Chapter 2:
Building a Schoolwide Foundation

Some students will learn and behave appropriately in almost any school environment. Other students, however, require some level of support to help them realize high academic and behavioral standards. A schoolwide foundation provides all students with the supports and skills they need to become effective learners and problem solvers. In addition, the foundation provides students and staff with the supports and skills they need to develop and foster appropriate behaviors and healthy emotional adjustment. Research at the University of Oregon's Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior suggests that most schools with effective schoolwide systems that focus on learning and behavior can prevent at least 80 percent of problematic student behaviors.

A comprehensive schoolwide foundation should help ensure that a school is safe and responsive to all children. The Early Warning Guide identified 13 characteristics as being essential to such a safe and responsive school.

This chapter describes the following four key components of a comprehensive, effective schoolwide plan that can be used to prevent school violence:

• Creating a caring school community in which all members feel connected, safe, and supported.

• Teaching appropriate behaviors and social problem-solving skills.

• Implementing positive behavior support systems.

• Providing appropriate academic instruction.

Creating a Caring School Community in Which All Members Feel Connected, Safe, and Supported

Safe schools support caring relationships between students and staff. Establishing these relationships reduces the causes of interpersonal conflicts (e.g., prejudice) and allows students to gain a sense of belonging, pride, and attachment to the school. These feelings are an important part of keeping students engaged in the educational process and sensitive to the needs of others with whom they interact in school ( Hawkins, Doueck, & Lishner, 1988; Pianta, 1999). Establishing these relationships between students and staff makes it more likely that students can share their safety concerns with staff and enhances the opportunities for adults to coach, mentor, and even discipline students, if necessary.

Creating caring relationships is not easy--particularly in large and diverse schools. Schools can create and nurture caring environments by organizing the environment to support positive relationships (e.g., by creating small learning communities within schools). In addition, schools can develop effective programs to prevent harassment, bullying, and conflict between groups. These programs will be most effective when they align with social skills instruction, the schoolwide discipline system, and the school's curriculum.

There are a variety of evidence-based programs that schools can adopt to improve their schoolwide foundation as well as to develop early and intensive interventions.

Activities to build a school community are varied, but in general, successful community building ensures that students associate positive experiences with their interpersonal interactions in the school environment. In other words, students who are accepted, are respected, and experience interpersonal and academic success will feel good about their school experience. Numerous schoolwide activities can be developed to build a strong sense of community within the school. These activities range from the schoolwide use of an anti-bias curriculum that teaches children tolerance and to deal with prejudice to the fair and equal treatment of all students within the school building.

Teaching Appropriate Behaviors and Social Problem-Solving Skills

Just as students learn how to read, write, and calculate math equations, they must also learn how to interact appropriately with peers and adults and how to solve interpersonal conflicts nonviolently. A school will have an increased risk of having students who solve problems with violence if the students are not encouraged and taught to interact appropriately and to use problem-solving skills. Thus, safe schools develop interpersonal, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills in all students.

Social skills instruction is an effective way to teach appropriate behaviors and problem-solving skills to all students. Social skills can be taught either directly through structured lessons or indirectly by integrating problem-solving themes into other curricula such as social studies or reading. In either case, social skills and problem-solving activities should become a part of the daily school routine. Numerous social skills programs are available; the school should select a program that fits the culture of the school best.

Many successful social skills programs teach students to develop a problem-solving language that will assist in guiding and monitoring their behavior when they encounter a difficult situation. This language and the corresponding behaviors are taught by providing students with an opportunity to see other people using good social skills successfully, practice these skills themselves, receive feedback from the teacher and others on the use of the skills, and then try them out in real situations.

It is important to develop an infrastructure to support the ongoing use of social skills programs. This infrastructure should include at least three main components:

* Training all school staff in the instruction and reinforcement of social skills.

* Designating school support leaders.

* Monitoring and supporting the teaching of social skills.

Staff Training

Programs designed to teach children new skills are most beneficial if all staff--including non-teaching staff such as custodians, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers--are involved. When new staff are hired, they also will require training. Training should be conducted by someone who is skilled in in-service training and consultation and who is familiar with social skills programs. Staff must be comfortable with and committed to teaching problem-solving skills, encouraging and reinforcing their use, and holding students responsible for using these skills. Most programs that are designed to teach students problem-solving skills are adaptable to the needs of teachers. Acquiring good teaching skills may be more difficult for non-teaching staff and, therefore, these individuals should receive adequate initial training and responsive follow-up support.

Staff Support and Coordination

The degree to which a new program is implemented successfully depends largely upon the support provided to those implementing the program. Someone in the school should have the skills, time, and authority to assist staff in their initial and ongoing efforts to teach and help students to use appropriate social problem-solving skills. In addition, because students may have several teachers, some coordination is necessary to ensure that teachers are consistently teaching these skills, and that all staff members are modeling and reinforcing the students' use of these skills.

Monitoring the Program

Support leaders should check frequently with teachers to ensure that skills are being taught consistently. Over time it will be important for the school to determine whether the program is working. Most teachers will be able to tell quickly whether students are using the social skills in class. It is important, however, to observe whether these skills are also being used outside of class and school. Community agency staff and families can often provide this information.

Positive Behavior Support Systems

Safe schools provide a social and physical environment that fosters appropriate behavior. The social environment includes the norms, rules and their enforcement, and any support necessary to enable students and adults to behave appropriately. The physical environment includes the way in which the building and the school's routines are managed to prevent problems (e.g., supervision during class changes).

Establishing Schoolwide Systems to Manage and Support Behavior

Effective discipline systems must be simple, schoolwide, proactive, and positive. Simplicity is important so that all members of the school--administrators, teachers, staff, students, and their families--understand the rules and what happens when people violate the rules.

These rules should be schoolwide so that expectations and behavioral supports for students are consistent throughout the school. The behavioral management systems should be proactive and positive, as research demonstrates that proactive approaches (e.g., intervening before a verbal dispute escalates into a physical fight) and positive support (teaching expected behaviors) are more effective than reactive approaches that emphasize punishment.

A critical component of a safe school environment is the establishment of clear guidelines for student behavior. Such guidelines should enable students to understand what behaviors adhere to or violate the school's expectations. Early in the school year, the Schoolwide Team, with input from the entire school community, should meet to establish behavior guidelines. Ideally, these basic rules of behavior should be as follows:

• Stated simply and positively (e.g., "Walk" instead of "Do not run").

• Few in number so they can be memorized.

• Reinforced, modeled, and enforced by the adults in the school.

• Consistent with the social skills that all school staff are teaching and reinforcing.

After establishing schoolwide behavioral expectations, the team should determine incentives for appropriate behavior and consequences for inappropriate behavior. These actions should be agreeable to all or most members of the school and be easy to use. An effective schoolwide management system is one in which all students know and can explain the school's expectations for behavior, as well as the incentives and consequences associated with adhering to or violating the expectations.

Despite ongoing and structured encouragement of appropriate behavior, some students may commit minor infractions or exhibit major disruptive behaviors. Caring schools use positive disciplinary measures to address these instances. Positive discipline has, at a minimum, the following three important characteristics:

• An explanation of why the behavior is a problem.

• An explanation of which rule was violated.

• The provision of opportunities to learn appropriate behaviors and to correct mistakes.

Students need to understand that not all inappropriate behavior is the same and that different consequences are associated with different levels of inappropriate behavior. Safe schools should build their capacity to deal with multiple violations of the rules by developing multiple levels of consequences. These levels should be systematically followed and never short-circuited. That is, steps on the consequences ladder should not be skipped to expedite a child's removal from the school building. The exception is any major violation of school rules that endangers the life of the child or the lives of others. It is also critical that parents understand the school conduct codes and the consequences for violations.

The consistent use of incentives and consequences is critical to successful management of behavior at the school level. When staff fail to adopt and implement agreed-upon procedures to encourage student use of positive behaviors, students learn that sometimes it is okay not to solve problems this way. As a result, their use of problem-solving strategies will be erratic at best. Consistency does not just happen. It is usually due to school-level strategic planning, team building, professional development, and ongoing discussion and evaluation. Consistency is further strengthened when a school's positive behavioral strategies and discipline system extend to families, support agencies, and other community groups.

The important components of schoolwide management strategies also apply at the classroom level. Expectations for behavior, the use of incentives and consequences, and the consistency with which they are implemented are just as important in the classroom as anywhere else in the school building. Students should understand classroom rules, have the skills to demonstrate behaviors that will allow them to meet the rules, and understand the incentives and consequences for appropriate and inappropriate behavior. In general, classrooms that are well managed are characterized by the following conditions:

• Classroom routines are well-established and understood by all.

• Teachers spend a great majority of time on academic instruction and only a minimal amount of time is required to redirect disruptive behavior.

• Teacher feedback to students regarding their behavior is overwhelmingly positive.

• Mechanisms are in place for students to cool off and generate solutions to problems.

• Students have opportunities to practice and use the solutions that they generate.

• Academic tasks match students' instructional levels.

• Academic tasks are presented at an engaging and appropriate pace.

• Rules and consequences are followed and applied consistently.

• High expectations exist for student behavior.

• Transition periods are highly structured with increased adult monitoring.

In addition to developing expectations for appropriate behavior and reinforcing that behavior throughout the school, an effective schoolwide violence prevention plan includes environmental interventions designed to prevent unsafe behavior. These interventions are discussed next.

Creating a Safe Physical Environment

Inevitably, there will be special situations and special places in schools where problems are more likely to occur. To prevent such problems, changing the school environment may be necessary. These interventions alter the use of school space and supervision routines so that opportunities for violent or disruptive behavior are minimized or eliminated.

An analysis of the school environment can determine if hot spots exist in the school. For example, the back hallway leading from the locker commons to the band room may be an area where many fights or disruptions occur due to minimal supervision and poor lighting. Perhaps an analysis also will show that these problems are most likely to occur in the mornings at a time when student traffic increases through the back hallway. A thorough understanding of when and where problems occur should prove invaluable to the Schoolwide Team. Some of the environmental characteristics that a school may examine include the following:

• Number and types of exits.

• Location and design of bathrooms.

• Design of the cafeteria, common areas, and the playground.

• Patterns of supervision.

• Density of traffic patterns throughout parts of the school during various times of the day.

• Lighting.

• Isolated areas.

• Bell and class schedules and the mixing of students from different grades.

• Length of time students stand in line to wait for a bus or to wait for lunch.

Equipped with the above information, the Schoolwide Team will be in a position to change the environment to minimize opportunities for inappropriate behavior. By continuing to monitor and supervise all areas of the school regularly, the team can maximize environmental safety.

Providing Appropriate Academic Instruction

Disruptive, antisocial, or violent behavior can result from ongoing academic frustration and failure. Schools and teachers face tremendous pressures to cover all of the required curricula while ensuring that every child performs at least at grade level. In their zeal to accomplish both goals, teachers sometimes provide instruction that is not tailored to meet the learning needs of every child. The experience of success--whether through academic or vocational instruction, or a combination of both--is important to minimize students' feelings of frustration. Of course, without extra support, success is virtually impossible.

Numerous interventions exist to address the individual needs of struggling students, but far fewer schoolwide interventions have been fully developed. However, at least three schoolwide interventions are both effective and feasible for teachers to implement. They are Class-Wide Peer Tutoring (Delquadri, Greenwood, Whorton, Carta, & Hall, 1986; DuPaul, 1993; Enright, 1995; Fisher, et al.1996;Gersten, 1998; Mathes , 1994), cooperative learning (Slavin, 1999; Slavin, 1996; Pomplun, 1997), and direct instruction (Brent, 1993; Darch, 1987; Gersten, 1984; Meyer, 1984). These strategies are particularly powerful because they enable children to experience a high rate of success on meaningful academic tasks and to practice their new skills. To use these techniques successfully, teachers and other staff must receive ongoing training to master instructional techniques.

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