Managing Discipline With Dean Poole Rockdale County High School

What is EducatorsHandbook.com? EducatorsHandbook.com is a new way to manage office discipline referrals and be able to track and analyze school-wide discipline data. Educator’s Handbook streamlines the discipline process by replacing paper discipline referrals, helps conserve time, and provides topnotch analysis of referral data

How can EducatorsHandbook How can EducatorsHandbook.com support RCHS’s strategic plan for technology use? EducatorsHanbook.com supports Rockdale County High School’s use of PBIS (Prevetative Behavior Intervention Strategies) to proactively reduce unwanted behavior, increase student engagement, and maximize instructional time. By recognizing student behavior trends and quickly identifying students who are in need of individualized services, teachers can increase student engagement, and administrators can reduce the amount of time students miss class time due to behavior incidents.

How can EducatorsHandbook How can EducatorsHandbook.com support RCHS’s strategic plan for technology use? One of our school’s high priority goals this school year is to reduce the number of hours/days missed by students from ISS and OSS assignments. 2014-2015 ISS/OSS Assignments: 567 Students Assigned ISS or OSS Total of 1,146 Combined School Days Missed!!!

Less Time Missed From ISS/OSS MORE TIME IN THE CLASSROOM How can EducatorsHandbook.com support RCHS’s strategic plan for technology use? EducatorsHandbook.com can help us identify behavior trends quickly and explicitly so that we can adjust our school and classroom management procedures accordingly to proactively reduce behavioral incidents. Less Time Missed From ISS/OSS = MORE TIME IN THE CLASSROOM

Evaluation of EducatorsHandbook.com Rockdale County High School is a Title 1 school with approximately 1,900 students. RCHS has a 69% “Economically Disadvantaged” rate with 64% of the student population eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch. One of our growing concerns is maximizing student instructional time while creating a more efficient and streamlined referral process for teachers. EducatorsHandbook.com will make these process easier and will also provide data that will help the school proactively reduce the occurrence of unwanted behavior.

Advantages of EducatorsHandbook.com Faster than traditional paper referral system Overlaps w/ RCHS referral process and existing terminology Provides immediate teacher notification once a consequence has been assigned by administrators Automatically collects and sorts discipline data associated with the district’s RtI procedures

Advantages of EducatorsHandbook.com Automatic record keeping that is accessible to any school district who owns a license for EducatorsHandbook.com Automatically generates parent letters, discipline contracts, and discipline/consequence records Provides better and clearer information about student behavior trends and patterns. Helps teachers and administrators quickly identify students in need of individualized services according to district RtI procedures

Target Population EducatorsHandbook.com will be used by the entire faculty of RCHS including classroom teachers, administrators, counselors, and other office personnel. EducatorsHandbook.com is used for ALL classroom behavioral incidents including minor incident reports and office discipline referrals. Teachers and administrators will be able to identify students who are in need of individualized services based upon the district’s RtI process and procedures .

Equipment and Software The Educator’s Handbook system is accessed through the internet so there is no additional or specific equipment or software that needs to be purchased or installed. Faculty can access EducatorsHandbook.com with any computer that has internet access both on or off campus. Faculty uses their school email as their username and then will create their own password. Administrators can control feature access for each individual staff member.

Support and Resources www.educatorshandbook.com/resources Technical Support, How-To Videos, Instructional Handouts and more are all located at: www.educatorshandbook.com/resources

Limitations Data trends and analysis will be limited for the first several months of implementation. As more minor incident reports and office discipline referrals are entered, the data trends will be come much more comprehensive and helpful. The program is only useful if teachers USE it. If teachers aren’t entering in ALL behavioral incidents, then the data will not be an accurate depiction of student behavior trends.

Limitations Data is only as helpful as teachers allow it to be. EducatorsHandbook.com is simply a tool to collect and organize data. Teachers must actively and continuously analyze the data trends and adjust accordingly. This is not a direct instructional tool. This is designed to help teachers effectively and efficiently diagnose “problem” areas/times/procedures within their classroom.

Cost EducatorsHandbook.com charges a $499/year subscription fee. This gives total access to an unlimited number of faculty members within the school. The subscription fee includes a one day staff training course conducted by a representative from EducatorsHandbook.com. Additional staff development can be held and led by school administrators or Digital Learning Specialists.

Funding EducatorsHandbook.com will be funded using the school’s Title I funds. This fits within the category of School Improvement.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? With the use of this technology, teachers can break down behavioral data in a variety of categories in order to better understand the sources of unwanted student behavior. Using this data, teachers can adjust instructional practices and improve classroom management, thus increasing instructional time and maximizing student engagement.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? Teachers will enter minor behavior incidents and office discipline referrals. As teachers enter data, they will begin to see behavioral trends based on days of the week, class periods, instructional arrangement, location, and more. Once teachers identify these problem areas, they can create strategies to proactively deter unwanted behavior in these specific situations.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? Administrators can now easily see which teachers, classes, hallways, times of day, etc. are most prone to behavioral incidents and plan accordingly. For example, if trends show that the 300 Hall has a high percentage of incidents occurring between 3rd and 4th period, administrators can plan to have a larger presence in that halls during that specific time. Administrators can also identify teachers that are having larger problems with classroom management and give stronger support to them.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? Teachers, Administrators, and Counselors can now identify “at-risk” students much more quickly. By identifying these students faster, the school can plan and accommodate early intervention strategies in order to reduce future incidents. This can also hasten the RtI process in order to have students placed in an alternative setting if needed.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? EducatorsHandbook.com will increase communication between teachers and administrators. Teachers will now have a full record of all minor classroom incidents to cite when writing an office discipline report. Teachers will also be notified immediately once an administrator has met with a student and assigned a consequence for an ODR.

How Do We Use EducatorsHandbook.com? EducatorsHandbook.com will also help with communicating discipline problems with parents. Parent letters and discipline records can be automatically generated and emailed or printed to be sent home with students. Teachers will also enter all parent contacts or attempts of contact in Educator’s Handbook to keep record.

Evaluating the Research Although EducatorsHandbook.com is a new web based program being offered, it coincides directly with our school’s use of Preventative Behavior Intervention Strategies (PBIS). Research, Study Results, and Data Analysis of PBIS Effectiveness led by Dr. Eric Landers of Georgia Southern University can be found at: https://www.my-behavior-resource.com/

Implementation

Implementation Creating a Climate for Change: Sense of Urgency: 2014-2015 Students Missed a Combined Total of 1,146 Days of School Building the Team: PBIS Team Consisting of Teachers, Administrators, and Community Members The Vision: Rockdale County High School Strategic Plan

Implementation Creating a Climate for Change: We have created a PBIS Leader team that consists of teachers, counselors, and administrators to overlook the implementation of all new discipline procedures including EducatorsHandbook.com that coincide with the district’s and school’s strategic plan. The teachers and administrators will participate in a half- day training for EducatorsHandbook.com with a company representative in order to become the school “experts”.

Implementation Engaging and Enabling the Whole School: Communicate for Buy-In: Present the uses and benefits of EducatorsHandbook.com Empower Action: Train all teachers to use EducatorsHandbook.com Create Short Term Wins: Establish attainable goals to build success

Implementation Engaging and Enabling the Whole School: Teachers will participate in a whole-staff introduction presentation for EducatorsHandbook.com to learn why we chose this program, the main functions and features of the program, and the advantages the program will provide the staff. Teachers will participate in small group trainings after the introduction presentation to learn how to use EducatorsHandbook.com. Teachers will be able to experience hands on training and have time to ask any questions or concerns.

Implementation Implementing and Sustaining Change: Don’t Let Up: Referral Data will be reviewed and presented each month during faculty meetings Teachers will analyze data monthly in PLCs Make It Stick: Each month teachers will be able to pose questions, concerns, and suggestions for the PBIS team to consider

Implementation Implementing and Sustaining Change: The PBIS team will present a “Discipline Trend Report” during each monthly faculty meeting. The report will cover “hot spots”, “trouble times”, “target issues”, and more. Teachers will discuss their personal discipline trends with their PLCs each month as well. This will be a time for them to speak with peers and their team administrator about target issues, identifying students who need early RtI services, and other options of support.

Reflection Although EducatorsHandbook.com is not necessarily an “instructional technology”, I chose it because I felt it will be effective in fixing a major problem at our school. Not only have we had an excessive number of students miss instructional time because of behavior incidents, our teachers have become more and more frustrated with our current discipline referral process and procedures. With EducatorsHandbook.com, teachers can now record discipline incidents more quickly and effectively. We will also now have a system that automatically categorizes this data so that we can easily identify behavior trends and target students who are in need of early intervention strategies. Using this system effectively, our school will be able to reduce the amount of behavioral incidents and maximize instructional time.