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Are you feeling swamped by the demands of being a principal? From juggling emails, calls, and decisions to boosting test scores and wading through endless paperwork, the pressure is real.
But imagine a scenario where you no longer feel this overwhelming stress. Picture yourself as a more resilient leader, concentrating on enhancing your school rather than merely coping with the daily tasks that currently consume your time.
I‘m Barb Flowers. Drawing upon my eight-year experience as an elementary principal, with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and certification as a life coach, Along the way, I've mentored and coached school leaders, guiding them to change their mindset, set boundaries and focus on their own well-being while navigating their roles.
Each episode offers practical insights on time management, communication, overcoming overwhelm, boosting confidence, and fostering a positive mindset. We'll also discuss topics like working with stakeholders, implementing new initiatives, and managing discipline. Let's set boundaries, focus on well-being, and reignite your passion for being a principal. Welcome to "The Principal's Handbook."
I firmly believe that to be an impactful educator, you must first become a confident and well-rounded individual. Join us in this journey to empower and enhance your confidence as a school leader.
Fixing Discipline: Teaming, Flow, Beliefs
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Speaker: [00:00:00] In this episode, we're talking about why teachers say nothing happens to kids when it comes to discipline and how to fix it. That's all coming up next on the Principal's handbook.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority. I.
Speaker: Well welcome everyone to the podcast. Today we're talking about a comment that I have heard from teachers in my own building, and I know that this is a common thing that [00:01:00] principals hear, it is when you are dealing with discipline and teachers say, nothing happens to kids.
And so I just wanna talk about this and what this could mean for your building. So if you hear the phrases, nothing happens to kids, there are no consequences. Why do I even send them to the office? , We are going to be talking about what could be really at the root of that issue when teachers are saying this because a lot of times there might be a gap between what is actually happening and how you are disciplining and what teachers believe should be happening and how you are disciplining. And so
that is one of the things we're gonna touch on. But really this is one of the most common complaints I hear from teachers. I think it's all over social media. Even when I post on TikTok about discipline, like teachers will comment, principal's discipline, question mark. , There's a lot of comments about that and a lot of.
Thoughts about discipline when it comes to principals. And so , if you are hearing this common complaint from teachers, I just want you to know, it doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It doesn't mean your teachers are even negative. It doesn't mean that kids are [00:02:00] worse than ever.
It means that there is a deeper issue happening in your building. And so today we're going to dive into five reasons that teachers feel like nothing is happening. So we're just going to get right into it. So. The first reason is it could be a lack of a clear discipline system. So maybe it's not defined what's classroom managed versus office managed.
, There might not be consistent consequences or there might not be a decision flow chart. So the decision flow chart really does help people know, , this is an office referred behavior, this is a classroom behavior. , But I think that the biggest thing when we think about discipline and whether it's classroom or office.
It is about the frequency of the issue and about the age of the child. And I say this because I'm elementary, and so let's say a kindergartner swears, and it's the first time they swear that's not an office related referral, right? But if they're doing it multiple times and the teachers have already retaught, they've had conversations, then it becomes an office referral.
Or if the [00:03:00] child's older and they are swearing at the teacher, that might be a first time office referral. So it looks different depending on the age of the student, depending on whether it's been retaught, the number of times. So those, , those flow charts are really helpful and it's good to have a lot of conversations around them, not just one time.
But , what does this look like? Let's give examples, let's talk about it. So when we have that flowchart, it can help. So discipline feels more consistent and there's less emotion in it. It's more based on fact, this is what happens.
So it's an office referral. Okay, so if your system isn't clear, your decisions are always going to feel questionable. So that's the first thing I want you to think about. The second thing to think about, , is there's no team approach to behavior. And so this is something I've really been reflecting about a lot.
Is, I think a lot of teachers just think the principal's going to be the fixer of all of the behavior in the building, , it's just not possible. If you're in a building with hundreds of students, you have a lot more [00:04:00] teachers than principals and administrators, and so it's gotta be ace.
Systems level approach and everybody has to help everyone. Even when I talk to principals who have really good systems in their building, I was just talking to a principal who has a great tier one, tier two, tier three system in the building, and she shared some things with me and it is clear that teachers take ownership.
Of how to reteach behaviors in the tier two system and the tier three system. It's not all on the principle, and that's huge because if you are just the fixer of all the behaviors, you're playing whack-a-mole basically, right? You feel like you're being reactive all day and there's not going to be that structured support and you can't have systems where you're running every system too.
That's another thing. So it really is important that you have that team approach to behavior. It also helps a lot with mindset when it is a system level approach, when everybody's thinking about themselves as part of the problem when it comes to [00:05:00] behaviors and how do we fix the problem versus sitting in the problem a lot of times.
We'll talk at my building about behavior and how they come in , ready for kindergarten and they're not. And so we talk about what are the things we can control and what are the things we can't control? So let's focus on what we can control. Let's get really good at those things and have our expectations around how are kids are coming in and what are we needing to do to set them up for support.
Because if we keep doing the things we did five years ago, when our kids who come in for kindergarten now look very different than they did five years ago, we're not setting them up for success. So we have to go back a little bit. One conversation we had, I'm in a K two building, is that our kindergartners?
Some of them it's like, ,, we're dealing with three year olds, same with first grade. So if we're dealing with three year olds in kindergarten, it's like they're kindergartners in first grade. So we have to think about. Where are our students and meet them where they're at. And so again, that comes down to a lot of conversations with the [00:06:00] staff.
It's being willing to pivot, fix what we're doing, really problem solve what is going on in the building with behavior and work as a team to do that. Because behavior is not a solo job. It really is about team systems and everybody working together to have good tier one supports in place. And then you can support that as the principal, but you can't be managing if you're having all these different office referrals all the time, all day.
There's just no way as a single person that you can do that. Even with an assistant, depending on the number of kids coming, it really needs to be looked at as a team approach. And what systems do you have in place? The third thing is misalignment in beliefs about behavior. So this is really big and this is really what comes up.
What I see a lot when people say nothing's happening, some of the comments I hear are they should be suspended. Or they should be taken out of class. And we can't always do that. , In Ohio we can't even [00:07:00] suspend with third grade and under. And I always say I wouldn't anyways because a lot of kids who are suspended, even when I had fourth and fifth grade in my building, they didn't have consequences at home.
So there's really no point of suspension. So some, beliefs that we have to think about are what should happen when a behavior happens, should students stay in class. What are the behaviors that require removal? What are appropriate consequences? And I think a lot of times it's having conversations with teachers.
I just had a conversation with one teacher who actually, the student, she noticed a pattern that they're trying to get removed to be in the office because they love the quiet environment. They love that even if it's negative attention, it's one-on-one attention. And so. Noticing that about the student is really important, and I give the teacher a lot of props for noticing that, , this is what's happening, and then how do we keep them in the classroom.
So it really is all about beliefs, about behavior, and your students, and understanding what's going on with them. If beliefs aren't aligned, [00:08:00] then teachers might expect one thing and you have different beliefs and so you respond differently. So it's really important to have time to have conversations about beliefs, about discipline, beliefs about kids.
How do we keep kids in class? What do good consequences look like? And to me it really comes down to, we do PBIS, but , it's that belief in are we reteaching behaviors? Is the consequence reteaching behaviors, or are we just ex. Expecting that we do punitive consequences and it's going to change the behavior because we know so often that it doesn't.
That is the third thing. The fourth thing is a skill gap in supporting behavior. Teachers might not know how to respond in the moment to situations where students are upset. They might not know how to deescalate or how to reteach behavior. We assume people know these things, but they might not.
Even when I think about, , escalated behavior so often, I'm guilty of that, of escalating it more with the comments that I say Our words matter. So much. And so we have to support teachers in learning [00:09:00] how to deescalate behaviors. , And it could be that a kid's personality with a teacher, they just don't click.
And so sometimes that can set them off. But, , we need to be having these conversations with teachers, how do we deescalate a lot of times CPI training where it's all about restraint and deescalation techniques. Our classroom teachers don't have, in many districts I've been in, it's more paraprofessional special education teachers, but now more than ever, I feel like our gen ed teachers need that.
They need to know, not necessarily to restrain kids and put them in holds, but how to deescalate them so that they're not, , setting kids off more and they can get kids regulated. So that's a huge thing is how do we deescalate, how do we regulate? I always go back to when I went to school for education.
A lot of things were different and so we, we need to have these conversations more and more with teachers. But then I have also had conversations with teachers where we have gotten away from a lot of really good practices [00:10:00] with our students. For example, morning meetings, just old school building relationship activities that we used to do in the classroom.
We get so caught up in instructional minutes and things that we have to do that some of those basic things we used to do in the classrooms get pushed to the side. And so we've had a lot of conversations about, okay, how do we bring that back so we can support behaviors? Because even though teachers might know those things, you forget because you're so focused on academics.
So that's something else to think about, but it's that skill gap in supporting behavior. And then the fifth thing is really capacity issues. And I see this, a lot of teachers have high class sizes. They have a lot of kids in their classroom.
They have a lot of high need students. So maybe the class doesn't have a lot of kids, but there's a lot of high need students in that class. Maybe there's a lack of intervention staff or paraprofessionals or support for them, and limited time. Then already the teacher's capacity is lowered because they're overwhelmed, they're overstimulated.
And so [00:11:00] even if they know all the right things to do, they might not have the capacity to do those things. So this is something to think about. , These are real systems issues that really matter.
, Maybe they would be supportive of restorative consequences if they didn't feel like there's so much on their plate and they just need that student out or they need a break. So capacity issues are huge. So thinking about, , if you have a teacher who's saying nothing's being done with behavior or, , really has a lot of comments about it, think about where their capacity might be at.
That might be another issue to think about. , so really what I want you to think about from this is teachers are. Actually asking for punishment for students necessarily, it's more about having predictability, consistency, support, and feeling like when they're super stressed and they don't know what to do, they have that relief.
They have somewhere to go and they know they're going to have support because that is the hardest thing. , Another comment I hear sometimes too is you're not always available, which happens of [00:12:00] course, i'm in a building of 420 kids. I have meetings to go to. And when a behavior happens, they want someone right away.
So that's another thing that teachers struggle with, right? Is , what do I do if the principal's not available? Or maybe you're out sick, how do we handle those situations? So again this is where it has to be a team system, a team support, because. There are times where you're not going to be available or you're going to be out of the building or something, and there needs to be a backup plan.
So even those types of things, but ways that you can support teachers. So now I'm gonna jump into three clear ways that you can fix this or help support teachers with this. So first is creating a simple, visible discipline flow chart, so I talked about this already, but having that. Discipline flow chart of what stays in the classroom, what goes to the office, and what happens next.
And so having a lot of conversations around this, but also going through scenarios for your age group, for your building, what does this look like? [00:13:00] And then what would happen? What would we do? , And another thing that could happen too , is to have buddy classrooms.
Maybe it's not necessarily going to the office, but it's having another classroom for a timeout because they need a reset. , I did that a lot when I was a teacher and that helped, and I know my teachers do that a lot and that can be really helpful. So. Having some sort of disciplined flow chart is the first thing.
The second, like I talked about earlier, it's building that behavior team system, so having a structure for a team system. And I do have a toolkit that I'll link in the show notes called A Team Approach to Navigating Challenging Behaviors. And it really is just that it is where you create a team and it's how you support teachers with those challenging behaviors.
Because what I have found is when you have that team, it is a place that teachers know that they can go for support when students aren't responding to tier one instruction when it comes to behaviors. So you know, it gives you like a regular meeting structure, a referral process, and just that shared responsibility for behavior.
So [00:14:00] that could be really beneficial if you're struggling with that. And then the third thing is really aligning staff beliefs and expectations. So having the conversation, what do we believe about behavior and what it means and , what is our goal? Is it punishment or growth, so this is an important conversation that you can have with your staff to really start thinking about what do we believe about kids?
What do we believe about behaviors? How do we help support those behaviors, and what do we do about it? So having those conversations with your staff can be really helpful. Remember, when you wanna help teachers when they feel like nothing's happening to students, it's not that nothing's happening to kids.
Remember, it's just that somewhere there isn't a clear system and people don't see the support that you're offering. So just think about where are those gaps in support and where can you really help teachers know that you are there to support them and give them the resources that they need?
, I hope you found some tips in this episode. Helpful. Like I said, I'll put in the, a link to the team [00:15:00] approach to navigating challenging behaviors, and you can check that out and see if you can start.
Creating better systems to help support teachers so they do feel like something is happening when kids have discipline issues.