Behavior:The Forgotten Curriculum - Chris Weber

Скачать книгу

      So, how is this nurturing learning environment created? I believe that there exist several foundational principles that educators should address, discuss, and ultimately accept regarding student behavior.

      ■ Behavior is as critical as academics; behavioral skills include the categories of precognitive self-regulation, mindsets, social skills, learning strategies (such as metacognition, cognitive self-regulation, and executive functioning), perseverance, and academic behaviors (such as participation, work completion, attendance, and engagement).

      ■ Students behave and misbehave for a reason, purpose, or function, and educators have a great deal of influence regarding the ways in which students behave.

      ■ Educators must define, model, teach, and nurture the behaviors that they want to see.

      ■ Educators will be most successful nurturing behavioral skills when they align the definitions, steps, and process of behavioral RTI to those of academic RTI.

      ■ Staff members must assume collective responsibility for nurturing student behaviors.

      ■ Great relationships between educators and educators, educators and students, and students and students lead to better student behavior and greater levels of engagement and learning.

      ■ Great classroom environments with high expectations and clear procedures and routines lead to better student behavior.

      ■ Engaging, rich, and sound pedagogies, strategies, and tasks lead to better student behavior.

      ■ If educators want student behaviors to change, they must be willing to change.

      Begin your collective work on building a system of behavioral supports by collaboratively reflecting upon and discussing these foundational ideas, and reference them throughout the process. Do they ring true? Do “yeah, but…” and “what if…” comments and questions arise? Transparent and courageous dialogue on core principles such as these can help serve as a vision or “North Star” that guides and shapes these critical efforts.

      To measure the current realities of your school and the readiness of your staff in creating a nurturing learning environment, consider using the survey in figure 1.1 (page 18) as a preassessment to inform how you will begin your journey. This survey is designed to gauge the current climate and staff attitudes regarding behavior and can be repeated at any time before, during, and after the implementation of the six steps of behavioral RTI.

      A colleague was recently appointed principal of a school in which the climate and attitudes, as measured by the survey in figure 1.1, were inhibiting success. Staff were hardworking and capable, but beliefs in all students learning at high levels and a collective commitment to meeting student needs required some attention. This principal courageously and respectfully shared the results with staff and facilitated an open dialogue in which frustrations were expressed. This began a healing process. From this beginning, a grade-level team volunteered to embrace the idea that behavioral skills needed to be taught and time needed to be embedded within the day to do so. The staff members were empowered and supported, and results in the first year, as measured by a reduction in behavioral infractions and increases in attendance, work completion, and reading levels, were dramatic. The momentum and excitement generated from this success inspired other teams to initiate shifts in their practices and a corner had truly been turned; the school now feels different, and student outcomes continue to improve.

       Figure 1.1: Survey of expectations, readiness, strengths, and needs of staff and stakeholders.

      Visit go.SolutionTree.com/RTI for a free reproducible version of this figure.

      A commitment to ensuring that all students possess the behavioral skills necessary for readiness in college, a skilled career, and life cannot be fully achieved without providing scaffolded core instruction for every single student, and supplemental interventions for students who do not come to school with a mastery of behaviors. We must define, teach, model, and measure mastery of the behavioral skills of all students as part of a core curriculum, both as a distinct and critical part of Tier 1 and integrated into the academic instruction that has far too long represented the totality of a student’s school experience. Within the remainder of this chapter, we will describe the process for identifying and defining the behaviors that all students must develop, and give examples of behavioral priorities that schools may consider.

      Education should have always been about more than academics. Students may earn acceptance into universities and skilled careers through academic achievement, but college is successfully completed and careers are sustained only through the application of behaviors that are too infrequently prioritized and taught in our schools.

      Thus, once you have established in your staff a collective belief that behavioral skills are essential to teach and a commitment to make that happen, you must ask two questions: (1) What are the most essential behavioral outcomes that students must master, in order to give them the best possible social and academic outcomes? and (2) What does your team collaboratively agree it will look and sound like when students master these most essential outcomes? These questions are simple to answer in the academic realm, but have not been considered frequently or systematically enough in the context of behavior. We cannot teach behavioral skills without first clearly identifying, prioritizing, and defining those skills that students must possess.

      When it comes to academic content, educators are making a renewed commitment to defining a viable curriculum within a grade level or course that all students will master (Larson & Kanold, 2016; Udelhofen, 2014). Next-generation standards and commitments to deeper learning in states and provinces are, in many ways, providing the motivation and opportunity for these endeavors. Depth is increasingly favored over breadth; quality over quantity; mastery over coverage. Educators are prioritizing the concepts and skills that all students must master, ensuring the most critical learning that students must possess receives adequate time and attention. Teams are also more clearly defining what mastery of prioritized content and skills looks like and sounds like. The work of teachers in my district related to these tasks—in kindergarten through twelfth grade, in mathematics, English language arts, science, and history–social science—is innovative and impactful; both teaching and learning are improving. When articulated horizontally and vertically, this collaboration allows for collective professional preparation and ensures that all students are optimally prepared for the next grade level or course.

      These processes are not new. From Understanding by Design (Wiggins, McTighe, Kiernan, & Frost, 1998) to curriculum mapping (Jacobs, 2004) to Rigorous Curriculum Design (Ainsworth, 2010), schools have long recognized that a guaranteed, viable curriculum (Scherer, 2001) is one of the most critical factors contributing to high levels of student learning. In light of next-generation standards, the collaborative staff processes of scoping and sequencing prioritized learning outcomes are more important than ever.

      We must apply this very same thinking, and complete this very same work, for the behaviors that we want all students to exhibit. Jim Wright, an RTI trainer and consultant to schools and educational organizations, notes that the “communal initial step of defining community behavior norms actually brings educators into alignment about the conduct they want to foster in their classrooms” (J. Wright, personal communication, May 23, 2017). We must identify, prioritize, describe and define, and scope and sequence these behaviors in our teams and with all staff across the school. In fact, defining and teaching behaviors will require even more consistency and collaboration than defining and teaching academic expectations. Here’s why: while collaboration within the third-grade team or high school mathematics department is vital when defining academic priorities for that team, behavioral skills will

Скачать книгу