Equity in Education

It can be difficult to know where to start with regards to creating a culturally responsive, equitable educational experience for students. McIntosh, Girvan, Horner, Smolkowski, and Sugai (2018) recommend a 5-point approach, including: reviewing disaggregated data; implementing a preventative, multitiered, and culturally responsive behavioral framework; providing engaging instruction; and developing policies with accountability.

Check out these resources to help your team to embed equity into your PBIS efforts. 

Systems:

• A 5-Point Intervention Approach for Enhancing Equity in School Discipline
• Implementing the Pyramid Model to Address Inequities in Early Childhood Discipline 
• Supportive Environments Create Classroom Community - PBISApps Teach by Design 

Data:

• Video: Using Data (and Data Systems) to Address Discipline Disproportionality (SCTG Webinar)
• Resource: Using Discipline Data within SWPBIS to Identify and Address Disproportionality: A Guide for School Teams

Practices: Equity & Culturally Responsive Classrooms

• Embedding Culturally Responsive Practices in Tier I
• Equity in education
• Go, Engage, Connect: Welcome Student Identity & Improve Equity - PBISApps Teach by Design
• Examples of Engaging Instruction to Increase Equity in Education

Resources:

• A Guide to Equity and Antiracism for Educators
• PBIS Cultural Responsiveness Field Guide
• Resources for navigating the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racial violence
• Project Implicit is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition - thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. Find out your implicit associations about race, gender, sexual orientation, weight and other topics! 
   

Student Engagement 

This has been a challenging year for student engagement with academics AND school in general. Yet, we still have a few months left in the academic year. This is an opportune time for your PBIS team to review and share strategies focused on engagement with your teaching community.

This webinar reviewed strategies and supports for increasing student attendance both in-person and virtually through tracking and monitoring, increasing student engagement, and function-based interventions. An exemplar school district, Gardner Public Schools, shared their process of creating district and building levelsupports to increase attendance throughout the district.

Check out the resources below and help your school to finish the year strong.

Consider these: 

• Get feedback from your students around how engaging they find their classes or lessons through a Student Engagement Survey.
• Make sure that lessons are accessible to ALL students through Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
• Continue building positive relationships with students while improving engagement by: 
  • Getting to know them better and
  • through “Positive Greetings at the Door”
• Whenever possible, provide students with choices in activities, topics, etc.
• Provide students with frequent and varied Opportunities to Respond to thecurriculum, such as choral responding, response cards, dry erase boards, digital whiteboards, chats, and polls.
• Try to relate academic concepts to students’ lives and interests.
• Build your students’ skills in engagement through executive functioning strategies.

Here are some additional teacher academic resources to keep your virtual teaching toolbox fresh.   

• Online Learning Teacher Resources
• 350+ Amazing Online Learning Resources
• Common Sense Education: Resources for all grades and subjects 

Even in the most typical of years, after any break is when students forget the school expectations or start testing limits again. It can sometimes feel like we’re back at the beginning of the school year. This is a great time for your PBIS team to set the tone for the rest of the acadmic year and to boost morale. 

 

Mid-Year Boosters

Some strategies your team may want to consider are: 

• Hold a virtual pep rally to celebrate and review your school values
  • Elementary School Example
  • Middle School Example
• Ensure matrix is updated for Virtual Learning
• Have fun with retaching the school’s expectations
• Change up acknowledgement incentives to keep them fresh and motivating
• Examine your data to create a mid-year challenge (pff download)

Here are some additional helpful links related to our Tip of the Month: 

• “Don’t Abandon PBIS After Winter Break”
• “Getting Back to School After Disruptions”
• “Teacher Morale Boosters”