School-Wide Progressive Discipline Model

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program JP Frame. JP holds a master's degree in guidance counseling and serves as a behavior interventionist at the high school level and has more than 24 years of experience at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. And he's the author of the Schoolwide Progressive Discipline Model, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:35] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:38] SPEAKER_01:

JP, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you for having me. Well, I'm very excited to talk about progressive discipline because it's something that I've been thinking about a great deal lately and something that, frankly, people seem to be increasingly unaware of as really a foundation of how schools have always worked. And we're starting to hear a lot of concerns about student behavior. We is nothing new, but I really get the sense that this year is different. The behavior challenges that teachers are facing, that schools are facing, are just at an unprecedented level.

[01:10]

JP, I wonder if you could start just by explaining to us what is progressive discipline and what potential does it have to address some of the things that we're seeing across the profession now with student discipline and student behavior?

[01:22] SPEAKER_02:

Well, progressive discipline is the process we use at our school. And it's just a series of steps. It's a framework to help teachers guide them through the process of when it's appropriate to address low-level behaviors. If a student is aggressive toward another student verbally, maybe a slur, some physical activity that's a major offense and that needs to be addressed immediately by the office but there are other behaviors that teachers experience in the classroom they sap instruction time and it's the minor stuff being on your seat off task you know cell phones are a big issue today and so i think traditionally there's been and it's been documented in some research finn at all talked about the disconnect between admin and teachers about what's important to them so for example Teachers see misbehavior as cutting class, being late, leaving their seats, speaking out of turn, failing to follow directions, etc. On the flip side, administrators have a tendency to see truancy, saler use of illicit substances, bullying, fighting, gang activity, and vandalism as more essential for them to be addressing.

[02:19]

And so what happens is when a teacher has a student who's consistently up and about the room and out of their seat and they refuse to follow any directions, they get frustrated. They start sending the student to the office. The office says, why are you sending the student to the office for being out of their seat? That's not a big deal. You should be able to handle that. It's a challenge.

[02:35]

And so what I like about the progressive discipline model is it gives teachers a series of steps. So hopefully you can handle this with a conversation with the students. So step one is a conversation. I want to say that each step is preceded by action. what's called a verbal warning. And this is where we have intentional teaching of the structure of our classroom, the culture of our classroom that should take place at the beginning of each semester because new students come and go.

[02:59]

But you should be sharing with students what your expectations are, how do you obtain materials and things of that nature. And so one of the things you would want to teach them at the beginning of the semester is the verbal warning. And what it is, is if a student is out, let's say they're out of their seat persistently and you've asked them several times in the course of a single class period, hey, I need you to sit down, please. And they're continuing. You may walk over to them and quietly say, hey, I need you to sit down, please. This is your verbal warning.

[03:22]

And through intentionally teaching that, they know that that's their cue. If you have to talk to them about that behavior again, then we're going to move to the progressive discipline model. And that the first step is a conversation with the student, explain why it's important for them to be in their seat, why it's important for them to follow certain classroom procedures. And hopefully that would be enough for us to say, okay, that makes sense. I'm going to changed my approach a few days go by weeks go by and it's a new behavior now it's poking your neighbor you know and i need you to stop that please need to stop that please you go to verbal warning again step two is when you send a form letter home it's a simple letter teachers have a stack of them in their drawer and they hand a letter to the students say you need to bring this back to the next class period the next time you come so if i hand it to you on a friday it's due on monday if i hand it to you on monday and you're absent tuesday and wednesday i expect to see it on thursday And it has, you know, it's just a basic form that are saying, you know, we're experiencing some difficulties in the classroom, nothing major, but you might want to talk to your student about their approach.

[04:16]

If you have any questions, please give me a call. And the parent's supposed to sign it. There's some conversation starters at the bottom to help the parents have a conversation with their student. Like if they think the teacher's being unfair, they can have a conversation about that. And then the teacher holds on to that. One thing I want to emphasize is we don't worry about forgeries because if a student forges their parent's name and the behavior stops, then that's a win for us and we're not going to worry about it.

[04:37] SPEAKER_01:

That's a big point. I think that the ideal here is that we take a small step. We take a proportional step. You know, this behavior is a low level behavior. We're not saying this kid committed an act of violence or arson or anything like that. Like these are low level behaviors, but that do add up and they are disruptive.

[04:54]

And we're trying to handle those behaviors in the least invasive and disruptive way possible, right? As educators, we don't want to make a bigger deal of something than is necessary. But on the other hand, we don't want to just let everything go until something big happens and get to that point where the class is so disrupted with so many of these low-level aggravating behaviors that students are aggravating each other. And then that turns into a fight or something else that's more major. So as you said, we're hoping that...

[05:20]

that handles it, that the conversation handles it, or that the letter home handles it. Even if the parent doesn't actually see the letter home, if that's the last we have to mess with it, you're saying that's an okay outcome.

[05:29] SPEAKER_02:

All we want is for the class to function as intended. This year, April 1st was, this year was the 41st anniversary of me getting suspended in fourth grade on April Fool's Day. My buddy John Andy and I, we got suspended for putting rubber snakes in girls' desks. You know, there was no internet back then, so it was a much bigger deal. The girls cried, and we got in trouble, and we got suspended from school for that. And people think, well, really?

[05:50]

For rubber snakes in the girls' desks? I'm like, think about the date. Poor Miss Follett. She'd been put up with John Andy and JP for September, October, November, December, January, February, March. April 1st, she's like, I'm so tired of you guys. Send them home.

[06:04]

And we were never like the egregious behaviors. We were just annoying every day. And it wears on you after a while. You write these lessons and you're trying to execute these lessons and there's these disruptions that prevent it from being finished. And it really impacts the learning environment. These small behaviors impact the learning environment.

[06:21]

And that's where teachers are looking for support in my mind. And so as we move through the process, moving to step three, verbal warning, the next step is a phone call home. Now the teacher makes the phone call home and that's a heavy lift. I understand what I'm asking teachers to do. Because I, as a teacher for 14 years of the 24 years I've been in education, remember sitting in staff meetings and asking myself, what are you adding to my plate now? What are you going to take off my plate?

[06:45]

Is a bigger question. And the payoff is, I'll get to the payoff as we go through the steps. So that's a phone call home. They assign an afterschool detention. They're talking to the parents. Basically, I would start it off, you know, hello, this is Mr. Frame from day school, and I'm just calling to inform you that your student has earned an after-school detention.

[07:02]

This is your 24-hour notice. Would tomorrow work for you? I'm engaging in a negotiation with the parents because families have challenges at home. I have a student population of 75% free and reduced lunch. We have 70 different languages spoken at our school from 120 different countries. They have a lot going on.

[07:18]

We have students that go home and take care of their siblings and they can't stay after school. So it's not saying your child is going to stay after school. It's letting them know there's going to be a consequence applied and we're going to be flexible and work with you. If you can't do it tomorrow, can you do it next week? If you can't do it at all, what we'll do is we'll convert that to two lunch detentions because that's the equivalent of one after school detention. We will work with you on that.

[07:37]

Once we get that out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about what I'm seeing. These are small behaviors. It's not a big deal right now. But I'm concerned that if we don't start addressing it early and often, that it's going to escalate into something more. So I'm calling you in an effort to avoid having your student be sent to the office. They have not been sent to the office and they're not going to be sent to the office at this time.

[07:57]

But it is a possibility down the road. So let's work together, you and I. And if you ever have any questions, you can call me. Here's my number. And develop that relationship because a lot of our families are uncomfortable coming to school. Maybe they weren't successful in school and it's not a place where they feel welcome.

[08:12]

And the idea is to create a partnership with families in the school, build that relationship, build relationships with students. so that we are a united front helping their child be as successful as we can possibly make them be. Step four is similar to step three, another phone call home from the teacher. And at our school, we apply to afterschool detentions. Once a student gets to step five, at our school, we call it a code rule, which means they're going to be sent to the office. And now we go into maybe in-school suspension for that student.

[08:39]

But what I like about progressive discipline model is it dovetails perfectly into the MTSS environment, which is a new and valid movement in our school systems. But I think it's starting to get a negative reputation because people feel like MTSS is give them candy and hope for the best. When the reality is we're looking for interventions and not just rewards, but real interventions that are effective for the students. So what happens is at step five, we enter into what's called the positive student support team. And this isn't in the book because different schools are going to have different methods of reporting students for tier two. But what I like as a behavior interventionist is I start to track and I can begin to identify which students are going to benefit from that tier two because I'm seeing it.

[09:20]

All these referrals are coming to me. The teacher puts the step three into the system. And the student doesn't leave the classroom. They remain in the classroom. But I get the referral and I will call them down at my convenience when I can see the student and give them the time that they need to have conversations about their behavior. So there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

[09:38]

And that's the payoff for the teachers. Because once they get to step five, they can turn it over to somebody else. They've done what we can reasonably expect them to do over the course of a semester. You have had a conversation, had a conversation and sent a letter home. You've called the parent twice. It's time for somebody else because I have to turn my attention to the students that are not getting in trouble because they have just as much a right to an education as a student over here that is being difficult in the classroom.

[10:03]

With all that being said, I want to emphasize one thing that there's a real free and easy way to support students as they're trying to improve. We call them buybacks. Well, maybe you're at step four and you meet with Mr. Frame and I'm like, you know, and I'm making very clear the next step. And this is where we have predictability for the students. They're able to know what's going to happen.

[10:24]

and that it will be followed through on. And I'm saying, hey, look, you know, if we get to step five, it's going to be a trip to the office. We're going to have a parent meeting, and I'm trying to avoid that with you. Let's talk about what you need to do to improve and then The teacher and the student negotiate a time period. If you can show me positive behaviors over three weeks, I'll move you back to step three. Now, they're still going to have the consequence for step four.

[10:43]

That will be served. But if they move back to step three and they have a bad day or an event occurs, they're not going to the office. They're just going to go back to step four. If they meet their goal for that three-week period, they can renegotiate another three-week period and move them back to step two. So they're not stuck there for the semester. They have the ability to earn their way back.

[11:00]

and oftentimes students will take you up on that offer and you'll see improvement i'm not going to say every time but it is an option to help the students avoid what we want to do is keep them in the learning environment provide meaningful interventions and accountability i think accountability is a key piece and i think that's where people get uncomfortable with the word discipline they see discipline as punishment and i disagree i see discipline as accountability before i was a teacher i was a coach that's what got me into education i started coaching when i was 18. any coach will tell you that the number one goal is to have a disciplined team. So in the sports world, discipline is a positive. That's what you want. And what discipline essentially is, is the ability to execute a plan with precision. And if you think about a classroom, that's exactly what you're trying to do.

[11:44]

Classroom's no different. There's a plan to execute each day, each week, each month, semester, quarter, year, you know? And so it's the ability to do that with precision. But then there's also, we have a tendency in the education world to associate discipline with punishment. And I tell students, you know, there's a difference here. We love you.

[12:00]

This is the restorative piece. We love you. We want to see you be successful. We're not punishing you. Punishing means I'm mad at you. I don't like you.

[12:07]

And I want to hurt you. Accountability means I care about you. You're not living up to the standards that we hope you would be at. And so I want to help you get there, but we're going to remove some privileges because you need to know that this isn't okay. And I mean, I hold my own children accountable. If I get a phone call from the school saying they're distracted in the classroom because of their cell phone, you have to know there's going to be consequences when they get home.

[12:27]

And it's not that I enjoy giving my kids consequences and take away privileges, but I want them to be successful, productive citizens. And if this behavior goes unchecked, it's going to be detrimental to that goal.

[12:35] SPEAKER_01:

You mentioned the idea of predictability. Why is predictability so important? And why is that hard for us as educators to put those kind of predictable consequences in place? And why is it so important for students?

[12:49] SPEAKER_02:

Well, with predictability, I feel like knowledge is power. If you know what's going to happen next, you understand the system and the process. then you have the ability, you have all the power in that situation because you're making the choice. When I give you a verbal warning, that's predictability. It's saying, hey, I need this behavior to stop, please. And if it persists, then we're going to move to this next step.

[13:11]

And by using this process school-wide, the language is the same in every single classroom. In so many of our secondary environments, and I just want to say real quick that the school-wide progressive discipline model is for secondary education. This would not be effective in an elementary environment. I just want to be very clear on that. But when we have our kids going through six different environments throughout the day, there's a lot of inconsistency throughout that day for them. You know, I have a kid sitting in my office, and this is an unfortunate reality, but they're sitting in my office because they got written up for cell phone.

[13:40]

And I know that in that classroom, cell phones are not allowed. But I know that in some classes, they'll go to the next classroom and there'll be 15 kids on their cell phone and nothing will be said. So that's inconsistent for them. But it's also an important learning process because you've got to learn how to navigate different environments. But we can at least provide them predictability by using the same language in each classroom, the same process in each classroom. And so if you're moving to a step three and first period and you're moving to a step four and second period, by the way, I would know that and I would get them in right away so we could begin talking about what's going on in your day because you're having trouble across your day.

[14:14]

You know, it also helps pinpoint individual classrooms. That doesn't mean that the teacher is doing a bad job. We have personality classes. I'd love to say that every kid that ever had me as a teacher loved me dearly, but I know for a fact that that's not the case. And so we might have a mediation where we talk about what's going on. So it allows me as a behavior interventionist to slow things down, get a big picture of what's going on.

[14:34]

The students have that predictability. And I think the hard part is we don't have that structure of what to do next, that everybody's doing the same thing. When you ask about the difficulties with the structure and why don't we have that, Again, all this is is a simple framework. You follow this framework and you will get the support of the admin staff, the counselors, and any interventionists you have because you've done what we could reasonably expect you to do in a semester.

[14:58] SPEAKER_01:

It's interesting to me how proactive you are in collecting data about lower-level behaviors because I think traditionally, as administrators, we want to get referrals about little things. We don't want work added to our plates if it's lower-level. We want to be there for the higher-level behaviors that do need to be dealt with. So it sounds like you're saying that because you are proactively collecting this data, that you are noticing patterns maybe that occur across multiple classes. Maybe the student gets in trouble a little bit in multiple classes in the same day or over a short period of time. It sounds like you're saying you're able to kind of intervene earlier and prevent bigger problems down the road by paying attention to things that maybe traditionally we'd prefer not to pay attention to administratively because they're lower level behaviors.

[15:45]

Is that right?

[15:45] SPEAKER_02:

Well, if you think about it, we have the step process where the teachers are expected to call home. So if a student moves to step three in first period, does fine in second period, moves to step three in third period, over the course of a week, they hit step three in three different classes. First of all, that's a red flag for me because I'm getting those referrals. I'm going to get them in and talk to them. I may call the parents, but the parents are also receiving calls from three different teachers across the week. So that should send a message to the parents as well.

[16:09]

Like, hey, I need to pay attention to what's going on here because too many times in my career, Before I became a behavior interventionist, I'd be in the office making copies or something, and a young man or a young woman is getting suspended for some low-level behaviors, persistent low-level behaviors, and a parent asks a very valid question. How come nobody ever called me? They were never given the opportunity to intervene at home and now their kid's being sent home. I don't think that's fair at all. So frequent communication with the parents allows them at home to intervene and have conversations with their student about what the expectations are educationally at home. It also sends a red flag to the behavior interventionist and I might call the parents.

[16:45]

We might start that PSST process before step five because they're having a problem across the day. It's not just one period. It's not right after lunch when maybe they're tired or before lunch when they're hungry. There's something going on here. So let's get out in front of this. Let's get those tier twos in place before we're in crisis mode.

[17:03]

And that's the whole idea is to avoid the crises and be proactive, getting out in front of it as early as we can to address the issue as quickly as possible.

[17:12] SPEAKER_01:

Another thing you mentioned earlier that I wanted to touch on is the idea of support and consequences. Consequences are tough for us. We definitely don't want to go overboard with consequences. We saw what happened in the 90s when zero tolerance got kind of ridiculous and we had kids getting expelled for nail clippers and just kind of huge overreactions to things that could have been handled at a much simpler level. But I feel like we're also seeing a pendulum swing too far in the other direction where we are not having consequences, perhaps because we believe that support is better instead. Do we have to choose between support and consequences or how do those kind of relate to one another?

[17:50]

And what do you see as the role of consequences, if any?

[17:53] SPEAKER_02:

I think it would be a mistake to eliminate support. Absolutely, our kids need support. There's this movement now toward restorative justice or restorative practices, which I absolutely value. Basically, the process is making sure these kids understand that they're valued and they're loved and they're cared for. And they absolutely need that in their lives. School may be the only place where they're experiencing that.

[18:14]

Just because of the variety of challenges families have. Maybe the parents are working all the time. and they're spending a lot of time at home alone. So I support the restorative justice movement, but I think part of the problem is, and it is a problem, is disproportionality. It's a real thing that needs to be addressed. We have students of color, particularly males, suspended at a much higher rate than their cohorts for the same offenses.

[18:36]

And it's a tragedy that it's happening, but it is happening. We need to address it. What my concern is, The answer to that problem is let's just get away from accountability and then we won't have disproportionality. Well, now we don't have that accountability in place. And, you know, kids are smart, but they need to be taught. They figure things out, you know.

[18:55]

And so I think it's important that you can do both at the same time. Like I said, I restore my own children. I treat the students as if they're my own children. Would I allow my child to get away with this at school? Absolutely not. Would I hold them accountable?

[19:09]

Absolutely. Would there be consequences attached to that? Of course. Now, would I go overboard and abuse my children? No. But there would be a loss of privileges of some sort.

[19:18]

And so it doesn't have to be extreme, but it has to send a message. And then that also helps address the fence riders, the kids that are looking around and seeing what's going on. And they could go one way or the other. They could go in the positive direction or they could be, you know, influenced to go in the negative direction. And they're seeing that there's accountability in the classroom, you know, and they're like, okay, I don't want that. And so they make the choice to lean in the positive direction.

[19:39]

Or like I told you earlier when we were talking, we've reduced office referrals by 80% for low-level infractions at our school. It doesn't mean the behavior went away. It just means we're handling it in a way where they're remaining in the classroom. We're not sending them to the office. There's alternatives to that. And that's where the progressive discipline model allows us to say, OK, we're going to try these things.

[19:58]

I'll give you an example. When I taught middle school, I moved from Las Vegas to here and they had just reopened the school. They'd close it down. They reopened it up. All new staff were hired. They already had a plan for a school wide model for behavior.

[20:11]

And I didn't want to be the fly in the ointment and say, well, hey, I have this great idea that I brought with me. I'm a team player. I was like, OK, let's see if it works. Because if it works, great. And in a couple of years, it wasn't working. And so we had a point where teachers could assign lunch detention and teachers could assign after school detention.

[20:27]

If a teacher assigned lunch detention, they didn't have to monitor the detention. If a teacher assigned after school detention, they had to have that after school detention in their classroom. So you can only imagine what everybody was assigned. We had 900 students at our school and we had three lunches. Every lunch had 100 students in lunch detention every day. One third of the student population of 900 students were in lunch detention every day.

[20:48]

And I never forget, I was giving this kid lunch detention and I was like, you're going to have lunch detention tomorrow. It's like, I already have lunch detention tomorrow, Mr. Friend. This is a Monday. I'm like, okay, well, what about Wednesday? I have lunch detention on Wednesday.

[20:59]

Thursday? And he looked at me, he goes, Mr. Friend, I'm booked all week. I was like, oh my gosh. So I worked with the principal, you know, middle school is working teams. You have a language arts, math, science, social studies teacher.

[21:08]

And I have permission for us to use the progressive discipline model for our team. And I cut my lunch detention referrals down by exponentially because I was only going to give one. Because if it doesn't work, then there's no point in going back to the well. And that's where the progressively more severe overtime happens. And I find that a lot of kids will get to step four and then they're done. They're like, I'm not going to get sent to the office.

[21:30]

They're going to test the waters and see what they can get away with because that's their nature. How far are you going to let me go before I get some pushback? It's just human nature. I did it when I was a kid.

[21:40] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think it's important for us to remember that it's one of the developmental tasks of adolescence to test boundaries, right? To see, are you serious when you say, I can't do that? When you say there is a limit and you say there will be consequences. If we as adults say, well, I feel bad that you're getting in trouble for this thing that I told you you would get in trouble for. I feel like that fails to create the sense of, as you said, predictability and safety that we've tried to put in place for that student, for them to have an environment that they can trust and people that they can trust. From your perspective, what happens when students test those boundaries and then find them not to be there?

[22:18]

What do we see subsequent to that if the boundaries are not there?

[22:21] SPEAKER_02:

So if I tell you that this is going to happen, if you engage in this behavior, this is what's going to happen. If you're moving to step three, you're going to have the afterschool detention. And then I don't follow through on that. Now what you have is inconsistency. Am I going to get in trouble or am I not going to get in trouble? And then that breaks down the relationship because now they're angry with you because last time you didn't hold them accountable.

[22:43]

But this time you are. That's not fair to them. Then it seems arbitrary. I get in trouble sometimes. I say kids are like puppies because a well-trained puppy who knows what they're going to get in trouble for and what they're not going to get in trouble for is a happy puppy. An unhappy puppy is one who sometimes gets in trouble for a behavior, but other times does not.

[22:58]

And so you can't wait until your frustration bubbles over and then react when they've been getting away with it for a month, you know, and sometimes with this process, you know, you have to coach the adults as well. And there's a format of some paperwork that's involved. You're documenting the behaviors, you're having conversations, you're making phone calls home and. You know, maybe you'll put up with a little bit more because you don't want to do that. And then you get to the point where I'm fed up and they want to send them to the office. And I'm like, well, what step are they on?

[23:25]

Well, they should be on step three. Well, should be and is are two different things. And I'm sorry that you as the adult in the situation. didn't take it upon yourself to follow the steps but we have to be fair to the students and you can't just arbitrarily assign after school detention I'm going to ask you to have a conversation with the student I've already had conversations but I'm going to ask you to send a letter home give the parents an opportunity to get involved and so a lot of that going on with the process you have to stick to the format because then that creates that inconsistency and that unpredictability and that breaks down the relationships because now there's anger you've let me get away with this And now you're holding me accountable. That's not fair. And kids understand fairness and social justice.

[24:03]

I mean, it's important to them, especially in the teenage years. Fairness is a big deal. And so it's fair to hold them accountable each time and be predictable for them because then they're like, yeah, I know I have two days of after school detention because it's step four. And that's what happens at step four.

[24:18] SPEAKER_01:

And we're basing this not on how annoyed I am today or whether they got on my last nerve or whether I had a few left over, but where they are in that progressive and predictable process.

[24:27] SPEAKER_02:

I've actually told kids when I was using it in the classroom, like, you know, I love you, but I got to send you to the office. I know, Mr. Frank. And I'm like, I need the behavior to change, bud.

[24:35] SPEAKER_01:

And as people who rely on patience, you have to develop patience as an educator, but that patience isn't necessarily the right barometer for what the next step is for that student. So you're saying it should be the policy, the process, not how much patience do I have left or how willing am I to move on from this.

[24:54] SPEAKER_02:

If you handle it in that way and you talk to the students about what's going on, it's like, I've asked you multiple times, I gave you the verbal warning, and now I have to put you on, and it happens to be step four. I can't not give you the detentions. I have to give you these detentions because that's what the school policy is. Now they can be mad at the school policy and not me as a teacher, and we can move forward.

[25:11] SPEAKER_01:

I think it's worth reiterating that for all this, we're talking about low-level repeat behaviors, not major behaviors like fighting, violence, throwing furniture, assaulting teachers, things like that. How does progressive discipline view those major issues that would always traditionally result in an office referral? How do they play into this?

[25:28] SPEAKER_02:

Well, in that regard, they're not going to move a step for that. That's going to be handled at the level of the Dean's office and whatever appropriate consequences applied to that. You know, a student might have a bad day. Something might flare up in the classroom. You know, we've had kids that have never been in trouble. Suddenly they get into a fight.

[25:44]

That's the one thing they have on the record. The progressive discipline model is not designed to address that. This is strictly for low level behaviors. It's not going to solve the truancy problem or the tardy problem. You know, teachers, when we first rolled it out, they wanted tardies. Sounds like it doesn't work for tardies.

[25:59]

We tried that. But they wanted it, and to placate them and get them on board, I was like, okay, let's put it on the back. And then they were able to see that really only three teachers were doing it for tardies. We had to do a whole different program for tardies. So there are certain things that's not going to solve all the problems of a school. This is designed specifically to address the low-level behaviors that teachers find frustrating.

[26:18]

From that frustration, then they begin to get zero tolerance. Every time you're out of your seat, I'm going to send you to the office. And we had a teacher that was like that. Before we had progressive discipline model in the school, she was sending 30 and 40 kids a month to the office. They made her mad. She kicked them out.

[26:34]

They made her mad. She kicked them out. And the counselors, we were like, she had the lowest numbers in her class because every new enrollee that came in, we were like, well, we're not going to give them to her. And what happened was when we put PDM in place, we held firm that she wasn't going to be able to send kids to the office. What happened was now she has a process to go through. If you want to address the student's behavior, these are the procedures and the process that you handle.

[26:55]

And we went from 30 to 40 referrals a month to three to four. So keeping the students in the classroom because it holds all the stakeholders accountable. The students are held accountable for their behavior. The teachers are held accountable for their practices. The parents are held accountable because they're fully informed of what's going on. When we get to the point where we have a parent meeting, the parent walks into the meeting fully informed.

[27:15]

They've had conversations with the teachers. There are no surprises about what's going to happen in the meeting. We're just looking for solutions together. And we're showing the student that there are all these adults in our world who care about them and are really trying to find some sort of solution to the challenges they're having in their day.

[27:30] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Schoolwide Progressive Discipline Model, and it is available on Amazon. JP, if an educator is listening to this, maybe a classroom teacher is hearing about this and seeing the potential fit between the frustrations that they're dealing with currently and the model that we've been talking about, in addition to reading the book, what might be some good steps for them to get started? Because it's my sense that in a lot of schools, low-level behaviors are just being entirely overlooked. There's just absolutely no bandwidth for dealing with them. There's a lot of frustration around that. And teachers need something that can kind of be put in place to relieve that daily just exhausting onslaught of low-level behaviors that aren't going to warrant an out-of-school suspension or a big kind of discipline referral, but really do add up.

[28:15]

What are some good kind of first steps as people become familiar with and start to implement your model?

[28:19] SPEAKER_02:

One of the most important things with the progressive discipline model is working with your administrators. They have to understand the process that you're working with. You can use this as an individual classroom. Then in my classroom, this is how we handle it. In the middle school, like I said, there was a plan in place. It kind of fell apart over time.

[28:37]

I worked with my administrator and I was like, I would like to pilot this with my team. Let the four of us use it. And then what happened was other staff members began to see the benefits of it because we had the support from admin that once they get to step five, we're going to start sending them down to you. And other teachers saw the benefits of it, and then they wanted to be a part of it. And so it can grow that way. It could be used individually.

[28:59]

But I think the most important piece is having a conversation with your administrator, explaining how the process works. I can't imagine an administrator who would look at this and say, you know what? It's not enough. I mean, I'm communicating with parents. I'm working with students. I'm keeping them in the classroom.

[29:14]

But at some point, and again, I think this is very important, you have to be able to turn your attention to the kids who are there and are not getting in trouble. Because every time you're dealing with these students for these low-level behaviors, they're all waiting for their opportunity to learn. And they have just as much a right to that education as a student who's having a difficult time. And I'm not trying to get that student out of the classroom. I'm trying to get them the support that they need.

[29:34] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is The Schoolwide Progressive Discipline Model. And JP Frame, I want to thank you so much for joining us today on Principal Center Radio. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.

[29:43] Announcer:

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