DAVID MORRILL: Hi, welcome to another episode of A Matter of Principals, the podcast from Washington state principals from AWSP. I'm David Morrill, the communications director here; and the conversation you're about to hear comes from a group of principals we call the MPLN, Mastering Principal Leadership Network. With a 2 year grant from the Gates Foundation, we were able to bring together about 50 principals from all levels and all demographics across the state. 
We invited these principals from superintendent recommendations, OSPI, data analytics, and also improvement trends from the Centre for Educational effectiveness. What we ended up with was an exceptional group of passionate gap closing leaders. We brought them together through the gates grant for 2 years; 3 times a year, 2 days at a time. The following conversation youÕre about to hear was recorded at our second to last meeting with them. The following conversation was recorded and moderated by Gary Kipp who at the time of the recording was still our executive director. 
We hope you enjoy our conversation and we hope there is something you can pick up and learn and put to use in your school. We would love to hear feedback on what you like to hear in the future episodes. But for the time being, enjoy the conversation. 
GARY KIPP: Hi, this is Gary Kipp, executive director of AWSP. I am excited to be here with powerful principals from around our state. We're going to be talking a little bit about social-emotional learning, how to support the whole child from 8 o'clock until 3 o'clock. We know that that expands beyond the school day for sure, but what can leaders do during the day to support the whole child and influence their support throughout the day? So before we get into the conversation, let's go around the table and introduce ourselves. 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: My name is Teleah Bell-Davis. I am a new assistant principal at Tacoma public schools. I work at Sheridan Elementary. It is a large elementary school with over 500 students on the east side of Tacoma. I consider us to be a diverse school with high needs. 
CARLA HUDSON: My name is Carla Hudson. I am at Betz elementary school in the Cheney School district. Student population is about 433 students. It is a medium poverty school that has close to 50% primitives clench and a lot of that socio-emotional need within the school. 
VALERIE ARAGON: I am Valerie Aragon, principal of Marie Cruz Elementary in Pasco. WeÕre a very large elementary school of about 840 students as of this month, 96% Hispanic and about 94% free and reduced. Socio-emotional learning is a consistent issue we deal with and strive to address in my building. 
LISA PHELAN: I am Lisa Phelan. I am the principal at Freeman elementary, Freeman School District just south of Spokane. In my building, we have 370 students and then another 25 inclusion preschoolers that are also part of our student population. And with the inclusion preschool and the high needs, we are continuously working in efforts of socio-emotional learning. 
GARY KIPP: Fantastic. I like the notion that we're going to restrict our discussions to the elementary level and that's going to help principals out there understand the scope of our discussion. So you've done a lot of things to help support kids. Let's first of all talk about some of the things that you've implemented that you feel good about, that you think seem to be working. Who'd like to start? 
LISA PHELAN: So at Freeman elementary, we implemented PBIS, positive behaviour support system for all students and all staff. We felt it was important because we needed something in place to help look at the positive behaviour and reduce the whole referrals and the behaviour and to help give teachers tools and to work with students. And so we felt it was important to not only work with the teachers, but the support staff; so the bus drivers, nutrition specialists in the lunchroom, the parent educators, and librarian. Anybody that came into the building knew that we have a system in place that is going to be sustainable. We've implemented that preschool through 12 now with the common expectations. So that's helped Freeman. 
GARY KIPP: Common language. 
LISA PHELAN: Common language. 
CARLA HUDSON: I think one of the things that you said earlier when we were talking about your PBIS program that I was impressed with is the colour coding of the tickets. A lot of us have the PBIS tickets, but can you talk a little bit about that because I think that was really good. 
LISA PHELAN: Sure. So when we attended the PBIS training with Clint SimonsenÑhe's well known in the Spokane area for all of his PBIS workÑour team sat down and just discussed how important it was to see where the students were being recognized for positive behaviour. So an idea that we had was to colour code our Scottie dollars, our Scotty box, our outstanding news. So the colour code looks like blue for teacher's classroom, we have yellow for bus drivers, green for the playground supervisors, orange for the nutrition in the lunch room. And then we have red tickets for guest teachers that they hand out and they're worth double gifts or toys or whatever the students choose at the outstanding new store. And then we also implemented a purple one because the students said, ÒMrs Phelan, what colour is yoursÓ? 
So now we also have a purple outstanding Scotty box So we did that so we can monitor where the students are being recognized and it's amazing to see when your best citations go up. I can just look in the bucket or the bag and say, ÒWell, there are not a whole lot of yellows today or this week or this month.Ó And I could go up and share with the bus drivers and just say, ÒOh you must be out. Let me bring you some more yellow outstanding used hand out and just a reminder to catch kids could be in goodÓ and they really liked that system. So it's been good to see. 
GARY KIPP: Good way to monitor them. 
VALERIE ARAGON: We monitor our PBIS implementation. We decided to his class dojo which I think was a big risk mention my demographics. There were some push back things. Our parents can engage in the technology and they did. We had 96% of our parents sign up the first year. But when we had to come in and provide some stuff development was after developing consistent tracks of the expected behaviour. We did see a huge increase or our use of the positive reinforcement right the whole premise of PBIS. And so we did some work with Aces 20 in the first year trying to understand the adverse childhood experiences. And then I have been intentional with providing some PD on social emotional learning to understand 5 to 7 positive reinforcements necessary to make a change. 
And so class dojo, we have to carry cash, but we cash out every other week based on dojo points. And so every teacher has set up a system in their classroom. It could be tied to Group points or individual points and to around care three, being respectful, being responsible, and being safe. And so I just met with my assistant principal last week because we haven't looked at that data because that's another conversation. Sometimes we have to really provide support to teachers; like, ÒWhy do I have to do this? They should just behave. They should just know.Ó Well, weÕre dealing with children in poverty. Research shows and that's where as a principal we have to continue to provide that PD. 
And so we're able to celebrate and have developed more consistent procedures in our building. But still like I said, our playground behaviours increase and I don't see our playground duties providing that positive reinforcement. So like I mentioned before, it is about little tablets because the nightmare, 800 kids and they carry cash and coins and kids were keeping their coins. And so that's why we do it electronic point system. I was trying to remind and to reinforce what our school expectations are around recognizing positive student behaviour. 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: So for me, being a new assistant principal to the area, my background is with high school and middle school students. So for me coming in, I needed a system in place. I needed an opportunity to have those social emotional conversations with the students because they're acting out for many different reasons and if you don't have the platform to have a conversation with them so they can manage themselves and self regulate their own emotions, you're kind of defeating the purpose. I get to sit down and talk to them about why and what happened and what was going on around that and how did you feel. And without this social emotional learning in place, that wouldn't be possible. 
So for me, it makes my job a lot easier when it comes to connecting with the students. So we have our self manager program and the students earn their badge so that they can move freely in the hallways and help out teachers and just be more responsible to their school day. So the goal is for them to earn that so they can move throughout the school successfully. But then I do have some students that need more hand-holding and more support when it comes to making the right decisions and I felt like they were being left out. So then I said maybe we can come up with a self management folder so we can put activities on the inside that can support the class time theyÕre missing out on when they are sent to the RP.
So when they do go to a buddy room or they do need a reset opportunity in their classroom. They have a folder with activities inside it so whatever don't interact with them, can jot little notes about what they did and what they accomplished; and then the child can walk away feeling more empowered and more in control of their time. But then I feel like I'm a partner in their growth. Does that make sense?
GARY KIPP: Sure. 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: That helps me because I spend more than half of my day with discipline issues that I would like to change to the word behaviours; like let's work on behaviours of kids. And I didn't even call it discipline. LetÕs empower them and teach them to manage themselves. 
CARLA HUDSON: Did you guys create a major and minor? 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: I'm working on that. I have my own feelings about how that goes. We have our behaviour reports, but the way itÕs designed, the teacher filters that out. So the adult is referring the student. They struggle between what they consider a minor and a major and I don't want them to spend time doing that. So we're going to combine those things and put them in like a hierarchical order of things that happen more often than not; and then on the opposite side of the form, we'll talk about maybe this child could see the counsellor, maybe this child needs to see the principal, maybe this child needs to go to a boarding room, maybe we need to call home. Just giving the teacher more options, but then giving all of us more accountability as to how we handle those things because I was getting reports with no action taken because it was too confusing; like should I just send the kid to the principal or is this something that I can handle on the spot? 
CARLA HUDSON: And I think as a new admin, this conversation would be powerful because we've had to come back to talk about what is a minor and major as well and then provide some strategies to deal with that classroom destruction because even now, most of our discipline comes in through classrooms and it is tied to that classroom management piece And so that's where as a system that weÕre trying to be very, very intentional. What strategies are we all utilizing to deescalate, to reengage students; because the message is once you send that student out, what happened to that relationship? 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: It is broken. 
CARLA HUDSON: And so for the most part, 90% of our staff is following those strategies, falling back on teaching. It's just in a couple of classrooms I struggle with the relationship.
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: So how do we support teachers? How do we support teachers when it comes to their social emotional? How do we do that? I want to see that happen.


LISA PHELAN: I think exactly what you said. The best discipline is a good curriculum. Keeping the kids engaged in the class really keeps the discipline at a minimum. And so when you do see repeated behaviours in the same classroomÑand I think we could probably all Say that exactly we know where the bulk of the behaviours are going to come from which really then tells us there's something else going on in there and what can we do to make that classroom engaging so that the kids we are meeting the kids where they are. 
In our school, we do have a PBIS system going, but another thing was put into place before I got there. So I'm in my first year in this particular school, but the principal before me established what they call the Green Zone. The green zone really is a whole designated classroom, such a luxury, with 2 behaviour specialists full time in it. So when a kid is brought in that classroom, it's not me that's called; it's the Green Zone that's called. And I'll hear it on the radio ÒBut I don't have to do itÓ. And they go and get that kid from the classroom. Sometimes they will just sit there and meet with the child right there or sometimes they will go and say, ÒLetÕs go to the Green zoneÓ. 
They use the acronym halt (HALT) to try to determine where the kids are. Are they hungry? If heÕs hungry, give him a snack. Or theyÕre angry? Okay, what can I do to do that? Or is their learning compromised? What's happening? How can I help you with your learning? We just need time. You just need a moment. And then go and sit in the comfort chair over there in the corner or they love to go under a table or something like that and just get out of my space for a bit. They get reset in there. If it becomes a discipline problem beyond that, then they bring them down to me. But if it's just one of those things, they can meet the need and get them reset. Often I don't even know what's going on and I get reports of what's going on in there every week. But they handle those students and that has been a wonderful gift for our behaviour management. 
GARY KIPP: Yeah. So each one of these strategies that you're talking about certainly involves teachers and in a significant way. Talk a little bit about communicating with teachers about this. How do you get them on board? Is it a struggle? Is it easy? What strategies have you used to help them to buy in to the kinds of things that you're trying to do? 
LISA PHELAN: What has worked at Freeman is we developed a PBIS team that went to the training. It was a 2 year commitment to attend the trainings and that team went to each training together. I was really kind of nonnegotiable. If youÕre going to be part of the team, you have to attend the training. 
GARY KIPP: How did you pick the people to be on the team? 
LISA PHELAN: I asked for volunteers and we shared you know, itÕs important to send a primary or couple primary, our PE teacher, the counsellor, school principal of course, upper elementary as well. And then the team brought it back and as a staff, we developed our matrix. As a staff, we developed the minor major sheet to refer to. That is also put on the back of a clipboard so they always have that. The team also decide how to involve parents in the process. 
And so we developed a minor infraction slip. It's a carbon copy slim that goes home with the student. It just says that communication, ÒHey, can you please talk to your student about this behaviour? This is what happened.Ó And it's not office referral; it's just that communication to parents. Our expectations that the staff developed to be respectful, be responsible, be ready to learn, and be safe. They see it around the school; they hear everybody saying it. The bus driver said they see it at the high school if they go up there for an assembly. They see it on the bus. I made bus posters for them. We just wanted to make sure everybody's using the same language and being consistent in the classroom. 
So they each have a poster in their classroom and really picking the expectations that are really an umbrella. So be respectfulÑalmost every behaviour can fall under that. So we can always ask them. And then we train the students. So September we take a week and they rotate and we show them what behaviours to look like. We do it again in January after Christmas break because we assume they lost their minds over Christmas break and we have to retrain not only the students, but staff to remember because you don't want your office referrals to go up in May because everybody's tired. And it really is an adult issue. It's not a kid issue. It was the adult not being consistent with our expectations. So it's really important to involve your entire staff and then to let parents know itÕs in our handbook; it's on our website; so they can also use the same expectations at home. 
GARY KIPP: Yeah. Great. Others? 
VALERIE ARAGON: Very similar as well for our school. It's been 3 years that we developed our matrix. We had to re-evaluate it. It was very, very dense. So we simplified it even more this year and talked about some issues that we felt like we were being consistent as a sap as well. And then our PD just 2 months ago was again because you start to hear that grumbling that they're not doing thing with the kid discipline. We had to talk about it a little bit and PBIS team as well. I do think in retrospect IÕd like to see more teacher leadership because itÕs still pretty heavy admin between myself and my assistant principal and I think a good PBIS team should be led by more of our staff. So that's a goal for next year, to have it be more teacher led, even our assemblies. We have monthly assemblies to recognize our [17:31 Inaudible] students. We invite our parents, tons of parents to see their kids being recognized. 
GARY KIPP: Good.
CARLA HUDSON: So with our staff, we've done a lotÑand once again this is my predecessor and IÕm continuing itÑwith the Ace training. We have a lot of childhood trauma in and it's something that is new language. I think probably most of us just began the past couple of years that we have really started focusing on the childhood trauma that these children come to our school with. And I think by helping our staff to understand a lot of the reactions that we're getting are not necessarily coming out of just been naughty like I think the old school thinking used to be. Did dad come home drunk last night and beat mum? And now I want him to learn. Was I left alone all night? We have little ones left alone all night. They wake up in the middle of the night and there's nobody there. But go ahead and learn. 
And a lot that they have to come to deal with before they even walk in our door and it can't be treated just as a naughty kid punishment. WeÕre not there and staff wise and all of us. I think it's a journey because when a child is being rude and insubordinate and mouthing off, it's hard to not just react and see it more in a punishment line rather than in a discipline line. And I really like that idea of discipline. Root word of discipline is disciple, disciple meaning to teach. Punishment is more a pain. What can I do to kind of hurt you and make you realize you shouldn't be doing that? But how can I disciple from this behaviour because I see that you're hurting and how can I help you?
GARY KIPP: What about parents? How do parents know what's going on and how you are approaching this in a way that may be unfamiliar to them? 
VALERIE ARAGON: I want to add a little bit to what Carla was saying to answer your question. So I don't think I'm there either. The Aces training was a great training and what came through that was how many staff members themselves are struggling with some there of their own issues. And so I just vividly remember a couple years ago I saw a staff in tears. So that gave me some information that we need to continue to support our staff and find ways whether it's through counselling or when there's issues with some tragedy knowing that they need some more support. 
And so that was again an eye opening experience for me that I didnÕt plan for it to happen as well. I think we are privy to sometimes personal information and it's just a lot on our plate, but knowing that we have to be mindful when there is a tragedy that takes place that we do take care of our staff. And those things I think we do have in place.
GARY KIPP: Yeah.
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: I got it. I think it's about building relationships. So as a school leader, if I'm very intent on building strong authentic relationships with the staff, I'm modelling for them how to do that with their students. I'm expecting them to do that with their students, but I also don't want them to avoid or leave behind the necessary relationship with the parents. You have to reach out to the people that you're serving and you need to meet them where they're at and I can show you by meeting you where you're at. If there's a death in your family or you have a long term illness going on or maybe you're new to the school and you don't really know the community, it's my job to give you that empowered feeling and acclimate you to the new community that you're serving. 
So if I can model that, I can help others kind of do that too. And I think I'd like to see more training in the area of actually building relationships with people that you assume you don't have anything in common with. But if you just had a conversation, dug a little deeper, got a little open yourself, a little bit of vulnerableÑI mean you have to be a little vulnerable to build a strong relationship. I think it can happen because I really truly believe that parents and teachers have many, many core values that are the same, but they don't know it because they don't communicate. 

And I don't mean a newsletter, I don't mean an e-mail, or the next lesson that youÕre going to do, but I mean calling the parent to say, ÒHey, it's your kid's birthday today. Should we do anything special?Ó or ÒI know that you're going to go on an extended vacation to visit grandma in another country. Can I send some work?Ó What is so hard about that and what do we need to do to support teachers to do that time wise or idea wise; not just our day to day things, but those little special, little titbits that you kind of give to build those relationships? I'd like to see more of that. 
VALERIE ARAGON:  Tying back to class dojo, like I said, it was a big ask for my staff my parents, but we planned to have parent nights and by any parent thatÕs having difficulty downloading the app on their phone. We did that intentionally for the first year. We had conferences, we had a dojo station, got a little video on how to try to follow some steps. I think my staff was pretty surprised about how many parents came and asked for help. The Android app was different than the IPhone app; and so they said, ÒOh my gosh! This is difficult.Ó So we try to get ahead of that a little bit and I think that allowed for that success because we really tried to reach out to our entire community. 
Just recently this year, I've had a lot of cyber bullying that we didn't have the previous 2 years with Snap Chat. I've had enough of it and so IÕm working with my counsellor and our ATP. We decided to sponsor a tech night parents and as I mentioned earlier, the gym was completely full. IÕm thinking it was because our local agency came in with their presenters and parents were so appreciative. 
It was just fantastic and the level of questions that they had, and again not directly related maybe with our elementary age kids, but middle school and high school because this is an issue that will continue to follow them and if they don't understand... And they asked some really god legal questions that I don't again anticipate. 
So it was again good for my staff to see me on the team. When we listen to what their needs are, we can involve them. Or if weÕre having an issue, it shouldn't just be our issue; we can involve our parents to help solve the issues. 
GARY KIPP: Really good ideas. Is there anything else to add in terms of parent communication? I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of it's a matter of building relationships. We find that we're working in the same direction for the same cause and that is to help their kids do better and be successful. 
VALERIE ARAGON: I want to piggyback. I think it's more than just a school issue; I think it's a systems issue. We're fortunate. ItÕs our second year, a year and a half weÕve had a Community in Schools person. It's been a grant that's provided a full time person to help connect and provide services to families that are in really dire situation. I wish we had that years ago because that's when there was homelessness and abuse and neglect. That weighs heavily on a principal shoulders. So it's nice to have someone that's in my office that I can say, ÒOh, she's going to help you.Ó 
And then this year also we've been able to have a half time mental health therapist, again through some intentional work our district is trying to do to meet the needs of the whole child and it's provided just a tremendous support and access for our kids. 
GARY KIPP: Well, I want to thank all of you for taking time out of the day. Thank you for being part of them MPLN and contributing to everyone else's growth and doing this podcast to help others who are outside MPLN get some ideas from your stories as to the things that they can do to help support the whole child at the elementary level. It's been fantastic and I appreciate your time. 
VALERIE ARAGON: Thank you.
CARLA HUDSON: Thank you. 
TELEAH BELL-DAVIS: Thank you.
LISA PHELAN: Thank you
GARY KIPP: Thank you so much. 
DAVID MORRILL: Thanks for listening to A Matter of Principals. Remember you can subscribe to our podcast and ITunes. You can find that in Google play store or you can always listen on our website. We'd love to hear feedback from what you'd like to hear and the guests you'd like to have us have on in future episodes. You can always send that feedback to me at www.david@awsp.org  or just shoot anyone here an email. Find us on social media. WeÕre on Twitter as awsp_principals or find us on Facebook.
Thanks again for listening. Take care. 
The Podcast you just listened to was paid for by Federal Title 2, part A grant funds from OSPI, the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the US Department of Education. Would you like to reuse the podcast in any way? It is creative commons license CCBY attribution 2.0. 
Thanks to OSPI and the Department of Education for supporting our work and supporting principals across the state. 

Transcript: Whole_Child