Robustness or Resilience (PBS for example)?

In developing school-wide systems, it may be important to be explicit about whether you are aiming to make the school's behaviour management systems

• robust - unlikely to fail in any of its parts so that problematic behaviour is prevented from occurring
• resilient - able to recover quickly and easily from failures (life's ups and downs), even the big ones

Follow the link to a posting on this issue from my favourite blogger (Dave Snowden).

Sometimes, when you are introducing PBS, staff may unwittingly assume that the intention is to make the school's behaviour management robust so that behaviour problems will disappear. Of course, this is unlikely to happen and some staff will then naturally think that "PBS doesn't work".

It is more realistic to aim for school-wide systems that are resilient. This will achieve three major outcomes:

• school-wide systems will cope better with the ups and downs involved
• recovery by the school, staff and students will be easier and faster, e.g., restorative practices, and, as a result,
• behaviour problems will reduce (even if they don't disappear altogether)

And this reminds me of the three measure of progress in relation to a problematic student behaviour:

1. Are the incidents getting fewer, that is,further apart? - "Yes" indicates the students behaviour is more 'robust' and that the student has more resilience
2. Is the recovery time getting shorter? "Yes" indicates the student has improved resilience
3. Are the the incidents getting less severe? "Yes" indicates improvements in both robustness of behaviour and personal resilience)

Problematic behaviour tends to improve in the above order. A "Yes" answer to any of the above questions indicates progress , even if, the last thing that improves is the actual incidents themselves. When a serious incident occurs it does not always mean that "We are back to square one!!!" or "All our work has been in vain!!"

It may be useful to get any staff and the student involved to answer these questions for themselves. In this way you are helping them to building resilience.

What is not negotiable in a school?

Are there any things that are not negotiable in a school?

For me, there are three things that are not negotiable,

• No harm to self, others or property (aka care, safety,...)
• No disruption to work or safe play (consideration, learning...)
• No offense to other members of the school community* (courtesy, respect, friendship....)

(* Includes neighbours and visitors)

In fact, these are the three school rules. These rules are derived directly from the rules that apply in our society - the school does not invent these. And they related directly to the two key outcomes

• success
• well-being

There are several supportive ways in which we interact with students. The main ways include

• coaching
• negotiating
• mediating
• befriending
• advocating
• ...

In fact when it comes to the not negotiable three school rules, the bottom line is that at times we will just need to be assertive. Of course there are children who, based on their other life experiences, expect all things to be negotiable. And others who dismiss all support other than befriending... And yet others who simply don't understand. But these things don't change the rules.

It is best to achieve as much s possible on the basis of our working relationships with students (coach, friend, mediator...). However, when our working relationships break down, we may need to be assertive and our right to do so comes from our role: Principal, Class Teacher, Duty Teacher, Teacher Aide...

Making the role explicit while being assertive can help reduce the student's confusion.

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Schools are for people

What if this was really true?  What would if take for this to be true for your school?

I know you want your school to be for its people: students, staff, families, the local community. But I also know that the official version (teachers teaching students in class) is really quite simplistic and often naive. The real stories tell something more.

Would you like to take part in a blog experiment? Instead of using the Comments to debate my attempts to make sense of schools maybe you could make a brief comment and then illustrate it with a story from your own (recent) activity and experience - good, bad or indifferent.

Let's start by gathering the range of things that people like you do in connection with schools.

What is one of the things that you have done recently that needs to be better and more widely understood?

As the themes become clearer we can focus on particular aspects and learn together.

Worth a try? I think so... it seems to me that the present orthodoxies are not serving anyone very well.

Looking forward to learning with/from you and your stories.

Most genuine solutions are 'inschool solutions'

The reason for this is very simple:

• Solutions are about improving success and well-being for all concerned and thus act as attractors for those involved
  
• Inschool because there is nowhere else that solutions can be constructed. Useful ideas and resources may come from elsewhere

In social situations such as schools the relationship between cause and effect is inconsistent: unlike engineering contexts, it is not readily possible to work backwards from the problem to its cause. Even when we can, the cause of the problem is likely to be elsewhere, at another time and too difficult for the school address, eg, parent drug addiction or mental illness.

The alternative is to search for what works in the here and now: a solution. Thus, despite our love of ‘problem solving’ it is usually much more productive to focus on solutions than on problems.

Common erroneous assumptions

Many schools and school systems are being badly damaged by systemic change initiatives. Such initiatives are based on erroneous notions of cause and effect as they relate to all organisations and to schools in particular.

Change initiatives generally assume that
(1) Some expert knows about the changes required and how to achieve them
(2) There are few or no current constraints on the school's capacity to solve problems and change
(3) The relationships between cause and effect in the phenomena involved are consistent over time and place
(4) The outcomes of the change initiatives are predictable
(5) Solutions are close (and deliverable) to where the problem manifest itself
(6) There are problems because schools don't know what is happening
(7) Schools don't know what they are doing (or need to do)
(8) Change in schools can be achieved by directing the actions of teachers, and hence,
(9) If the outcomes are not achieved then the school (staff) is somehow responsible
(10) Doing something (about the problem) is better than doing nothing
(11) Those in charge of the situation are also responsible for it
(12) Those in charge are in control