Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast
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Expert Instruction is the PBISApps Teach by Design podcast where we talk to experts from the educational field - researchers, practitioners, community members - about their work. Each episode connects with that month’s Teach by Design article, taking you deeper into your own exploration of the topic. Expert Instruction gives you a fly-on-the-wall perspective to hear how the research can work in your school, too. Visit PBISApps: www.pbisapps.org
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Sep 19, 2023
Ep. 32: The Fundamentals of Schoolwide Teams
Two system-level, foundational features of PBIS implementation relate to your schoolwide team — specifically who’s on it and how it operates. While research tells us team-based decision making is an effective practice, it can’t pinpoint exactly which practices contribute to that success. , That’s because what makes teams so great has a lot to do with how well they fit within the culture and context of their schoolwide community.
So what does a schoolwide PBIS team look like? How does it work? We invited our colleague Danielle Triplett to join us today to share some of her experiences working with teams in every role from team member to district-level coach.
Danielle is a Senior Research Assistant and member of our PBIS Apps training team. She is passionate about schools. In her work, she’s particularly interested in exploring how schools can improve educational equity, offer alternatives to exclusionary discipline, use data for decision-making, and implement multi-tiered systems of support for behavior and mental health.
For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:
* Tiered Fidelity Inventory
* Centering Equity in Data-based Decision Making: Considerations and Recommendations for Leadership Teams
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Aug 15, 2023
Ep. 31: Mythbusters - Students Don't Need to be Taught How to Behave, Do They?
PBIS has its skeptics — folks who just aren’t so sure the framework is useful. It’s fair to question things and criticisms push us to think about how our implementation can be more inclusive. When you hear a critique or even a misperception, how do you respond?
We thought we’d help you out. Today’s episode of Expert Instruction is the first in our new series: PBIS Mythbusters.
Mythbusters was a television series where the two hosts, Adam and Jamie, would use science to test a myth and determine once and for all if it was true. If it wasn’t, they stamped the myth as officially busted. We’re taking our cue from that show by exploring some of the critiques about PBIS with experts from across the country. Together, we will figure out whether we can declare the statements true or busted!
The myth we’re talking about today is, “Students don’t need to be taught how to behave at school; they should just know.” Joining us in conversation is Dr. Jessica Daily and Mimi McGrath Kato.
* Mimi is a Senior Research Assistant here at the UO. In her research, she focuses on implementing prevention systems at the high school level and improving outcomes for students in those places. She brings with her more than 25 years of experience either working in or alongside high schools across the country.
* Jessica is the Professional Learning Administrator for Michigan’s MTSS Technical Assistance Center. Before working there, she spent time as a school psychologist, a PBIS district coach, a state-wide technical assistance provider, and up until about a month ago, the training team lead here at PBISApps.
For more information about the resources shared in the episode, check out the following links:
* Feedback and Input Survey
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Jun 20, 2023
Ep. 30: 2023 Year in Review
Who’s ready for summer? Literally every hand in our office is up…maybe yours is, too. The end of the year is the perfect time to tie up loose ends, pack up your things, and look back on everything you accomplished. Reflection is an active process — one that keeps our work fresh and helps us improve from year to year — and it’s what we’re doing today.
In this episode, we’re looking back at every conversation we had over the past school year and sharing our favorite highlights and lessons learned. We’ve interviewed 21 guests across 10 episodes. Every conversation gave us something to think about and find ways to infuse it in our work moving forward. Today, we’re sharing five of those lessons with you.To travel back in time and dive into any of these episodes mentioned today, check out the following links:
* Ep. 21: Benefits & Examples of Creating a Schoolwide Purpose Statement
* Ep. 24: The Benefits of Play
* Ep. 26: Vulnerable Decision Points
* Ep. 27: Neu…
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May 16, 2023
Ep. 29: Integrating Mental Health Supports in Your PBIS Framework
This month, we’re taking the opportunity to explore the ways schools embed school mental health within their existing PBIS framework through a process called the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF). The ISF offers you a way to take advantage of the expertise within your larger schoolwide community, add it to the systems, practices, and data accessible on your PBIS teams, and get students the comprehensive support they need.
In this episode, we’re talking to two people who have done just that.
* Megan Schultz is the community coordinator for an organization called The 15th Night —"a youth-informed, community movement to end youth homelessness by connecting existing resources and finding innovative ways to keep kids in school and off the streets.” In her role, Megan helps schools and community organizations get connected through a system called the Rapid Access Network (RAN).
* Kelly Perales is the co-director of the Midwest PBIS Network and an implementer partner with the Center on PBIS. She leads schools implementing ISF, focusing on the integration of mental health and education systems. In addition to her work with schools, she researches the effects ISF has on family-school-community partnerships.
For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:
* Overview of ISF
* Advancing Education Effectiveness: Interconnecting School Mental Health and School-Wide PBIS, Volume 2: An Implementation Guide: A step-by-step guide for district and school teams implementing ISF.
* The 15th Night Homepage
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Apr 18, 2023
Ep. 28: Dosing Up Schoolwide Support
Teachers across the country say the number of behaviors they manage in the classroom is up this year compared to before the pandemic. We know the first step to improving behavior trends schoolwide is to verify your Tier 1 systems and practices are fully in place. When you’ve verified they are and behavior trends continue to rise, what can you do? In this episode of Expert Instruction, learn how to increase schoolwide support by infusing it with a dose Tier 2 critical elements.
Joining the conversation are Dr. Billie Jo Rodriquez and Noah Van Horn.
* Billie Jo is a Northwest PBIS Network staff member, a senior lecturer at the University of Oregon, a nationally certified school psychologist, and a board-certified behavior analyst. She has over 20 years of experience supporting students with diverse needs and helping schools implement increasingly intensive function-based supports.
* Noah is a nationally certified school psychologist and PBIS coach for Springfield Public Schools in Springfield, OR. In addition to his work leading district initiatives to support PBIS, he is a lead trainer for district professional development on topics ranging from Tier1 practices to more intensive, individualized support.
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Mar 21, 2023
Ep. 27: Bonus Episode - Defining Behavior
Surprise! It’s our first bonus episode of Expert Instruction! We’ve been working as a team to bring some new labels and language to the Schoolwide Information System (SWIS). As part of that work, we revisited the category label definitions and gave them a refresh. As that project comes to completion, we realized the work overlapped with the conversations we’ve had over the last two months.
When you talk about solutions to disrupt vulnerable decision points, defining behavior — both what it looks like and the options available to address it — is on the list. We had to get the team together to share a little about what the process was like and how you can do it, too, in your school.
Joining us in conversation are Diertra Lomeli, Katie Schulz, and Seth May.
* Diertra is the Customer Support Team Manager at PBISApps. She leads the team of people who connect with our users, set up every account, invoice every subscription, and problem-solve every bug as it comes in.
* Katie…
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Mar 21, 2023
Ep. 27: Neutralizing Vulnerable Decision Points
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re continuing the conversation from last month’s episode about vulnerable decision points (VDP). Drs. Maria Reina Santiago-Rosaria and Sean Austin are back to share how we can disrupt our decision making in those moments.Today we’re talking about neutralizing routines: brief, step-by-step processes to make our quick decisions more deliberate. During our conversation, we recognized the overlaps between these routines and those we explored in previous episodes related to de-escalation. While both require us to become more present in the moment, neutralizing routines are specifically designed to disrupt our implicit bias—those stereotypes we carry around without even knowing it.María is a researcher at the University of Oregon who focuses on racial equity in school discipline, measuring teacher expectations of students, and supporting students who receive special education services as they transition from middle to high school. Sean is also a researcher at the University of Oregon who focuses on positive behavior support, implementation science, and professional development.The two of them share how they’ve seen these routines implemented, how to know when those routines are working, and how all of this serves the larger goal of making your discipline decisions more equitable for all students.
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Feb 21, 2023
Ep 26: Vulnerable Decision Points
In this month’s episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re diving further into the research and practices surrounding vulnerable decisions points (VDPs). Over in our Teach by Design article, we shared how you can find the VDPs contributing to the disproportionate outcomes you see in your data, but why do we even focus on VDPs in decision making in the first place? Joining us to help answer that question are Drs. María Reina Santiago-Rosario and Sean Austin.
In her research, María focuses on racial equity in school discipline, measuring teacher expectations of students, and supporting students who receive special education services as they transition from middle to high school. She understands what it takes to implement system-level changes and how to guide teams in classroom behavior management and strategic planning for equity in discipline.
In his work, Sean focuses on positive behavior support, implementation science, and professional development. Before completing his PhD, Sean worked for several years as a school psychologist supporting students with behavioral needs.
Speaking of Sean’s PhD, his dissertation revealed some interesting things about the common points in the school day that are most vulnerable to biased decisions. We talked to him about that! Then, we asked him and María what makes a VDP such a good starting point and how do we handle those challenging conversations to create the self-awareness necessary before launching into problem solving?
For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out these links:
* Don’t Discipline Hangry – a Teach by Design article with more information about unconscious bias and VDPs.
* Ep. 6: Implicit Bias – an Expert Instruction episode with Dr. Erik Girvan talking about implicit bias and its affect on classroom decisions.
* Using Discipline Data within SWPBIS to Identify and Address Disproportionality: A Guide for School Teams– a guide from The Center on PBIS on how to data to address equity in your school
* Registration for the 2023 NWPBIS Conference
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Jan 17, 2023
Ep. 25: A Coaching Conversation
We’ve mentioned before the important role coaches play in your PBIS implementation. They help hold you and your team accountable, facilitate your meetings, walk you through intervention options, and guide you through the process of making the systems and practices match your unique context. Coaches are valuable members of any implementation effort, and yet, we haven’t spent much time exploring what it means to be a coach.
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re talking with two coaches about what it’s been like to support schools and districts to sustain their implementation in spite of so much disruption. If you’re a coach, a team lead, or you want to hear about these roles from someone else’s perspective, this conversation is for you!
Joining us in that conversation are Drs. Lisa Powers and Kelsey Morris from the University of Missouri Center for Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support.
* Lisa wears many hats in her work, one of which is as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Missouri. She currently supports district-level leadership teams in their PBIS implementation. She has also been a special educator, PBIS facilitator, administrator, and professor. In everything she does, Lisa remains committed to learning with and from the communities she supports and doing whatever she can to make sure every child is successful in school.
* Kelsey is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Missouri and co-director of the University of Missouri Center for Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support. His work focuses primarily on PBIS, classroom management, data-based decision making, and district-wide PBIS implementation.
For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out these links:
* Missouri Center on Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support
* Educator's Blueprint Podcast: Lisa's weekly podcast exploring topics currently impacting school systems, behavior, and instructional practices.
* Information about the Tiered Fidelity Inventory (TFI)
* Information about the District Systems Fidelity Inventory (DSFI)
* Evaluation Brief: Collecting Fidelity Data to Support and Sustain PBIS/MTSS in Schools
* Practice Brief: Creating a Classroom Teaching Matrix
* Upcoming Webinars for Using the TFI
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Nov 15, 2022
Ep. 24: The Benefits of Play
This month’s Teach by Design article introduced the continuum of play and how to embed play-based learning in your classrooms. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at one specific type of play on the continuum. Today, we’re talking about free play.
Free play is that dedicated time in the day where your students get to move and explore in unstructured space free of any adult interference. In schools, most of us call it recess! Our students love it, and yet there never seems to be enough time dedicated to it. But what if we made more time for it? What are the benefits? How would it work logistically with the bell schedule? Most of this relates to early childhood and elementary school, but what could it look like in middle and high school?
In this episode, we’re talking about it all with Dr. Michelle Bauml and Nellie Huggins.
Michelle is a Professor of Education and an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at Texas Christian University (TCU). She is also a Play Consultant as part of the Let’s Inspire Innovation ‘N Kids (Liink) Project’s Research Team. The Liink Project is an organization dedicated to increasing student access to unstructured, outdoor recess time as a way of improving social, emotional, behavioral, and academic achievement in schools.
Nellie is a veteran in the field of early childhood education and an advocate for young children and their families. She has spent the last 22 years working in every early childhood setting and role possible – from infant care to preschool teacher, to preschool owner and director. Currently, she’s the Parent Outreach Coordinator for Early Childhood CARES at the University of Oregon – an organization providing early intervention and early childhood special education to infants, toddlers, and preschool age children in Lane County.
For more information on the resources shared in this episode, check out these links.
* The Liink Project homepage
* Early Childhood CARES homepage
* Time to Play: Recognizing the Benefits of Recess: The research findings around the percent of students who have dedicated time for recess in their day.
* Super Fun Transitions by Shawn Brown: An album of transition songs to use in early education settings as kids move from one activity to another.
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Oct 19, 2022
Ep. 23: How to De-escalate Student Behavior
This episode of Expert Instruction is the second in our 2-part series about de-escalation. Last episode, we spoke with Dr. Kathleen Strickland-Cohen and Alex Newsom about the school-wide strategies you can put in place to help prevent behaviors from escalating in the classroom. We know it would be impossible to prevent 100% of behaviors from getting bigger. So, what happens when those prevention strategies aren’t enough? What can you do to de-escalate a behavior before it becomes a crisis?
We invited Ami Flammini and Brian Meyer from the Midwest PBIS Network to help us answer those questions. They are co-authors (along with Kathleen, Alex, Katherine Meyer, Laura Kern, and Robert Putnam) on the new practice brief from The Center on PBIS called, Strategies for De-escalating Student Behavior in the Classroom. Today, they're are sharing how they've used these strategies to stop the escalation cycle and help students return to a place of calm.
Ami is a technical assistance director with the Midwest PBIS Network where she works to integrate trauma-informed practices within a multi-tiered support system. Ami has nearly 30 years of experience in education as a social worker and trainer, so she is intimately familiar with what it takes to create a positive school culture that supports everyone.
Brian is a co-director for the Midwest PBIS Network and a partner with The Center on PBIS. He bring with him experience in just about every educational setting. From general education, to higher education, to residential care, to state departments down to the local level, Brian has worked with them all. In his current work with the Midwest PBIS Network, Brian leads the curricular development of district leadership training, Tier 1, classroom management, and bullying prevention.
Dr. Kathleen Strickland-Cohen is also back for this episode. Kathleen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Utah and a Doctoral-level Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She has extensive experience conducting research and training both preservice teachers and in-service district and school personnel in behavior support implementation at Tiers 2 and 3. Her research interests include: designing inclusive educational environments, using efficient methods to train school professionals how to design individualized student behavior plans, and enhancing family-professional partnership within PBIS.
For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this episode, please check out these links:
* Practice Brief: Strategies for De-escalating Student Behavior in the Classroom
* Expert Instruction Ep. 22: School-wide Strategies for Preventing Escalated Behavior
* Teach by Design Article: Slow the Climb: 4 De-escalation Strategies to Keep Behavior from Going Downhill
* Midwest PBIS Network's Website
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Sep 20, 2022
Ep. 22: School-wide Strategies for Preventing Escalated Behavior
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re kicking off a two-part series about de-escalating the behaviors you see in your school. Today, we’re exploring the school-wide, classroom-wide systems and practices you can leverage to prevent problem behaviors from escalating in the first place.
Joining us today are two of the authors of a recently published practice brief from The Center on PBIS, Dr. Kathleen Strickland-Cohen and Alex Newson.
Kathleen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Utah and a Doctoral-level Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She has extensive experience conducting research and training both preservice teachers and in-service district and school personnel in behavior support implementation at Tiers 2 and 3. Her research interests include: designing inclusive educational environments, using efficient methods to train school professionals how to design individualized student behavior plans, and enhancing family-professional partnership within PBIS.
Alex Newson is a doctoral student in Special Education at the University of Oregon. She is a recipient of Project COLEAD, which is a leadership grant focusing on autism, evidence-based practices, diversity, and collaboration across universities. Her current research interests include equitable neuroinclusive research methodologies, collaborative trauma-informed teacher education programs for neurodivergent educators and service providers, and the promotion of autistic mental health in schools for students and staff. She has taught throughout in the Pacific Northwest as a certified Special Educator and educational assistant.
Oh, and we’re also welcoming our new co-host, Nadia Sampson! Nad is a veteran in the PBIS game and she’s ready to share her experience and her humor as we all learn more about the topics in each podcast episode.
For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this today, please check out these links:
* Practice Brief: Strategies for De-Escalating Student Behavior in the Classroom
* Expert Instruction Ep. 14: Relieving Staff Stress with System-level Solutions – Staff stress is a systemic issue best addressed with system-level solutions. We talked to two experts about how to do that in your school.
* 10 Strategies to Combat Stress in the Classroom – Check out this article for more information about the affects of chronic stress and the fight, flight, or freeze responses you might see in your classroom.
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Aug 16, 2022
Ep. 21: Benefits & Examples of Creating a School-wide Purpose Statement
We all have a reason compelling us to get up and go to work in the morning. Our personal purpose plays a big role in how engaged we are in the work we do. Defining your why is a hot topic of conversation these days, and it’s an important thing to do. Equally important is defining your school’s organizational purpose, but it’s not something we talk as much about.
In today’s episode of Expert Instruction, we’re answering the questions:
* What is a school-wide purpose statement?
* Why is a purpose statement important?
* How do you co-create a purpose statement with your larger school-wide community?
Our guest is Dr. Nikole Hollins-Sims. Nikole is an educational consultant, strategist, and most recently, technical assistance coordinator with the Midwest PBIS Network. Prior to joining up with the Midwest PBIS team, she served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Education at the Pennsylvania Department of Education as well as an educational consultant working for the…
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Jun 21, 2022
Ep. 20: 2022 Year in Review
At the end of any project, it feels right to pause and reflect. The end of the school year is no different. We’re all ready for a break and some relaxation, preferably by a pool, with something cold to sip. It’s also important to take a little time to reflect on everything you did over the course of the past school year. The process of looking back on your accomplishments isn’t selfish, it’s the key to improving the way you do anything in the future.
So, that’s what we’re doing today. We’re looking back on the last 10 episodes of this podcast and sharing our favorite highlights and lessons learned. We’ve interviewed 16 people this year and every single one of them left us some nugget of brilliance to think about long after the episode finished. We hope this episode reminds you of all the good stuff you’ve done this year and all the ways you can continue to support your students and each other in the years to come.
To dive into any of the episodes mentioned today, ch…
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May 17, 2022
Ep. 19: Post-conference Wrap-up 2022
This spring, we were fortunate enough to attend not one, not two, but three, in-person PBIS conferences. We know scheduling conflicts and budget constraints can get in the way of making it possible for everyone to register. So, this month we decided to take some time to share our conference experiences, the conversations we had, and the things we learned during our time at these events.
In our Teach by Design article, we’ve got a list of 12 tips and tricks we picked up from conference sessions devoted to social-emotional learning and mental health. In today’s Expert Instruction episode, we’re bringing together our PBISApps team to share some of the most pressing questions we answered at our vendor booth.
Joining the conversation is Katie Schulz, one of our Customer Support Specialists here at PBISApps. Katie is a 7-year veteran on our Customer Support Team. If you’ve ever had a question about how to use any of our apps, you’ve probably spoken to Katie.
Jessica Daily is our…
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Apr 19, 2022
Ep. 18: The Fundamentals of Data-driven Decisions
What does data-driven decision making mean to you? In this month’s Teach by Design, we showed you how researchers found it means something different depending on who you ask. What works for one school may not work for another, but we were also curious to know whether there were some components of a decision-making process that might be similar across most contexts.
In today’s episode of Expert Instruction, we’re exploring those decision-making fundamentals – the components of your decision-making model that make your team more efficient and your solutions more effective.
Joining us is Dr. Jessica Swain-Bradway and Dr. Billie Jo Rodriguez. Jessica is the executive director for Northwest PBIS Network – an organization providing professional development and support around PBIS & MTSS, including restorative practices, Interconnected Systems Framework, equity in discipline, early childhood PBIS, and more. Jessica’s work focuses on equipping teachers with strategies for instruc…
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Mar 15, 2022
Ep. 17: How to Create an Action Plan
No matter where you are on your implementation journey, at some point you’ll want to take a step back and ask yourselves, “Are we doing what we said we’d do and is that effort having the kind of impact we hoped it would have?” Answering those questions requires data. Once you’ve collected the data you need, the next step is to create a plan.
On today’s episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we invited two experts to share their action-planning strategies. Hear how they guide teams to use data, focus their problem solving, and build their best action plans ever.
Our guests today are Hannah Anderson and Luke Anderson. Hannah is the Director of Innovation, School Programs and Accountability for the Rocklin Unified School District (RUSD) in Rocklin, CA. She oversees state and federal programs and leads the district’s PBIS Leadership Team.
Luke Anderson is the Senior Director of Prevention Supports and Services for the Placer County Office of Education…
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Feb 15, 2022
Ep. 16: Adding Student Voice to Leadership Teams
On today’s episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we continue our exploration of how to add student perspectives to the decisions effecting schools every day. We’ve shared ideas for how to include students at the school level, but what about at the district level? What does it look like for students to be involved in decisions that effect not only the way their school operates, but how all schools operate within their area?Zachary Patterson knows.
Zachary is a senior at University City High School in San Diego, CA and the very first student board member on San Diego Unified School District’s school board. The fact that the district has a student member at all was Zachary’s idea. As a 7th grader, he proposed the board add a student seat. By October 2019, not only had they approved that proposal, but Zachary was elected to serve as the inaugural student member. On top of this position, he is also the founder and current president of the California Student Bo…
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Jan 18, 2022
Ep. 15: Uplifting Student Voices in Implementation
After the annual PBIS Leadership Forum held this October, I caught up on some of the sessions I missed by watching the recordings. I came across a presentation called “Youth Speaking Up About Inequity: Their Experiences Through Their Own Voices” given by Dr. Felicia Singleton and Marcus Jackson. The two of them presented on the ways they have engaged and uplifted students’ voices in their county to address the systems contributing to the inequities students experienced. Specifically, San Diego County Office of Education hosted a series of student panels, moderated by university students, and attended by adults from around the region. During these Zoom sessions, students shared openly about the challenges they’ve faced as members of marginalized communities. Their commentary was honest, authentic, and brave, even when their truth was hard to hear as an adult.
We had to know more about what it was like to organize these discussions and about the impact they’ve had since. So,…
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Nov 16, 2021
Ep. 14: Relieving Staff Stress with System-level Solutions
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re talking about stress – specifically the stress so many adults in education feel right now. Our guests are Susan Barrett and Dr. Kimberly Yanek from the Center for Social Behavior Support at Old Dominion and the Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. Together, they will share tangible strategies for tackling problems at the system level that contribute to the stress so many in education feel right now. They’ve even got some solutions to start implementing today!
For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this episode, check out these links:
* The Burnout Epidemic by Jennifer Moss
* Guidance and resources for supporting schools during and after crisis from the TA Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports
* Resource mapping activity (aka Initiative Inventory)
* Practice Brief: Building a Culture of Staff Wellness Through Multi-…
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Oct 19, 2021
Ep. 13: The Who, Why, & How of Tier 2 Decision-Making
Every October, you can expect us to talk about the October Catch – a way for your school-wide teams to use referral data to identify students who might benefit from additional supports. The October Catch is the first step in a process to get students the resources they need when they need them. What comes next? How does a student’s name end up on a Tier 2 team’s meeting agenda? How do you know which intervention is a good fit?
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we’re talking about Tier 2 teams and the foundations of decision making at the Tier 2 level. Joining us in this conversation are Drs. Erin Chaparro and Ginny Joseph.
Dr. Chaparro is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon. For more than a decade, she has worked with districts and schools to implement multi-tiered systems of support for literacy and PBIS. She works with states across the country consulting on explicit instruction, PBIS, implementation science, and the…
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Sep 20, 2021
Ep. 12: Effects of Stress in the Classroom
You are teachers. Stress comes with the territory. However, the stress we’re under this year feels different. It’s more complex. There are multiple sources of pressure and there isn’t an end date on the horizon. It’s one thing to handle the stress that comes and goes in a typical year; handling chronic stress is something else entirely. The pandemic has compounded the effect stress has on your students, to the point where you’re likely to see more unwanted behavior crop up in your classroom this year.
In this month’s Teach by Design, we offered up some ideas for how to combat the stress levels in your classroom. In this episode of Expert Instruction, we’re diving a little further into the topic.
Today, we’re talking with Dr. Geovanna Rodriguez, an assistant professor of school psychology at the University of Oregon about how to manage the stress happening in your classroom this year—both your students’ and your own.
Find out how creating safe, predictable classro…
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Aug 16, 2021
Ep. 11 Creating a Welcoming Classroom
The last year and a half brought a lot of lessons, maybe the most important of which is the way we build relationships with each other. Now is the perfect time to talk about going beyond welcoming students and start creating radically welcoming classrooms.
In this episode of Expert Instruction, our guest is Saki Malose, a research assistant from the University of Oregon’s College ofEducation. Saki is an experienced educator and scholar. In her current project, the Inclusive Skill-building Learning Approach (ISLA), Saki works as part of a team of researchers helping schools implement an instructional approach to exclusionary discipline practices like suspension and expulsion. She shares how she creates classrooms that welcome students and offers up the strategies she teaches so others can do the same. For more information about radically welcoming spaces, checkout Dr. Christopher Emdin’s conversation from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Activate Series.
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Jun 15, 2021
Ep. 10: More Wins From a Weird Year
After a weird year like we had in the 2020-21 school year, we wanted to take some time to showcase the things that went better than you thought they’d go. We reached out to our PBISApps community and asked you to submit your wins. Some stories appeared in our Teach by Design article this month; the rest you’ll hear in this episode.
We sat down with three schools from across the country to hear more about how this year didn’t stop them from creating community and building relationships in spite of the distance.
* Horace Mann Elementary School, Oak Park, IL: Linda Chrystall shared how she modified their school’s Check-in Check-out point card to work better for students engaged in distance learning.
* Elkins Park School, Elkins Park, PA: Shareese Nelson, Stephen Suplick, and Brian Wallace gave us examples of all the ways they went above and beyond to encourage their students to feel connected as part of the larger school community.
* Thurston Middle School, Springfie…
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May 18, 2021
Ep. 9: Supporting School-Wide Mental Health
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health America is using this May to build upon last year's "Tools 2 Thrive" campaign by sharing “practical tools that everyone can use to improve their mental health and increase their resiliency regardless of their personal situation." Susan Barrett and Dr. Brandi Simonsen from The Center on PBIS jumped right on top of the theme and started a social media campaign called #SchoolWellnessPBIS on Facebook and Twitter. With online spaces flooded with resources around how to support mental health in schools, their goal was to curate a list of tips and resources for incorporating positive mental health strategies in the classroom. After sharing a few of their strategies in this month's Teach by Design article, we wanted to invite them to the podcast to talk a little about the inspiration behind the campaign and why they feel it's so important to talk about mental health in schools right now.
Our conversation includes ideas you can implement…
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Apr 20, 2021
Ep 8: How PBIS Practices Helped Us Through the Pandemic
In this episode, we’re joined by three experts who share with us their experiences using PBIS to guide them through the crisis of the last year.
Jennifer Bouckaert is the District Supervisor of Culture and Climate at Southbridge Public Schools in Southbridge, MA. She is a licensed School Adjustment Counselor and has worked in Southbridge for about six years supporting PBIS implementation within the district.
Kitty Clemens is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the Associate Director at Cedarhurst School. Cedarhurst is a therapeutic middle and high school serving students from all over Connecticut who have social, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Kitty has been at Cedarhurst for 18 years, originally running the clinical program and more recently in a general administrative role. She was involved with the initial PBIS implementation at Cedarhurst 12 years ago and has been a member of the PBIS team ever since.
Luke Borowski is the Behavior Program Manager at Cedarhurst School…
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Mar 16, 2021
Ep. 7: The I Am M.O.R.E. Project
In this episode of Expert Instruction, we're joined by Renee Mitchell, the visionary behind the I Am M.O.R.E. project. (M.O.R.E. stands for Making Ourselves Resilient Everyday.) I Am M.O.R.E. came out of Renee's work helping students at Roosevelt High School write their personal essays for scholarships and college applications. One year, of the four Portland students awarded $16,000 scholarships, three came from her class. That's when she realized something: there is power in students telling their own stories. By reframing their hardships as assets, and validating their experiences, her students began to say, "My story has meaning. By sharing myself, I can support and help someone else." Renee watched how the process of "owning their stories" transformed how her students moved through the world, with their shoulders back, believing their dreams were possible.
The I Am M.O.R.E. project is an important reminder of how we can all find our purpose...even from our lowest moments.
To find…
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Feb 16, 2021
Ep. 6: Implicit Bias
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, our guest is Dr. Erik Girvan from the University of Oregon School of Law. Dr. Girvan's research focuses on how sterotypes, attitudes, and other biases might impact the decisions you make in schools. He joined us to talk specifically about implicit bias: the automatic, unconscious associations we make about people and their social roles. Addressing the way these biases make their way into our school policies and procedures is exactly the kind of work we need to do in order to create supportive environments.
During our discussion, we talked about how to know when our implicit biases are most likely to affect our decisions. These moments are called vulnerable decision points and they're most likely to happen when we are under pressure, stress, fatigue, or without much specific information. If that doesn't describe the reality we live in right now, I don't know what does. So, what do we do when life feels like one big…
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Jan 19, 2021
Ep. 5: Voice's Role in Implementation
In this episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast, we continue the conversation we started in November about culturally responsive practices in PBIS implementation. We are joined by three experts to explore the role of including student, family, and community voices in your implementation.
* Dr. Jennifer Rose is a psychologist with Loyola Community and Family Services, a mental health clinic providing services for children and families in the Chicagoland area. In her advocacy work, she supports children impacted by exclusionary disciplinary policies as well as students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs). As a nationally certified school psychologist and licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Rose has provided psychological services in diverse settings including traditional k-12 buildings, juvenile corrections, alternative schools, psychiatric hospitals, and community mental health.
* Melaney Leverson is a nationally certified school psychologist and a re…
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Nov 17, 2020
Ep. 4: School Culture vs. Climate
This month, we kick off our series about culturally responsive practices in PBIS implementation. In Teach by Design, we defined what we mean when we say a school is culturally responsive; we explored how to use data to determine the impact your existing systems and practices have on specific student groups; and we used Dr. Christopher Emdin’s idea of “content + context” to embed student identity in implementation.
When your school is culturally responsive, you hold all students to high expectations, and you use their cultures to enhance their learning. What do you do when your schoolwide expectations aren’t culturally responsive? How do you know when they are?
In this episode of Expert Instruction, we’re talked to Athena Vernon. Athena is a member of the Desert/Mountain SELPA Prevention and Intervention Team. She is a Prevention and Intervention Lead Specialist with over 15 years of experience in K-12 settings. During our conversation, we talked about the difference betwee…
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Oct 22, 2020
Ep. 3: Restorative Practices During Distance Learning
In this month’s Teach by Design post, we explored how to use effective classroom management practices as a way to prevent suspensions during distance learning. Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts to manage them, misbehaviors escalate. What is an alternative to exclusionary discipline like suspensions and expulsions?
In this month’s Expert Instruction episode, we’re talking all about restorative practices.
We are joined by:
* Dr. Rhonda Nese, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences and the principal investigator of a research project called ISLA: an instructional alternative to exclusionary discipline practices.
* Keith Hickman, the Executive Director of Collective Impact at the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Graduate School.
* Saundra Hensel, the Behaviors Support Systems Coordinator from Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, KY.
* Dr. Naomi Brahim, the Multi-Tiered Systems of Su…
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Sep 15, 2020
Ep. 2: Making Virtual Meetings Work For Your Team
Our September issue of Teach by Design is all about the small changes teams can make to create big impacts on the way they conduct their virtual team meetings. When I first started researching the topic, I knew I needed to check in with Dr. Erin Chaparro. Erin runs a research project called TIPS EdTECH - a project to develop a suite of online tools to help teams in their mission to create more efficient, effective team meetings. I called her up a few weeks ago and out of that 30-minute conversation came ideas like changing the team meeting time, finding space to talk about more than work, and looking for new ways of collecting and using data. We ran out of time during our phone call, so I asked her to come back and join us on Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast.
In this episode, Dr. Chaparro shares her experience watching teams navigate the spring of 2020 as they moved their in-person meetings to virtual ones. She also tells us how these same teams prepared themselves f…
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Aug 24, 2020
Ep. 1: Adapting Practices for Distance Learning
Today we launch the first episode of Expert Instruction: The Teach by Design Podcast. In this episode, we wanted to explore one of the six back-to-basics strategies we listed in our August Teach by Design article. Specifically, how do you take the good teaching practices you already know and adapt them for distance learning? We talked to two of our PBISApps trainers to learn what they did to make their in-person trainings effective in online spaces.
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