Safe and Civil Schools Approach

1. Safe and Civil Schools Approach Safe and Civil Schools material is designed to teach school personnel to apply behavior analysis in humane and respectful ways. Key Terms in that simple statement: • Behavior analysis • Apply • Humane • Respectful

2. Behavior Analysis • Consists of data driven decisions and manipulating the ABC’s– antecedents, behavior and consequences. This by no means, new information • Manipulation of four variables- two “A”s and two “C”s: • Modify the structure and organization of the setting • Clarify and teach expectations • Provide positive consequences when students are meeting expectations • Provide effective corrective consequences when students violate expectations.

3. Apply: Why is this so difficult? • Behavior problems pose a direct threat to people in authority. • When staff are threatened, stressed or fatigued they tend to revert to what is automatic…not what they intellectually understand. • School-wide application requires unity, follow-through, and a willingness to focus on variables within the staff’s control • Staff need training across time (with lots of examples), and coaching (with respect and passion) in order to “apply” the four variables

4. “ When you want to convert someone to your view, you go over to where he is standing, take him by the hand and guide him.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas

5. Apply Staff should be knowledgeable about how to modify the four variables • Modify the structure and organization of the setting Conscious construction of school and classroom climate (e.g., schedules, physical space, procedures, coordination, and consistency of staff.) • Clarify and teach expectations Consistent and detailed expectations taught in age-appropriate ways ( e.g., lessons across time..sports coaching model)

6. Apply • Provide positive consequences when students are meeting expectations Contingent (meaningful) positive feedback and non-contingent attention (e.g., ratios of interaction) • Provide effective corrective consequences when students violate expectations Instructional corrective techniques when students lack information and mildly punitive techniques when needed (e.g., fluent corrections that maintain instructional flow and do not provide unnecessary attention to the misbehavior)

7. Why are “Humane” and “Respectful” essential factors? “ We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality”. -Albert Einstein

8. Why are “Humane” and “Respectful” essential factors? “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” -From a sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton

9. Humane Treating people humanely and with dignity is a pre-requisite if students are to feel connected to school. • Modify the structure and organization of the setting. It is possible to over-structure, or to structure in demeaning ways • Clarify and teach expectations Lessons can create an assumption of high or low expectations and compliance or non-compliance

10. Humane • Provide positive consequences when students are meeting expectations Positive feedback can feel impersonal and manipulative or generous and sincere in intent. • Provide effective corrective consequences when students violate expectations. Corrective consequences can feel coercive and mean-spirited or supportive and instructional.

11. Respectful Treating people with respect provides a foundation for building social/emotional relationships. Positive relationships between students and adults create an entirely different, and far richer, context for the four variables • Modify the structure and organization of the setting • Clarify and teach expectations • Provide positive consequences when students are meeting expectations. • Provide effective corrective consequences when students violate expectations.

12. The Results? The results of doing all these things well can be: • Dramatic • Gratifying • Exciting