Tuesday, May 22, 2018

School-wide Expectations For Students & Staff


Spending a significant amount of time in education for more than a decade has provided a wide range of experiences with various systems that establish school-wide expectations for students and staff. PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Systems) is a common implementation being seeing in schools across the country. PBIS establishes clear expectations and routines for supporting students and staff with creating effective relationships and procedures to ensure optimal learning environments. Although PBIS has been successful in a variety of learning environments, there are situations in which PBIS has failed to reach effectiveness in supporting student needs in schools I've worked in/with. These situations may be due to a number of factors including lack of consistent implementation, lack of student involvement in the development of action plans or growth steps, and the failure to effectively teach or model desired behaviors. With the successful implementation in some environments and failure in others, I've sought out additional models to support school-wide expectations with success.

A model I've been highly impressed with and witnessed achieve high levels of success in recent years is the Crew model by EL (Expeditionary Learning) Education. EL Education (2015) states, "The structure of crew allows for relationship building, academic progress monitoring, and character development" (p.1). Supporting learners in any environment begins with "relationship building" as educators must know their learners and the learners also need opportunities to know their educators on levels deeper than academic achievement and instruction. Relationship building allows educators to support learners with "academic progress monitoring" and "character development" in much greater ways as each learner has different needs and situations affecting academic progress and character development outside educator control. As educators have deeper relationships with learners, they are equipped for success in supporting learners with understanding what intrinsically drives them or potential roadblocks for their success.

One of the key components of EL Education's Crew structure is to provide educators and learners opportunities to continue the development and growth of relationships and mentoring across multiple years. EL Education (2015) describes the Crew structure as, "Multi-year relationships forged in other school structures (e.g., multi-age classrooms, looping) to ensure that students’ needs are met and individual strengths are discovered" (p.1). A significant barrier to supporting staff and students across schools is the constant shifting year after year. Relationships require time to develop and grow which, is often hindered by structures established on an annual basis rather than spanning the time frames in which students attend a school. Powerful and influential relationships are leveraged over longer time spans where staff and students have opportunities to reflect, grow and develop without the pressures of an annual calendar.

I recently experienced a high school graduation in which the EL Crew structure has been implemented for both staff and students. All students participate in a daily Crew block with the same teacher across all of their years in attendance at the high school. Staff also participate in a weekly "Staff Crew" together where they collaborate and reflect on successes and needed improvements across the school. At the school's graduation, each Crew teacher hands the diploma to the students in their Crew as they cross the stage in symbolic representation of the relationships they've established and the accomplishments they've achieved together over the years. It is an extremely powerful illustration of how learners work and grow together over time even in the midst of set backs, obstacles, and conflicts. Ultimately, it's a depiction of real life as relationships contain the realities of high and low moments so students are able to experience and learn how to get through the good times, as well as, the tough times with the necessary supports.

Reflecting on my experiences with EL Education's Crew model as a leader I continuously seek to implement the philosophies and practices it contains. Providing staff and students opportunities to establish and grow relationships together will lead to increased learner outcomes. Creating structures for all learners to collaborate, problem solve, and be creative together will create schools full of incredible learning and growth. So much of what we do as humans on a daily basis relies on relationships and the health or volatility of them. When we can all seek to establish relationships as a primary goal and work through the challenges and successes together, there will ultimately be a collective growth experienced by everyone in the community.

Reference:

Purposes of Crew - EL Education. Retrieved May 18, 2018, from https://eleducation.org/uploads/downloads/ELED-PurposesOfCrew-0815.pdf

1 comment:

  1. Nick,
    I definitely agree with your observation of the issues with PBIS. There must be consistent implementation and 100% buy-in and follow through or it cannot be successful. I also appreciate the different system that you describe. I like that EL focuses on relationships. I am a firm believer that relationships are the key to solving most discipline problems.

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