Behavior Solutions. John Hannigan
behavior initiatives.
How RTI at Work Applies to Academic and Social Behaviors
How can educators ensure students learn, master, and generalize (apply across multiple settings and situations) a set of academic and social behavior standards that will allow them to access their education and become productive citizens? How do educators design a system that intentionally teaches essential academic and social behavior standards the way it teaches academic content standards? To begin, educators need the tools and practical resources to build, teach, assess, and sustain a foundation for schoolwide behavior expectations at Tier 1 of RTI. This is obviously easier said than done.
On the academic content side, educators receive a set of academic standards for each grade level that students are expected to learn and master. In fact, students, teachers, and administrators are held accountable for these identified academic standards at the federal, state or provincial, and district levels, which requires the alignment of a strong instructional system.
Are schools and districts held accountable for behavior outcomes to the same degree? Do they have as strong a reason to align behavior systems with specific desired outcomes? Do educators teach and reinforce required behaviors with the same emphasis as academic outcomes? Sometimes the answer to these proposed questions is yes, and sometimes it is no. Districts and schools can answer yes to these questions when they have committed to providing all students access, both academically and social-emotionally, to accountability structures and goals aligned to these beliefs. Districts and schools must answer no if they inconsistently provide components of a behavior initiative and they provide those only to comply or to address discipline, rather than to make behavior skills a priority for all students. Making sure they can answer yes is how all schools can ensure students master crucial academic and social behavior skills.
Also, when using the term accountability with regard to behavior, we do not mean holding students accountable for their behavior in the form of discipline. We are not referring to exclusionary practices such as detention, suspension, and expulsion due to education code violations; we mean holding schools—the adults—accountable for designing a system that will teach students the academic and social behavior standards they need to access their education. This doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for misbehavior. Educators must hold students accountable for demonstrating essential behaviors.
Educators should view misbehavior as the absence of an academic or social behavior skill; misbehavior or organizational struggles are an educator’s cue to fill that gap by teaching the expected skills. A non-fluent reader won’t become fluent through more fluency practice. A teacher must first identify where that student is struggling and then target those skills with instruction to put proficient reading in reach. Educators need to respond in the same way for behavior—the adults must explicitly teach the skills needed to demonstrate a specific behavior. Unfortunately, teachers commonly see negative or lackadaisical student behavior through the lens of an adult feeling frustrated or disrespected by the behavior. But a student needs to learn the required skills before changing his or her behavior. This includes students who are not necessarily getting into trouble due to their behaviors but who need behavior supports to access their education and excel.
What RTI at Work Looks Like
This resource is not an educational theory text—it is an application workbook. While the procedures and tools provided are based on powerful research, these proven practices will not help a single student unless you put them into action. With this resource, we ultimately aim to provide more than a toolbox of random behavior resources, but a targeted set of complementary processes that will collectively create an effective system of supports. The RTI at Work pyramid in figure I.1 captures the entire system.
A school or district can use this pyramid as a graphic organizer for guiding its efforts to create a highly effective system of supports. In the next chapter, we will dig deeper into the essential elements of the RTI at Work process.
Source: Buffum et al., 2018, p. 18.
FIGURE I.1: RTI at Work pyramid.
What the Chapters of This Book Offer
In the introduction and chapter 1, we focus on why this work is critical in schools for students’ long-term success. We would define long-term success as mastery toward the next level of grade completion and one step closer to becoming a productive member of the community by establishing healthy relationships and a living-wage job. We will also identify the factors that contribute to what we refer to as the systemic behavior gap and we help you audit your school’s current state.
The introduction and chapter 1 help you answer the following and more questions.
▶ “Why is this work important?”
▶ “How do we know if our school has a systemic behavior gap?”
▶ “What contributes to the systemic behavior gap?”
▶ “How do we continue doing the work as competing initiatives are being pushed on us from the state and district levels?”
▶ “How do we know what we have to work on?”
In chapter 2, we explore how to integrate the roles in the PLC at Work and RTI at Work processes to ensure all students master essential behaviors. We also highlight the key differences among integrating the PLC process, RTI, and behavior and describe the roles and responsibilities of a school’s different teams—the leadership team, intervention team, and teacher teams—at each tier of RTI.
This chapter helps you answer the following and more questions.
▶ “How do we fit behavior into PLC at Work and RTI at Work processes?”
▶ “How does PLC and RTI integration differ when it comes to behavior, as opposed to academic structures?”
▶ “What is the responsibility of each team member in a PLC and in RTI?”
In chapter 1, you learn about the context and operational definitions required to understand and apply the information in this book, including the systemic behavior gap contributing factors and an audit of your school’s current state. In chapter 2, you learn about the roles and responsibilities for the teams involved in this work.
We walk you through each stage and allow you to complete your school’s RTI pyramid each step of the way. At the end of this book, you will have a complete picture of your school’s RTI pyramid and a plan for continuous improvement for each tier. In addition, you will have the information you need to prevent the systemic behavior gap. Implementation guides for Tiers 1, 2, and 3 help you plan PLC and RTI next steps.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5, we focus on identifying and avoiding the behavior-related challenges of PLC and RTI implementation by demonstrating how to function as a PLC and use RTI for each tier of behavior supports. We highlight what we call the essential academic and social behavior standards and provide a Plan–Do–Study–Act framework for implementing behavior solutions at each of the three RTI tiers.
The three reproducibles at the end of chapters