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ONE

Psychological factors—often called motivational or non-cognitive factors—can matter even more than cognitive factors for students’ academic performance.

— CAROL S. DWECK, GREGORY M. WALTON, AND GEOFFREY L. COHEN

Identifying, Defining, and Making Sense of Behavioral Skills

If it’s predictable, it’s preventable. This core phrase is at the heart of RTI. It allows us to identify, anticipate, and prepare for our students’ needs, and to proactively respond to these before frustration and disengagement set in. We as educators predict and take measures to prevent student difficulties in academic skills—but how can this predict-and-prevent attitude apply to our model of behavioral RTI?

We can predict that a lack of adequate core instruction in the behavioral skills as the introduction describes will compromise student success—both behavioral and academic. We can predict that not all students will possess the mindsets, social skills, perseverance, learning strategies, and academic behaviors that will lead to success in school and life when they arrive in our classrooms. Thus, we can conclude that if we do not identify, prioritize, and teach these critical skills, there will be some students whose success is negatively impacted. We can prevent this negative impact if we establish behavioral skills as a priority along with key academic concepts.

In this chapter, districts, schools, and teams of educators will discover tools to assess the culture of their districts or schools and the readiness of their staff to proactively and positively nurture behavioral skills with and for all students—a necessary precursor to implementing behavioral RTI. They will then consider the first two steps in the behavioral RTI model:

1. Identify the most critical behavioral skills.

2. Define and make sense of these skills.

Educators will learn to identify those behavioral skills that will most contribute to student success in school, college, career, and life, and define and make sense of what those behavioral skills look and sound like. They will then learn how to prepare both general and content-area-specific behavioral priorities for their classrooms in a manner that emphasizes consistency and prepares them for the next step of teaching behaviors.

So, to begin our journey, let’s briefly address school culture.

Creating a Collaborative Culture of Commitment

The first step in designing a system of supports that nurtures the mindsets, social skills, perseverance, learning strategies, and academic behaviors within students—behaviors that are so critical to their success—is for educators to accept responsibility for this critical but challenging task. Parents and communities can positively shape student behaviors, and schools should complement these supports. Schools, however, have the unique opportunity to nurture behavioral skills that educators can apply and practice when engaging in the intellectual tasks in which schools specialize.

The nurturing of behavioral skills is consistent with innovative learning environments in which student voice, choice, and agency are priorities. Ryan Jackson, executive principal of the Mount Pleasant Arts Innovation Zone and practitioner of behavioral RTI, notes that:

Schools adapting to the Netflix generation mindset, where purpose, passions, and empowerment reign supreme over compliance, standardization, and simple engagement, can be highly successful. These schools are building a sustainable model of behavioral skill success, starting from the ground up with trust and respect as a foundation, and goal setting and commitment as the catalysts. (R. Jackson, personal communication, June 19, 2017)

Creating this sort of staff culture and learning environment starts with a belief in and high expectations for all students’ success and a commitment to not letting anything (such as poor attendance, apathy, or deficits in reading skills) get in the way. The central importance of belief and expectations should sound familiar to proponents of PLC at Work (DuFour et al., 2016). They are foundational Big Ideas. A culture of high expectations, of doing whatever it takes, and of recognizing that the only way to ensure that every student learns at high levels is through a commitment to collaborative and collective action has always been at the heart of PLC at Work.

So, how is this nurturing learning environment created? I believe that there exist several foundational principles that educators should address, discuss, and ultimately accept regarding student behavior.

■ Behavior is as critical as academics; behavioral skills include the categories of precognitive self-regulation, mindsets, social skills, learning strategies (such as metacognition, cognitive self-regulation, and executive functioning), perseverance, and academic behaviors (such as participation, work completion, attendance, and engagement).

■ Students behave and misbehave for a reason, purpose, or function, and educators have a great deal of influence regarding the ways in which students behave.

■ Educators must define, model, teach, and nurture the behaviors that they want to see.

■ Educators will be most successful nurturing behavioral skills when they align the definitions, steps, and process of behavioral RTI to those of academic RTI.

■ Staff members must assume collective responsibility for nurturing student behaviors.

■ Great relationships between educators and educators, educators and students, and students and students lead to better student behavior and greater levels of engagement and learning.

■ Great classroom environments with high expectations and clear procedures and routines lead to better student behavior.

■ Engaging, rich, and sound pedagogies, strategies, and tasks lead to better student behavior.

■ If educators want student behaviors to change, they must be willing to change.

Begin your collective work on building a system of behavioral supports by collaboratively reflecting upon and discussing these foundational ideas, and reference them throughout the process. Do they ring true? Do “yeah, but…” and “what if…” comments and questions arise? Transparent and courageous dialogue on core principles such as these can help serve as a vision or “North Star” that guides and shapes these critical efforts.

To measure the current realities of your school and the readiness of your staff in creating a nurturing learning environment, consider using the survey in figure 1.1 (page 18) as a preassessment to inform how you will begin your journey. This survey is designed to gauge the current climate and staff attitudes regarding behavior and can be repeated at any time before, during, and after the implementation of the six steps of behavioral RTI.

A colleague was recently appointed principal of a school in which the climate and attitudes, as measured by the survey in figure 1.1, were inhibiting success. Staff were hardworking and capable, but beliefs in all students learning at high levels and a collective commitment to meeting student needs required some attention. This principal courageously and respectfully shared the results with staff and facilitated an open dialogue in which frustrations were expressed. This began a healing process. From this beginning, a grade-level team volunteered to embrace the idea that behavioral skills needed to be taught and time needed to be embedded within the day to do so. The staff members were empowered and supported, and results in the first year, as measured by a reduction in behavioral infractions and increases in attendance, work completion, and reading levels, were dramatic. The momentum and excitement generated from this success inspired other teams to initiate shifts in their practices and a corner had truly been turned; the school now feels different, and student outcomes continue to improve.

Figure 1.1: Survey of expectations, readiness, strengths, and needs of staff and stakeholders.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/RTI for a free reproducible version of this figure.

A commitment to ensuring that all students possess the behavioral skills necessary for readiness in college, a skilled career, and life cannot be fully achieved without providing scaffolded core instruction for every single student, and supplemental interventions for students who do not come to school with a mastery of behaviors. We must define, teach, model, and measure mastery of the behavioral skills of all students as part of a core curriculum, both as a distinct and critical part of Tier 1 and integrated into the academic instruction that has far too long represented the totality of a student’s school experience. Within the remainder of this chapter, we will describe the process for identifying and defining the behaviors that all students must develop, and give examples of behavioral priorities that schools may consider.

Identifying and Prioritizing Essential Behavioral Skills

Education should have always been about more than academics. Students may earn acceptance into universities and skilled careers through academic achievement, but college is successfully completed and careers are sustained only through the application of behaviors that are too infrequently prioritized and taught in our schools.

Thus, once you have established in your staff a collective belief that behavioral skills are essential to teach and a commitment to make that happen, you must ask two questions: (1) What are the most essential behavioral outcomes that students must master, in order to give them the best possible social and academic outcomes? and (2) What does your team collaboratively agree it will look and sound like when students master these most essential outcomes? These questions are simple to answer in the academic realm, but have not been considered frequently or systematically enough in the context of behavior. We cannot teach behavioral skills without first clearly identifying, prioritizing, and defining those skills that students must possess.

When it comes to academic content, educators are making a renewed commitment to defining a viable curriculum within a grade level or course that all students will master (Larson & Kanold, 2016; Udelhofen, 2014). Next-generation standards and commitments to deeper learning in states and provinces are, in many ways, providing the motivation and opportunity for these endeavors. Depth is increasingly favored over breadth; quality over quantity; mastery over coverage. Educators are prioritizing the concepts and skills that all students must master, ensuring the most critical learning that students must possess receives adequate time and attention. Teams are also more clearly defining what mastery of prioritized content and skills looks like and sounds like. The work of teachers in my district related to these tasks—in kindergarten through twelfth grade, in mathematics, English language arts, science, and history–social science—is innovative and impactful; both teaching and learning are improving. When articulated horizontally and vertically, this collaboration allows for collective professional preparation and ensures that all students are optimally prepared for the next grade level or course.

These processes are not new. From Understanding by Design (Wiggins, McTighe, Kiernan, & Frost, 1998) to curriculum mapping (Jacobs, 2004) to Rigorous Curriculum Design (Ainsworth, 2010), schools have long recognized that a guaranteed, viable curriculum (Scherer, 2001) is one of the most critical factors contributing to high levels of student learning. In light of next-generation standards, the collaborative staff processes of scoping and sequencing prioritized learning outcomes are more important than ever.

We must apply this very same thinking, and complete this very same work, for the behaviors that we want all students to exhibit. Jim Wright, an RTI trainer and consultant to schools and educational organizations, notes that the “communal initial step of defining community behavior norms actually brings educators into alignment about the conduct they want to foster in their classrooms” (J. Wright, personal communication, May 23, 2017). We must identify, prioritize, describe and define, and scope and sequence these behaviors in our teams and with all staff across the school. In fact, defining and teaching behaviors will require even more consistency and collaboration than defining and teaching academic expectations. Here’s why: while collaboration within the third-grade team or high school mathematics department is vital when defining academic priorities for that team, behavioral skills will be expected and practiced within all classrooms on campus. Consistent expectations for appropriate behavioral skills are absolutely critical, no matter a student’s grade, no matter the staff member with whom a student is working, and no matter the environment within the school (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2009, 2010, 2012).

So, how do teachers identify these key behaviors? As a first step, form a representative team from across grade levels and departments to identify your school’s behavioral priorities using the template in figure 1.2. The prioritization, defining, and teaching of behavioral skills must be consistent across the school; student and staff will be frustrated, confused, and less-than-ideally successful if this is not the case. While all sta must ultimately have a voice in the behavioral skills that are identified, this representative team can guide the process, communicating to and gathering feedback from the colleagues with whom they work.

Figure 1.2: Template to identify behavioral priorities.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/RTI for a free reproducible version of this table.

To help you identify behavioral priorities, table 1.1 compiles an extensive list of behavioral skills and attributes based on our definition in the introduction, popular educational frameworks, research studies, and models from schools that have successfully implemented RTI. You can use any of these, a combination, or make up your own priorities based on your school’s individual needs.

TABLE 1.1: BEHAVIORAL SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES

Social Behaviors (and Their Opposites): Label and define the behaviors you want to see, not the misbehaviors that you do not want to see.
Social behaviors include: • Cooperation (Disruption)—Interacting positively within learning environment and with others • Social respect (Defiance)—Complying with expectations • Physical respect (Aggression)—Demonstrating care and concern for physical being and space of others • Verbal respect (Inappropriate language)—Using kind, positive, and supportive words • Attention (Inattention)—Ability to focus • Self-control (Impulsivity)—Ability to control oneself physically and verbally • Attendance (Absences)—Physical, cognitive, and emotional presence at school • Honesty (Lying, cheating, or stealing)—Truthfulness in relationships and learning • Empathy (Harassment or bullying)—Consideration of others’ situations
Academic Behaviors (and Their Opposites): Label and define the behaviors you want to see, not the misbehaviors that you do not want to see.
Academic behaviors include: • Metacognitive practices (Unreflective learning)—Knowledge and beliefs about thinking • Growth mindset and positive self-concept (Fixed mindset and negative self-talk)—Viewing learning as continuous and intelligence as malleable • Self-monitoring and internal locus of control (External loci of control)—Ability to plan, prepare, and proceed • Engagement and motivation (Apathy)—Ability to maintain interest and drive • Strategy creation and use (Passive learning)—Techniques for construction, organization, and memorization of knowledge • Volition and perseverance (Learned helplessness)—Efforts students need to maintain their motivation • Resilience (Emotional fragility)—Techniques for regulating response to situations
Twenty-First Century Skills
These skills mean students know how to: • Access and evaluate information • Adapt to change • Apply technology • Be flexible • Be responsible to others • Collaborate with others in diverse teams • Communicate clearly • Create media products • Guide and lead others • Innovate • Manage projects, goals, and time • Problem solve • Produce results • Reason effectively • Self-direct learning • Think creatively • Think critically • Think systematically • Use and manage information • Work independently
College-and Career-Readiness Skills
• Manage effort and time • Monitor progress and confirm precision of work • Organize and construct products in various forms • Persist • Practice self-awareness • Read strategically • Reflect on reasons of success or failure • Seek help and self-advocate • Self-monitor and self-motivate • Set goals • Understand academic expectations for college admission • Understand financial aid options and procedures • Value knowledge
Self-Regulation
• Plan, including– • Goal setting • Strategic thinking • Manage their time • Monitor– • Self-motivation • Delaying gratification • Attention control • Reflect, including– • Self-advocating • Self-evaluation • Self-assessment
Executive Functioning
Executive functioning means: • Setting goals and establishing a due date • Planning, prioritizing, and sequencing the steps or tasks needed to reach the goal • Identifying necessary information, materials, or both • Obtaining and organizing the information, materials needed to complete the goal, or both • Beginning the task • Persevering through distractions and delaying gratification • Establishing a reasonable work rate so that the goal is met by the due date • Shifting from one task to another smoothly • Responding to, and incorporating, feedback • Assessing performance and progress toward the goal • Controlling emotional responses to difficult situations • Seeing tasks through to completion
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Competencies From CASEL
CASEL lists social-emotional learning competencies as: • Self-awareness—The ability, within oneself, to recognize how emotions influence behavior; assess strengths and limitations with healthy self-efficacy, optimism, and a growth mindset; and identify emotions • Self-management—The ability, within oneself, to regulate emotions, thoughts, and behaviors; manage stress; control impulses; be motivated; set goals; and organize • Social awareness—The ability to empathize with and respect others; understand norms for behavior; and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports • Relationship management—The ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships; communicate clearly; listen well; cooperate with others; resist inappropriate social pressure; negotiate conflict constructively; and seek and offer help • Responsible decision making—The ability to make choices about behaviors based on ethics, safety, and social norms; evaluate consequences of actions; respect the well-being of oneself and others; identify problems; analyze situations; solve problems; and reflect on and learn from experiences
Learning and Life Strategies
Conscientiousness	• Reasoning • Empathy • Attention • Awareness of social situations
Optimism	• Belief in oneself • Self-monitoring and self-motivating • Growth mindset and positive self-concept
Metacognition	• Problem solving • Thinking creatively and critically • Analyzing and evaluating findings and viewpoints
Motivation and volition	• Managing projects, goals, and time • Thinking systematically • Employing memorization techniques, study skills, technology skills, and problem-solving strategies • Monitoring progress and confirming the precision of work • Setting short-term and long-term goals • Creating and using strategies
Perseverance	• Practicing self-directed learning • Working independently • Managing effort, time, and materials
Relationships	• Collaborating responsibly with others in diverse teams • Communicating clearly and persuasively • Guiding and leading others • Managing relationships • Being aware of emotions • Making responsible decisions
Resilience	• Adaptability to change • Flexibility • Persistence
Self-advocacy	• Focusing on an interest or career pathway or major • Being self-aware • Reflecting on reasons of success or failure and seeking help • Communicating in written, verbal, and social ways
Examples of School or Agency’s Lists of Behavioral Skills
Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP): • Grit • Self-control • Zest • Social intelligence • Gratitude • Optimism • Curiosity Character Counts!: • Trustworthiness • Respect • Responsibility • Fairness • Caring • Citizenship Scholarly Attributes: • Respect yourself and others • Make good decisions • Solve your own problems	Three Rs: • Respect • Responsibility • Readiness Three Ss: • Strategy • Self-efficacy • Self-starting REAL: • Respect • Effort • Attitude • Leadership Three Ms: • Motivation • Metacognition • Monitoring MOP: • Motivation • Organization • Perseverance PRIDE: • Positive • Responsible • Integrity • Dependable • Engage

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/RTI for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Next, consider your behavioral priorities in greater detail in the context of our behavioral RTI framework. You will find a simple template in figure 1.3 (page 26) for categorizing behavioral priorities into the five areas Farrington et al.’s (2012) framework defines. Within each of the five areas, we suggest identifying three key behaviors to focus on. While PBIS-oriented behavioral models typically include three to four skills, and Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools very successfully emphasize seven, our behavioral RTI template suggests fifteen behavioral skills to prioritize (see figure 1.3, page 26, and, as examples, the Key Behavioral Skills row in figure 1.4, page 27). KIPP schools are charter schools whose emphasis on developing skills within students that research indicates are most necessary for success—skills described in this book—was profiled in How Children Succeed (Tough, 2012). Though this may seem like a large number, I urge educators to consider that there are forty-two English language arts standards in each grade within the Common Core State Standards (ten reading literature, ten reading informational text, ten writing, six language, and six listening and speaking, plus four foundational skill standards in grades K–5)—and that’s before we further define the sub-standards and learning targets within each standard (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010). If behavior is as critical as academics for success in school, college, career, and life, then we should be open to prioritizing a few more critical behavioral skills than we are used to. Of course, each school and school system should decide what is most necessary for its students—indeed, you may choose more than three per factor. The fifteen skills that I suggest simply provide more detail and definition to the categories Farrington and her colleagues (2012) describe.

Consider this important note: I have not included precognitive self-regulation as a separate column within the behavioral skills template. While I acknowledge the critical importance and presence of these foundations, schools and educators will not and cannot “teach” basic health, nutrition, and sleep into existence in the same way that we can and must nurture the skills in table 1.1 (page 21). Instead, we can and must work with families, social agencies, and governmental groups by proactively and passionately striving to determine family needs and reimagining schools so that they represent hubs of community to ensure that the students’ physiological and safety needs are met. Additionally, we will discuss ways to mitigate the impact of needs in the area of precognitive self-regulation in chapter 4, page 120. We can positively impact students’ precognitive self-regulatory skills through emphasizing their practice both within and outside schools and by supporting students’ emotional coping skills, which we believe are subsumed within the five skill areas in figure 1.3 (page 26).

To define the behaviors that staff have prioritized, teams should describe what the displayed behavioral skills will look like and sound like. To illustrate how to fill out the template, figure 1.4 (page 27) contains a suggestion for behavioral skills that schools may prioritize. It also provides examples of how to describe each of these behaviors. The examples of behavioral priorities in figure 1.4 are suggestions only; we strongly recommend that staff analyze their students’ specific needs and select the essential behaviors that they feel will best prepare students in their particular neighborhoods and districts for the next year of schooling and for life. The following recommended categories of behaviors—categories that are used and further described throughout the book—are simply the categories that Farrington and colleagues’ (2012) review of the research indicates are most critical for success. They include needs that educators probably recognize in their students and about which educators have been reading, including mindsets, grit or perseverance, and social-emotional learning.

Teacher or staff teams can identify and describe these behaviors within their teams or in collaboration with students. One principal who utilizes the collaborative process when prioritizing and defining behavioral skills is Jon Swett, principal of Shaw Middle School, Washington, and noted pioneer of behavioral RTI. He says:

At Shaw, we establish schoolwide and classroom agreements with our students rather [than] dictate rules. This opens the door for us to ask students to tell us how they want us to hold them accountable to the social and academic goals we set. (J. Swett, personal communication, June 9, 2017)

Principal Swett’s point is important: students and parents, in addition to teaching and support staff, should be involved in the process of determining and defining these behavioral skills, attitudes, attributes, and habits. We want and need the support and involvement of parents and students’ voices about skills they need for success in school, college, career, and life. Additionally, this will lead to a greater student understanding of why these non-academic skills are being emphasized.

Figure 1.3: Template for identifying and describing key behavioral skills.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/RTI for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Figure 1.4: Examples of behavioral priorities.

What you choose to name your behavioral priorities isn’t as important, and the specific behavioral priorities that teams select are not as important, as the selection of a viable quantity of behavioral priorities that you can consistently define, teach, and reinforce. Just as with academic skills, depth is more important than breadth. Schools may choose to begin by prioritizing behavioral skills with what they see as the greatest student need. As an example of prioritizing behavioral skills, behavioral RTI consultant Jim Wright believes that:

A prime inhibitor of student success is learned helplessness, the self-reinforcing syndrome in which the student assumes that poor school performance is tied to their own lack of ability rather than a need to apply more effort. So … the behavioral skill most critical to success is self-efficacy, the confidence within the student that he or she can meet any academic task through the application of effort and self-regulation skills. (J. Wright, personal communication, May 23, 2017)

Thus, prioritizing self-efficacy-related attributes such as engaging, believing, belonging, persevering, adapting, and advocating (from figure 1.4, page 27) may be a first step for schools with which Wright works.

Consistency is key. When different expectations, interpretations, and applications of the behaviors that they expect students to display exist between classrooms, educators will be frustrated and students will be unsuccessful. Wright notes:

[The] variability of behavioral norms across classrooms creates confusion—and is a prime driver of student misbehavior … minimizing this discrepancy by getting teachers to agree up front on what shared set of “goal” student behaviors they will preteach substantially reduces the “friction” in interactions between students and teachers (and among students as well). (J. Wright, personal communication, May 23, 2017)

In addition to consistency, high expectations are key to success. When educators establish high expectations for student success in conjunction with student participation, students recognize that their teachers and principal believe that they can achieve these behavioral skills at high levels, and they rise to the occasion.

But what does achievement at high levels look like? The next important step in behavioral RTI is to define your chosen behavioral skills. This will be discussed in the following section.

Defining Key Behavioral Skills

Once you identify your key behavioral priorities, a representative team of staff, students, stakeholders, or all of these, should fully and purposefully engage in defining what the behavioral priorities look like and sound like. Identifying behavioral priorities is not enough. We as educators must also clearly and consistently define these priorities in ways that allow us to observe and measure success. At Shaw Middle School, Principal Jon Swett and staff focus on the same behavioral skills (or noncognitive factors) that KIPP adopts—grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity. Staff use the school’s character report card throughout the school year as a way for students to monitor and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Swett explains, “They set social goals and become aware of themselves as learners. This is how our students get good grades—through research-based best practices” (personal communication, June 9, 2017). Setting goals for what success looks like allows the students to optimize their learning and empowers them by giving them agency, or the opportunity to influence their own life and learning path.

Defining academic concepts, content, and skills is important—and challenging! So, give this process an adequate amount of time to complete. Principal Derek McCoy of West Rowan Middle School, North Carolina, notes that: