For more information, visit www.edclick.com or contact sales@edclick.com.

Posted at 11:32 AM (permalink) 8 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: Aeries, Discipline Manager, API

Monday, November 18, 2013

Edclick Joins Pearson ISV Partnership Program

Garland, Texas October 31, 2013 --Edclick expands the discipline capabilities of PowerSchool by joining Pearson’s ISV Partnership Program.

Discipline Manager, Edclick’s top selling software program, gives extended capability to PowerSchool’s current discipline software by allowing schools to track referrals, tardies, sign outs and much more. Discipline Manager is a comprehensive, web-based, discipline management system designed to streamline the discipline process.

Originally created as part of a comprehensive plan to improve achievement at a Title I Texas middle school in 2005, Discipline Manager is now used in over 14 states across the country and expanding each month. 

The embedded interface with PowerSchool will allow Edclick software to easily import and export important local and state reporting measures. Along with Discipline Manager, add Intervention (RTI) Manager, Testing Manager or any other software items seamlessly to your school.

“Edclick is extremely excited about the integration with PowerSchool because our software will expand to new heights as schools get real time updates of their student lists and are able to report state required information directly to PowerSchool. By joining the ISV Partnership Program, Pearson has allowed us to take our software to the next level”, stated Ken Washam Director of Sales and Marketing at Edclick.

About Edclick

EdClick, formerly Harry Tennant & Associates, Inc., was formed in 1993 by Dr. Harry Tennant. Prior to forming Edclick, Dr. Tennant spent 14 years at Texas Instruments, was a TI Fellow, Chief Technologist of the IT Group and conducted research into various aspects of computing technologies. He was also selected as one of 100 Outstanding Scientists under age 40 by Science Digest magazine.

In 2002, Edclick started partnering with schools to meet the desire for more effective school related software. Each software product has been developed in close collaboration with school administrators and teachers.

Our goal is to continue making software for educator by educators.

For more information, visit www.edclick.com or contact sales@edclick.com.

Posted at 11:42 AM (permalink) 6 Comments View/Leave Comment
Keywords: Pearson, PowerSchool, Discipline Manager, ISV Partner Program, Intervention Manager, Testing Manager, Edclick, Discipline