NANCY ALEXANDER: RICHIE:

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1 NANCY ALEXANDER: We're here today to share with you our journey, as seen through the eyes of the adults and the students in implementing PBS. And this began for us in July I think the most important thing for you to know for us in the implementation of PBS, is that our very first training was at the IU and we had about 35 teachers there. At that time, Mr. Salamone was not onboard and it was all just teachers. And we had a lot of work to do to understand what PBS meant for us. We did probably what was kind of typical, we just took what was taught to us, and it was an excellent introduction, but we did note to take it back and make it ours. So we went back and we took the respect yourself, respect school, respect learning, respect others, and we just took it whole hog and implemented it. And we realized then by January 2009, whoa, we have to stop and think about what we're doing and make it apply to Chichester High School for it to have meaning for us. So it took us two full years to get there. Now one of the first things that, in October, and that's why we have Richie here. One of the first things in October we did, this was in 2008, from the very beginning we had to decide what's going to be our priority. We decided that having students work with us in developing what PBS would be for us and putting together... to implement were key. So for us, students had to be a part of that solution. And for us, that meant working with the matrix and expectations, looking at how we would implement and how we would, the vehicle we would use. Now we have home... how many of you have homerooms in your high schools? How many have high schools, first of all? How many have high schools, just high schools? It's really difficult, isn't it, to do RtII and PBS at the high school level and figure it out. That was what we felt. So, am I right about that? Yeah. So we thought, and we had students, wonderful students, right here's an example of one, but we didn't have a represented government. So our students hadn't developed the concept of leadership. They had ability, believe me, they had great skills, but they didn't have the voice in the school, so for us, we had to make sure that they had that. So homeroom was our vehicle for our students to increase in participation and develop that voice, and what it would be like in our school. We also came forth with the idea of Eagle Exchange. This is when each homeroom has a representative... meets with administration. I'm going to let Richie talk just a little bit about Eagle Exchange. RICHIE: All right. Eagle Exchange in our school is where each homeroom elects one member of the class, which is about 25 students, and that student then is like a liaison between the two, the administration and the student class. So in this, like you've all got issues... for instance, in our school, we wanted ipods at lunch since there's a lot of issues at lunch, and we just put them on and listen to them. And this is all true of high school students. And we brought them to them, and then we talked to the administrators, Ms. Alexander and Mr. Salamone, and they said, that's a great idea. It was a reward that we got if we cleaned up after ourselves. So it was a great incentive for us, especially since all the kids that do the right things, they don t really get recognized for it. And now

2 since they're actually being noticed for it, that should go... oh, wait, this is actually going to work. Eagle Exchange is something that we need to do. We were very pessimistic of it at first because we didn't think it was going to work because, as high school students, we're very, we're not used to change. We're not used to the high school administration wanting to listen to our say. So the Eagle Exchange is just a time where 25 minutes, maybe once a month or twice a month, where we talk to our student class, our peers, our grade, about what we want to see as the future goes on, especially at the beginning of the year. This is a big thing that we start off as, and then the year, as the year goes on, different things come along like, middle of the year, like... like field day at the end of the year of some sort. Then we get to talk about it then and there, and we get to talk to them at the Eagle Exchange, which is a great thing that I'm glad our school allowed us to do. NANCY ALEXANDER: So for us, as you can see, our... as well as... school comments that would impact student achievement, and we thought we needed students involved. And that from the get-go was, in 2008 and on we felt we had to do that. And the most important thing for us was the school comments(?), involvement from all the stakeholders, which included the students, to increase student achievement. We wanted the opportunity for all students to develop to their fullest potential. So PBS for us was the answer. So in year two, we kind of worked through things, year one. In year two, we got a wonderful assistant principal, Mr. Salamone, and I will ask him to talk about year two. KEN SALAMONE: Thank you, Ms. Alexander. Year two was a lot of work. It was really, it was a lot of what we call gut work because we had many, many meetings after school with Becky Millspaugh. She was our... representative, really guiding us through this process. I believe at that time her label was external coach or internal coach, either way/ she was there to guide us through and without that, this whole thing would not have happened. I must say that first. We did a couple of things. We kept the meetings short and we kept them focused. We were very goal oriented. First thing we had to do was we had to establish problem behaviors, okay. All of this is based off of the PBIS and the Swiss definitions. So we had to move our definitions to fit theirs, okay. So it took a while to look at majors and minors and come up with appropriate examples that would work at Chischester High School. That was a number of meetings. Once we got those down, it went out to the staff for a vote. You can send it out via SurveyMonkey, and you get the results back, and there it was. I must say that with each committee that we did, it was open. It was no you're assigned to this team or you're assigned to that team. Anyone that wanted to come could come. You could come to one meeting. You could come to all the meetings. You could come to some of the meetings. That allowed for flexibility with our coaches and everybody that spends a lot of time dealing other things to help our high school, and I think people appreciated that. It also created fluidity because it gave people a voice. I believe it goes back to that... say, this is your chance. This is your chance with this setup to have your say

3 about what's going on in the school because these were our expectations. These were the problem behaviors. These were the outcomes as far as if it's going to be a discipline referral, if it's going to be classroom managed, if it's going to be guidance managed, or if it's going to be a whole new... match, okay. We moved from committee members... and then we did expectation committees. That was with the students, and again, Rich and a couple of other students were involved in that because throughout the whole process, it was very important to involve not just, you know, 14 members or people that want to be involved in... committee, but also students and other faculty. NANCY ALEXANDER: We couldn't have done it without her. We needed somebody to help us stay on task, to help us through this journey and Becky, being an outsider, and she kept turning the question back on us. No, it's not what I think, what is it that you need? What outcome are you trying to reach and how are you going to do it? So she made us keep looking internally as to what we need. Now we decided at the get-go that we needed to put in some recognitions and start involving students and recognizing them for their involvement, so we came up with Eagle bucks. And Richie has some to show you, and we also... RICHIE: I have a few. NANCY ALEXANDER: Yeah, a few. We had T-shirts, you'll see that on our DVD, we have certificates. Key from day one, we decided we needed the students, we needed the faculty, but we also needed to let the parents know and the community leaders. So the community leaders, the Chischester Business Association, was right on board from day one and so were parents. And that was key that we would do all of that, so that it wasn't just an adopt an issue(?) within the building, but it was something that people understood and would be beneficial for everyone. We felt all students' comments results from building relationships. That was the key for us. That building relationships was what guided us throughout our journey, and yes, we did add the breakfasts we had each month to recognize students for Eagle bucks. We did add the Eagle bucks, so we had some good things, the Eagle Exchange. By the way, the same time we were doing this with the students, we had collaborative learning communities. Most of the teachers were doing the same thing, and then we were connecting the two. So we made sure the teachers had the opportunity. And as you heard this morning, everything fell under for us, under building relationships, or PBS. Some of the stuff we already had in place, but we just kept it under the same umbrella. It was real key for us to not put it separate, to keep it together, and for everybody to understand that the outcome was a comet in which students could learn, and that was important for us, and Chi Pride was the outcome for that too. We are continuously looking at academic improvement, and we felt like in order to do that, that the big key for us was behavior in our school, and we connected the two so that PBS was real important, what we were going to do in improving academics and student achievement. For us, we are educating the whole... you do too, a lot to undertake because we're looking at RtII, PBS, we're looking at... we're looking at

4 continuum PSSA and everything. And we felt like we needed to look at PBS as the umbrella under which everything would be. You heard this... for us, how we made the connection right off at the beginning, that it had to be, the behavior part had to be PBS, had to be, along with the academic. And so everything we did for everyone, we made sure that it had the behavior component as well as instruction, engaging, active learning, and all of that was involved in what we did. So everything that we did in Tier Two, we struggled with, and Tier Two had to be individualized to the students' needs. You will see how that impacted what happened to our referrals, a number of referrals. We're still working on struggling with Tier Three. We have an alternative school setting and within our building, and we use it for, we're using it for Tier Three, but still a ton of work. So we can then make a connection that it was, what, it was people, it was working with people and providing them opportunities and meeting their needs. And so for us, relationship was the key to all of that. And when we talked about school improvement, everything we talked about, whether it would be what we were doing curriculum, everything had to be involved around PBS for us. So Tier One, Tier Two, it was classroom expectation, all of that would be our guideline. We're back to year three, this year for us, and this is when it really clicked for us. You notice it took two years. It took two years and we struggled. It wasn't an easy pathway. It was two steps forward, one step back... understand. Becky, come help us. It was that. And it had to be that in order to make it work for us. So I'm going back to Mr. Salamone to talk about lessons. We actually, we had to roll it, where we've been working all along in helping students understand their Eagle bucks, their monthly breakfasts, but we had to roll it out so that they began to understand the structure of it. So this is what we did into year three and what we did with lessons. KEN SALAMONE: Before I go into the PBS lessons, there's one thing I want to just kind of explain with the whole PBS process. It was a process to create this framework, and that's what it is because it's not, just like Dr. Sugai(?) said, it's not something you're going to find in a box, okay. Before I was there, they went to an in-service and they adopted this respect yourself, respect others, respect your school, and that is supposed to become the core of your matrix. And as we were creating the matrix, I know Becky remembers this, I know Ms. Alexander remembers this too. NANCY ALEXANDER: I think he remembers it. KEN SALAMONE: I know Richie remembers this too. We were sitting there and we were probably three-quarters done, this process, and one of our teachers, whose name was Ed, he looked down. I was sitting in his group and he goes, this doesn't match. And we were all kind of like, okay, this is going to be interesting, and we had to rewind a couple of weeks, if not a month and a half, and, okay, what does fit? What does fit then if it's not going to be respect yourself? What is that vertical column of the matrix going to look like that defines our behaviors as what's acceptable at Chischester High School? So we kind of had to, again, rewind and as a committee,

5 as an open committee, we worked, we worked, we worked, and we tweaked, and we came up with Eagle. WOMAN: Do you want him to do that? KEN SALAMONE: You can do it. What does the acronym Eagle stand for? RICHIE: Eagle is earn respect, always make good choices, put forth your best effort, live responsibly, and excel. And that makes you, it puts it all into perspective, what you're supposed to be following, not just respect yourself, respect others, which you've been told since first grade, so it changed up in high school. KEN SALAMONE: Thank you, Richie. That was perfect, by the way. And that then centered on, because that was something we could call our own. That gave us a focal point to move forward within this PBS process. Yes, Becky, I'm sorry. BECKY MILLSPAUGH: I just want to add that the students helped do this and when he talked about SurveyMonkey, every special homeroom came up with attributes. We put all of them on SurveyMonkey so everyone's voice was heard, and they had to pick five. That's like saying to a girl, what kind of shoes do you want to wear? And it was very difficult. They struggled during that English special homeroom, but every student had a voice, and that's how you got the Eagle. So it wasn't just the teachers having PBS, saying, ooh, that's sounds really cool, and a couple of kids that came and joined them. No, it was everybody in the school was touched by this. And then after you guys came up with the Eagle acronym, we came back to the staff and said, hey, can you live with this? It was only a one-question survey. They loved us for that. And 98% said yes. And that is how they got that wonderful Eagle acronym. WOMAN: Great idea. KEN SALAMONE: So then we were able to move forward. We felt at that point that now we had some really good momentum. We're moving forward and what we needed to do was, it just can't stay in that little circle of people, it's got to go out, it's got to out to the masses. It has to go to our largest mass of people, which is the students, and we had to teach them. And so what we did was, you know, at Chischester, we're always asking for volunteers. So, you know, I sent out an , I said, if you got 48 and I'll feed you lunch, or actually, more importantly, I think Becky will feed you lunch... what it was. And I think we had 15 teachers in the middle of the summer time. And I'm talking July when no one's around, okay. Fifteen people ed me right away, said I'll be there and they came. And we worked for three-quarters of the day if not a full day, and we created lessons to deliver in special homeroom at the beginning of the school year. The first one was basically how to participate in special homeroom, what the purpose of special homeroom was, the expectations and the goals of special homeroom. So in order to be a good special homeroom member, you have to know

6 how to interact correctly. And then we also started with our hallway behavior expectations, okay. I've explained the vertical portion of the matrix. Across the top is your problem areas that you identify as a school. And again, identifying those areas again was a collaborative and fluid process. It went to the students, we did a survey, I think, that was actually the previous year, in year two, that was, where are the problem areas? And within those problem areas, what's going on that makes it a problem? That was the students, that was the teachers, and as a team, as a core team here, we looked at that to establish our problem areas. The major number one was the hallway. We used the data to find out what was going on the hallway to fill in positively what we wanted to see. The second special homeroom was again, we're looking at Eagle expectations. We're trying to engrain in the child, be an Eagle, be an Eagle. And then we looked at the bathroom, the cafeteria, and our before-school area expectations. I'm sorry, yes? WOMAN: Can you please repeat the acronym for Eagle? KEN SALAMONE: It's, Eagle is, now that I'm put on the spot, thank you, thank you, I got it. Earn respect, always make good choices, give your best effort, live responsibly, and excel. NANCY ALEXANDER: What we challenge you to do is, we sit in a room like this, and we received expectations and an acronym. We took... and just implanted it in our school. It wasn't until Ed Tomasetti said, wait a minute, and our students said, hey, this is elementary. And it was a combination of people came forth and said, we've got to have our own. So I challenge you to do that and include your students in that because it won t be Eagle, it won't be anything close to what we have, but it will be meaningful for your students and your... KEN SALAMONE: And you guys are all high school here, you know this. You know, elementary kids love being told what to do and they love following directions, okay. Middle school kids, they really don't know what they want to do, okay. High school kids, as they evolve in the high school, they want a voice. They want a voice, they want to be part of the process and they want to be respected, and it was important that Ms. Alexander kept that focus and Becky kept that focus on the team the entire time to always include students, for surveys... participation on the team. So I can't stress that enough. Third special homeroom, again, we're working on Eagle expectations and we're looking at our assemblies, our lockdown, and our fire drill expectations. You notice, obviously, those are areas where we have large amounts of people there and we need to keep it safe. And then we went into the first day of class, okay. We had school-wide expectations and we head, you know, district expectations, but now we had to center it into the classrooms, okay. Teachers were instructed that they needed to come up with classroom expectations for their own classes, and I asked that they turn them in into either to myself or Mr. Stankavage, the other assistant principal, so that we could have basically a database when we got a referral, we knew why it was a problem, you know.

7 I don't know what's expected in your classroom or your classroom unless I see it. So that way when I get it, and it does say inappropriate behavior, you know, talking or out of seat, you know. If you constantly do group projects, that's expected, but if you do, you know, if you're more of a lecturer than a teacher, that's going to be a problem. So almost 95% of the teachers handed them in within the timeframe that I asked for, and the other ones, we just had to nudge a little bit further. That positive nagging that we talked about earlier, okay. So, at this point, I'm going to turn it back to Ms. Alexander for... NANCY ALEXANDER: Mr. Salamone is our identified... in the school and he'll nudge you until you get it in. Let me tell you, the... of doing Capturing Kids' Hearts, and we see that also as a part of this, and in Capturing Kids' Hearts are teachers who will be trained in June. We're learning how to build a capacity for a relationship among students in their classroom, and that will allow them to build the classroom expectation and it will become a process, we believe, as we saw with our Eagle, from respect yourself, school, and learning into what had meaning for our students. Okay, can you hear me? As we journeyed along this process, we realized that parents had to be involve. So we do back to school night... ceremony, anything we could to talk about what we were doing and the climate we were building and how it connected to learning. That was real key for parents to understand. Now you know we had monthly breakfasts in which we recognized outstanding students. We invited the community leaders, our board members, and most important, our parents, and they came. Don't tell me they won't come to high schools. They want to be there. They came, especially when we were recognizing their students. So we did lots of activities throughout this whole time, throughout this three years and related it all back to learning and getting to know each other, to feel comfortable talking with each other. And when you see the DVD, you're going to hear from students for the first time, they had a voice, and they could talk to the teachers. And listen what the teachers are saying to them because they felt like teachers cared. So that was... Eagle Exchange. We did it an awful lot with Eagle Exchange, but it wasn't just about PBS. We also used it as a vehicle to talk about look beyond yourself and be a member of a bigger community... what can we do and how can we raise money, we had school-wide efforts to do that. So now we had a vehicle for students to be involved outside of just their school, but extend their involvement for localized citizenship, and go back to their homerooms. We had lots of Eagle Exchanges and opportunities for students to be involved. We used it to go to them, to say, this is really important. We need your help, help us solve this problem. So if we got a bad reputation with the community, with our kids stepping out the door, don't have... easy, let's talk about this. It's true. So we, the real problem is they come to us and say, hey, the back hallway's a problem, let's work on this. So we began to problem-solve together and offer opportunities to talk about those expectations. Once we came up with them, and we spent a whole year doing that, we still keep talking about them, not just to learn them and apply them to ourselves, but are they for real, do they fit what's happening now? Do we need to tweak them? So it's an ongoing conversation that we have.

8 MAN:... it might not work for second. He's going to try to adjust it. NANCY ALEXANDER: This is the ipod that Rich talked to you about. Now you have, Rich can tell you about the student component part of it and how the students in homeroom voted and talked about responsibility. And if we let them use the ipods, what are they responsible for, and when I want do something, I have to also be responsible to do something else. But also, what he doesn t know is we did the same things in collaborative learning communities with our teachers, what do you think about this, and how would this play out in our 45 minutes' lunch period, and what can we do to make this a better environment for that 45 minutes? So the involvement, even in faculty meetings, everything centered around what we could do to improve the climate in the school, whether it be through Eagle Exchange, whether it be through our meetings, our collaborative learning communities. All of that was vitally important. We asked the students, we kept going back to them, Becky and Kim and Rich have shared with you some surveys, but we constantly kept asking, what's working, what's not, what do you need? That dialogue has to go continuously, and that was very important to us to make that happen. In faculty meetings, everything we did, we tied it together, and we gave opportunities for the participants, the stakeholders to say, to express, and to share their ideas. So that was always important. Recognizing students, we recognized outstanding students when we approached... doing something really good. Let me tell you something. This is when we began to reclaim students. We reclaimed lost students because they begin to see that when they did something that was expected and exceeded expectation, exceeded it, then they were recognized for doing that. And their pasts may not have been so good, but I have a bright future. And so we began to recognize students and bring... who were involved in that recognition and I can tell you that this is, you got to have a cornerstone, something that to tie your hat on. And for us, from the beginning, was recognition of students, Eagle Exchange, opportunities to discuss, and opportunities to bring parents into that conversation. Building relationships, that was the most important part for us, and we did it. Continuously over the last three years, it has been our cornerstone. KEN SALAMONE: Real quick note. When identifying our PBS students, in the beginning, it was interesting because you always have your good kids, and they, this is kind of twofold. You have to always maintain focus to recognize the great kids that you have that sometimes slip beneath the cracks. Because they go about their day, they always do what's right, they always get good grades, and they go home and they do their homework or they go do their sports, okay. It is so important to celebrate them, and this was a good avenue to do that. We were able to have their parents in, we were able to say, hey, great job. Have a breakfast on us, okay. We had teachers come down, could you talk about that? Yeah, okay. You had teachers come down. Our first year, we had teachers come down and talk about the kids, as they were sitting there in front of their parents and it just, you

9 know, even with high school kids, it just instills a lot of pride. The parents still want to know that their kid is doing a good job and making right choices. But the second part of this was, you get kids that might have a lot of referrals, that might have done something really good. An example that pops out of my head is I had a girl, we had a dodgeball tournament, a PBS dodgeball tournament. It was one of our first events, well attended, you know, raised a good large amount of money for us to use as a PBS team to give back. But also, someone left their wallet on the bleacher, and she came right down, she came running at me, and she said, Mr. Salamone, you know, someone left this here, okay. And I rewarded her by nominating her for one of our PBS students of the months. And originally, there was a little grumbling, let's just say that, from other staff members because of who she was and what she did before, and one of the important things to recognize about PBS is, is that we move forward, folks. We move forward and we concentrate on what we're trying to get out of the student. We're trying to get the best out of them. And if we constantly hammer them down about what they've done in the past, and not help them change, we're not doing anything. So one of our big shifts as an administration has been working with the teachers to move forward, okay. Forget about, you know, all the bad things that they may have said or done to you last week, you need to move forward. It's a new day, it's a new week, we're going to continue to work forward. Doing these breakfasts has largely helped transform our staff in that way, so. NANCY ALEXANDER: We combined our Eagle bucks with citizens of the month, so we would have the opportunity to do just what Ken mentioned to you. It is real important to see that we're not enabling you to continue to do the wrong things, but we're empowering you to realize that what you have but bring yourself to launch you into a better person, and that's the difference, and there are consequences. Don't ever, people will think, well, there's no consequences, it's all just about hugs and feel good, no, no. We spent a long time talking about the matrix and consequences, and Rich will tell you a little bit about that. RICHIE: About the matrix? NANCY ALEXANDER: About consequences. RICHIE: Oh. With the consequences, it's still black and white with us, don t get us wrong, it's still, if you do something wrong, you're going to get in trouble for it, but it's not like, they're rewarding you for doing what you're supposed to be doing anymore. Like you're not, if the kids who, like myself, I had never gotten in trouble, and I would pick trash up, I would go home with a kid after school if they needed help with homework, and it didn't bother me I didn't get recognized because I felt like I was doing the right thing. And now that the administration and all the teachers see, boy, we have to start rewarding these kids because these are the kids who just go through high school and don't get seen because they're such good kids. It's a shame that the principals only get to see the bad kids, and that's a really upsetting factor like to me, because I wish that, I

10 do have a great relationship with all the administrators, but it's a shame to those other kids. But there's a gray area between the good kids and the bad kids, but there's black and white for the punishments. You still get into a fight, you're going to get suspended. Like, I think that's what the kids notice now. They thought, oh, wait, we're doing PBS, let's see if we can get away with this or get away with leaving something there or do that. They finally learned after three years of it being implemented in the school, and as well in middle school, they now know that PBS is a, it's a consequence. If you do something wrong, there's a consequence from it, and that they also realize if you do something right, you get a reward, and that's what we re starting to see. We're starting to see the kids doing the right things and not getting into fights, not getting into verbal disagreements with the teachers, they're doing the right things. And I'm hoping that's what PBS is trying to teach us, and I think it is, so. NANCY ALEXANDER: Let me say one thing we want to do with PBS. We wanted to build with the capacity of our young people the ability to talk articulately in front of a crowd. We had, you may have read, that we had an interesting board meeting on Monday night. About 300 people in an auditorium, high school students included, that came up to a mike to express their opinion. They were not all of one voice. There were various opinions within that room. A high school student's... our high school students could step up to the mike, introduce themselves, and express their opinions because they too are involved in education, and that, for us, was the outcome of PBS. To allow them to have a voice and be able to do that, and that this is their education and their future and they own it, and that was what was important for us. I think that's just a prime example of what we were trying to put out. Homeroom was just to deliver report cards originally. We wanted to build a capacity for teachers to be mentors, and we're developing that capacity even further for next year. When we talk about individual mentors, we have about 40 teachers who have volunteered on their own and they will be trained from June the 17 th, and what they will work with is one ninth grader that will be coming up and one adopted upper classman to be the mentor. That's going to be our kind of check-in, checkout, whatever because we re high school, we got to do it a little different. But there's going to be somebody other than all the other teachers, that I know you, I see you, come and talk to me, how are you doing today? Somebody that's always going to check up on that person. In high school, they need it as much as they do in elementary. Capturing Kids' Hearts will tell you that every student needs seven appropriate touches, now it's appropriate, but seven appropriate connections each and every day, each and every day, so that's very important to us too. Now, daily, oh, it just feels so good and I just love it, but we also knew that we to look at our data, and we consistently look at data on a constant basis. For us, this was, I think in March, that we presented this, and we had less referrals in different areas, less overall referrals. We have a problem of kids getting to school, truancy, or getting to class on time. We're probably the only high school in America that has that problem, or cutting classes, or, and we also had an issue, and this is different from high school to high school, with fighting. Fighting dropped 50%. That's big to us.

11 Also cutting class, coming to school late and truancy has dropped. Suspensions have dropped, and so we are very proud at the outcome. We can see it in how students are maintaining the matrix. The expectations are now controlling, and talking and influencing each other. See, that s the big piece of it. It's not just a relationship between the adults and the students, but students among themselves. No, Richie, think about it, I know you're upset, but you really don't want to do that. Let's think about, let's talk about it. That relationship and building capacity to help each other maintain. That is extremely important to us. So for us, Eagle success, nothing less involves a lot of ideas. And the big thing we want to say to you is that we're now adopting, we're, Capturing Kids' Hearts falls right in line with this, the same philosophical ideas are involved with it, and will even help us increase what we're doing, but we want you to hear it clearly. This is our third year and it's a process, and, yes, it's a framework, and, yes, we have some things in place, and we have worked through it, and we keep revising it, but the big key is we, we the students, the adults with the parents, with the community, and that has probably been, that capacity to bring us all together, has been the biggest, I think, outcome for us in improving student achievement. This is their education and they own it. And I think, for us, that's been the most important part. Everything comes under it for us. So, we now have a DVD. WOMAN: Do you want to do questions first? NANCY ALEXANDER: Questions first? And the DVD is students. It's not adults. And I tell you, it's across-the-board type of student. It is from the student who's been in a placement for a couple years to a student who's always been successful to the student who has always been a failure and now has A's and B's to the student who's always made A's. It is for everyone. So, questions. In the back of the room. WOMAN: How many students do you honor at each breakfast? Is that monthly? NANCY ALEXANDER: It's monthly when we, we had that month of March when the PSSA kind of invaded us. Wow, what a month. So we did the next month, April, we combined March and April, so that was a combination. And we're going to combine May and June because, as you can imagine, high school, we are just swamped with prom and with AP exams, and getting ready for graduation. So we're going to combine the two on June the 8 th. Normally it's monthly. Now what does it look like? We vary it. When we have a lot of Eagle bucks... means a lot of kids have stepped up to the plate, we don't cap it at a certain number. We just, we vary that. So typically, it's been about 15 to 20. We had about 35, 40. Yeah. And we started out real small. Our first year might have been like eight to ten. Yes. MAN: Could you talk to the demographics, the size of your building, the number of students, and...

12 NANCY ALEXANDER: Okay, we are a building of 1,100 to 1,200 kids on any given month, in and out, you know, because that's... we have over 40% free-reduced lunch, and a lot of that is we have hired, but that's not identified because in my field, I don't want to do it by myself as free-reduced lunch, you know that, is a real wide range of diversity. That's what we love about it because it's so diverse. You have those who are from one end of the spectrum to the other, educationally, and the money earning part of that concept, what we notice is, kids don't see that. Kids do not see that. Kids, in our school, I think, benefit greatly from that diversity. So it's not a school where you have a lot of influx of money to support you. We do it on a shoestring. And who helps us? We brought in the Chischester Business Association and, man, they give us money every year, just like clockwork and they all, most important thing for the kids is, and I've said over and over, it means something to me when I see all those businessmen sitting... with our parents and talking. They come to our breakfasts. They come to everything we have. Tonight we're going to have the spring concert. They're going to be there. Yes. WOMAN: How was this first introduced to you? Did an administrator bring this idea, teachers, how did that all happen? NANCY ALEXANDER: We have wonderful district administrators who really care about our kids and who said, we can do better, we are better. But we need to reach out and help all of our students, no matter who they are, feel connected. And Gloria Senatore, we had a wonderful building principal at that time, that was five years ago, I think, and Kathy Sherman, who started at elementary and brought it up through the middle school. She's going to be assistant superintendent in July 1. So we have wonderful people at district level and in buildings, principalship who had the foresight to say, we can do better, we are better. And they went out and hunted for what it could be and then we went to training. I'll tell you what you have to have. I don't know where she is, but you have to have somebody like a Becky Millspaugh. She's over here. Becky kept us true blue, and there was times that we thought, oh, we're lost, and she would have to direct us back on the pathway, so you need those external supports. WOMAN: I would say that your administration has been very supportive in every step of the way... NANCY ALEXANDER: Amen. Amen. They're supportive every step of the way. Yes. MAN: Just a couple real quick procedural questions. On that breakfast, exactly how do they get to go? NANCY ALEXANDER: Two categories, one is who has the most Eagle bucks for that month and the second one is at faculty meetings, teachers nominate citizens of the month. So we have an opportunity for students, I've heard those students say, you know, I just go out of my way and not gotten any Eagle bucks. So it's an opportunity for

13 students to recognize we're trying to make sure that we don't miss anyone, that we spread... MAN: Who got the most Eagle bucks? NANCY ALEXANDER: Yes. You get Eagle bucks, every adult in the building can give you an Eagle buck. So if Rich had gotten an Eagle buck from me for something he did, he'd have to... the presentation because we didn't have, we couldn't the speaking system to work. He did that today too. KEN SALAMONE: I gave Eagle bucks around the room. Eagle bucks have two parts. It's kind of rip-off tag. So the student gets one part of the Eagle buck and then the other part, the teacher hands in to one of our secretaries, and that's where we keep the monthly total. We have one of our instructional aides help her out and they total it up at the end of the month. And that's how we come up with our mass number of who has the most this and that. And then we have... WOMAN:... MAN: So where do you draw that line... five and tens. How do you know how many are... KEN SALAMONE: It's kind of fluid. NANCY ALEXANDER: I'll tell you what. If we, there's a demarcation line where there would be a whole bunch of ten and above, and then there might be threes and twos and ones, and so that month the ten's going to do it. The next month there may be, the demarcation line may have moved, but it's kind of that way. Also, we use Eagle bucks, we have drawings, we tie this in with PSSA, we have assemblies, we had drawings for attendance. You know, in our PSSA, which is, man, everything's a part of this... the first three days, math and reading, important. Each day, only one 11 th grader was absent. A girl hobbled into school with broken bones in her leg. She couldn t take the medication because it hurt her stomach. She said, I will not miss PSSA because I'm a part of this team. So that's the kind of stuff that we didn't... WOMAN: Did she get an Eagle buck? NANCY ALEXANDER: She got an Eagle buck. Yes. WOMAN: I'm so impressed with this program. We've been trying to figure out how to do a high school program for the longest time. And I can see that... but can you tell me how your buy-in was, and if you had to do anything to go to... NANCY ALEXANDER: That was a transition that July 2008, when a large number of staff members were trained, up until today was a real transition. And the one thing

14 you've got to know is teachers' hearts are already there for the most part. Teachers care. They care passionately. But they have to know how can I make this work and I need to empower, not enable. And so that's what they need to know. So it s in transition and we just did a lot of teamwork, collaborative learning communities, each month they met and talked about things that had meaning for them, and that was a growth factor over time. Right now, Mr. Salamone put out an , we'd like to do this mentoring one-on-one with maybe one or two kids. How many people are interested? They started popping back, this was after hours. They're at home, and they just started sending back those s, hey, sign me up, I want to do it. But it's a transition. Ed Tomasetti, this doesn't match, doesn't make sense, you know. But they have a voice too, and that was important to us. WOMAN: Could we get a copy of your PowerPoints? NANCY ALEXANDER: Yeah. BECKY MILLSPAUGH: I want to add to that, because I don't want you to think it was all roses and wine and, you know, Becky provided breakfast for everyone... but what I want to point out to you is when we first started out, the staff wasn't exactly excited about me coming in. I know that's really just surprising, but they weren't. And so what I had to do was I had to be a continual presence, a non-threatening presence. We had to take the teachers where they were and we, I am not kidding you, then 25 weeks, half an hour after school every day, we had to let them get out what they wanted to get out before they could actually move forward, and yes, I do have some training in guidance and counseling. But the idea was that once they got that out, they were actually able to move forward, but they had to be heard first. And when we talk about building relationships, we talk about building relationships with students, it would not have worked had we not had that two-prong approach. Because what the teachers would have thought, oh, these kids are railroading us, they're telling us what to do. But guess what? High school teachers don't like to be told what to do either, just like high school kids. But what happened was with the two-prong approach, and those CLCs, or what you guys know as professional learning... really helped. But we also took influential people and said, hey, this is your time, let's meet, let's get this out in the open. And the other thing was, if the IU did not deliver after that first couple days of 14 training, we could not stand up there with... practices, and that was totally different, but we did not stand up there and say, hey, this is how you do it, okay. What we did was we trained those people who were coming regularly to that PBS 14 meetings and they turned it around. And when you turn your colleagues around to your colleagues, it is much better received. The whole discipline referral process wasn't from me, wasn't from any of the people that you see up here... maybe. It was actually the people who helped develop it who turned it around. And the other thing was that they didn't do it... so any time there was something new turned around, the teams got together and developed the training materials that were important to where they were moving, and they delivered them in their CLCs. And that was important because as they were delivering it, they were able to the feedback

15 from staff as opposed to right now, you know, having a large group. That was critical. So we talk about teachers at the high school level, that was critical, that was the turning point. All the rest of these things would not have come into place had there not been that two-prong approach. NANCY ALEXANDER: I want you, and we're continuing questions, but I want you to see the video because you heard our voices, and you've heard Rich, Rich has spoken, but I want you to see our students and what they've had to say about it. I don't know if we need the lights or what. [Begin video] [Music playing] [End video] NANCY ALEXANDER: I have to tell you that Becky Millspaugh spent hours upon hours in the school interviewing students, and they were not prompted or practiced. She would just say, oh, how are you? Let's hear what you have to say. And that quickly, they said it. So they said it from the heart. So this is for the students and this is for Becky for spending all that time to do that. This prep room is obviously for students, but more than that, I think it's for everyone in the community and for parents, and most of all, for teachers and students. It doesn t change the students. I think it changes everyone's lives. Now I know there were some more questions. Yes? WOMAN: My question actually, is it Richard? NANCY ALEXANDER: Rich. WOMAN: When, because I know you're on the student body, and you know what we do, when do the students start to buy in? When did you notice that the students, that it was starting to click with not only your friends, but the other groups? RICHIE: Well, it obviously didn't start in the first two years. It actually came about the beginning of this year. Because when you leave for summer, people think oh, that PBS is over now, we don't have to come back to that. And when you came back and you saw that the teachers were still serious about this and this is something that they were trying to implement, that's when everyone changed their whole perspective of this. They actually started to take it seriously and actually try to get Eagle bucks, try to get involved, and talk to the administrators about what's wrong in school, and that, they, the whole, it just, it was a shift. It didn't all happen at once. It happened in waves, like yes, there were some people who were with it in the second year, and midway through the first. But the whole like, the school turnaround was a shift...

16 WOMAN: And the other part of my question is, if you were giving us advice, okay, if you were giving us advice on how to make this work in our schools, what would you tell my teachers and my school? RICHIE: Take it seriously. Don't, like if, you have one teacher who's like, oh, PBS, I don't want to do this, then that's going to reflect out into the students, because we look at you, as the teachers, as mentors. And we look at you as role models to what we want to be in the next ten years. And if you don't want to do the PBS, what would make us want to do it? So I would definitely say, take it seriously and ask the students, that's another thing. Ask the students what you want out of PBS... WOMAN: Thank you very much... you're on the table, right? RICHIE: One day, one day. NANCY ALEXANDER: Yes. WOMAN:... NANCY ALEXANDER: Oh, I'm going to let Mr. Salamone, who works with special ed, we're so proud of that, so answer that one. KEN SALAMONE: Well, if I could bring it up, last year, I had to go to Harrisburg with a couple of our district employees at the upper administration level because we were in corrective action, okay. We were suspending too many kids with special ed more than ten days. And we were pretty much told that this had to stop. And, you know, we went to the in-service and listened, and you know, you start to think about it and you reflect. I mean I live in Burrowsford(?), it's an hour and a half drive here, and you know, you have time to really do your thinking and that's where I do it. And it was us. We were the ones that needed to change. Because like Rich said, we're the role models. And how can a kid learn if he's not in school, okay? That's, thank you. The sooner you think about that and you let it sink in, the better off your district's going be because you need to have the kids in school so that you can impact them for the most minutes that you can. Yes, we still suspend kids, okay, because we have to in certain circumstances. We're bound to do that, okay. But for the rinky-dink stuff that, we call rinky-dinky, or the ticky-tack stuff or whatever you call it, if you're putting the kids out for days or putting them in in-school for days, you're wasting your time. There's better ways to reach them, counseling, you know, sitting with the kid, finding out the root of the problem, you know. Does he have power at home? Maybe that's why he's not doing his homework or maybe that's why he's acting out in class, okay. So basically, we took all that into effect for this year and it became a real communication effort between the administration and the teachers, that let the teachers know too, hey, this is what we can't do anymore, okay. This is not an option. We're not going go over a certain number or we're not going to bring it up to a certain number over

17 these things. You need to manage those things, okay. Let us handle our job, but you've got to help out too and do your job. And through doing that, we were able to decrease our numbers at the high school from, I think, it was a 5% to a 2% or 3% or 1%. I'm not sure exactly. NANCY ALEXANDER: Let me just make one, our faculty and we, the administration, would not have been ready to make that shift if we had not worked our way through PBS. It was the PBS that laid the foundation for us beginning to think differently, and we always thought we were there truly. We really did. We thought we did those things. PBS made us honest about ourselves, so that, I think, those years, working through PBS got us to where we needed to be. And Becky wants to add to that. BECKY MILLSPAUGH: I just want to add because I was able to infiltrate more than one initiative at Chischester. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, so the whole time we were doing PBS, we were also doing progress monitoring special education. And so what happened was Ellen was already working with their emotional support. Gloria had set that up wonderfully, but it was such a disconnect because Ellen and the emotional support class had one set of expectations, and I know that surprises you, but those are your high fliers... and so what we did was we literally opened up that communication and said, hold on a second, let's start with point sheets. We can't have different expectations. Okay. Now let's look at the way the IEPs are written. What are our expectations for the school? How does this affect our students? So the more refined PBS became, the more refined some of these things, such as special education services was able to happen. And we talked about... decision making. I am so proud of what the high school did because they've really been looking at data in a different way for their kids with emotional support, and it's been in alignment with what's going on with Swiss. So it's really been redefining for their culture how they want to look at behavior and really problem solve. KEN SALAMONE: Real quick, just to piggyback one second on your question. There is going to be, there's going to have to be a shift within your school so that people understand that you know, when we do discipline, one of the first things we look at is, are they special ed or not, okay? Because yes, it's going to impact what we do. And as a staff, through PBS, I believe, it's opened up that line for us to actually have that conversation. Before this, if you would have said that, they would have said, no, it is what it is, and they get what they get. And that's it. That's how it's going to be. And now, when I say, well, this is a child with X, Y, and Z wrong, you know. And then you'll get a pause. And then they'll understand exactly what I'm going to say next, which is, we're going to go this direction, okay. So that, PBS has definitely helped that shift. To answer your question, basically from 5% to 1%. NANCY ALEXANDER: Yes.

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