Student behavior gets a bad wrap. Often focused on compliance and management, attempts at helping students to learn prosocial behaviors can be frought. Many of our typical "behavior expectations" are white-dominant culture norms and don't honor student agency and voice. At the same time, interacting with one another in a shared space and active learning self-management strategies are essential. Today we will consider how we can support positive student behavior with an equity lens.

There are three types of behavior expectations:

• Rules or Expectations: These are decided upon by people of authority. They could be your written "school rules" but they can also be district policies, laws that govern the school, fire code, etc.
  
• Norms or Agreements: These are decided upon by the group as a whole. These could be group norms you set at the beginning of a small group or classroom agreements for how we will treat one another.
  
• Unspoken Rules or Social Norms: These are rules supported and reinforced by a group of people, usually implicitly. The group of people could be a friendship group, club, culture, school building, etc. 
  

Here's the thing, all three of these types of expectations are always present. Sometimes I'll see someone write on twitter - "no more behavior expectations." Um, when that happens, we just push more into the unspoken rule realm. I would argue that doing so increases bias. 

When we consider the behavior expectations experienced by our students, the first step is to take a look at the rules in place and ask ourselves:

Do we elevate white cultural norms in our expectations? Can students be a part of your learning community and be themselves? For example, if a student has to cut their hair to participate in a sporting event or is shushed if they speak a language other than English, does that elevate their culture or expect them to conform to white cultural norms? I recommend that you read this article on How School Leaders Reinforce Supremacy Through Discipline and Behavior Expectations for an extensive look. The article also includes 10 Questions for Ensuring Equity in School Discipline.

After we've checked ourselves to make sure that the rules we are reinforcing are appropriate, we can work to support students in learning the expectations, routines & procedures. But wait, I thought expectations, rules, and procedures were bad? They don't allow students to be their authentic selves? Remember that we do need expectations, rules, and procedures to share a space and have a positive learning community. If you've ever tried to get 25 kindergarteners from point A to point B without losing anyone, you quickly realize why we walk in a single file line. When 600 high schoolers share a cafeteria, there will need to be rules about how to get your lunch quickly enough to have time to eat and what is expected for cleaning up your space. 

Delivery of explicit instruction for expecations, routines, and procedures allows students and staff to be clear about what is expected. It's important to also include feedback from a diverse representation of students (and their families) on behavior expectations and their implementation. I once had the honor of speaking with a few high school girls who talked about how dress codes were unfairly enforced at their school. They told me that a skinnier, white girl was rarely dress-coded for the same torn jeans that worn by students of color who had been dress-coded. 

Nobody's perfect, students will mess up. When that happens, we can view their behavior with a deficit lens and use punishment to fix their behavior. In reality, the situation is more complicated than that. The student may need an (appropriate) consequence but they also may need to learn a new skill. The other possibility is one we don't talk about, the one where the adult has an unconscious (or conscious) bias that is impacting their view of the behavior in the first place. 

Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, uses a Mindful Reflection Protocol to help educators in "a process of deep reflection that interrupts historically deficit views and response to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds." Read more in the full protocol but the steps include:

• Describe the behavior or interaction
• Reflect on (your own) feelings
• Explain your interpretation of the student's behavior
• Consider alternative explanations (check assumptions)
• Identify one small change to reframe and respond differently
• Continuously revisit

Please share with me how you use an equity lens with behavior in your building. Do you have any effective strategies?

The new school year is starting and many schools are beginning the year in online learning. As school counselors, this presents an unique challenge for how to proactively support students through a comprehensive school counseling program. By rethinking some of our basic best practices, I think we can successfully implement school counseling during remote learning. As I share suggestions today, make sure to keep your districts guidelines and policies in mind as you consider how you will shift and change your program this school year.

 (My very first principal told me that the reason he hired me was because I talked about visibility in my interview. If students and parents don't know who the school counselor is, they won't see you as a resource. I always signed up for breakfast duty because most of my kids ate breakfast in the cafeteria, I walk through the lunchroom during lunch, I go outside during recess to check on kids instead of calling them to my office, and I make sure to greet any parent that I see throughout the day. Being visible shows that you are a part of the school and not a person locked in their office waiting for the "bad" kids (note: there are no bad kids and if you disagree, let's talk). 

So how can we adjust this to the virtual setting?

• Offer to read a book or stop in to morning meetings
• Ask to be included in any videos or phone messages that go out to parents
• Reach out to all parents by sending an email or asking teachers to include a message from you in their communication
• Attend PLC meetings for grade levels or content areas
• Call parents for students that you have worked closely with in the past just to check in
• If feasible, send postcards or notes to students

Collect as much data as possible on how Spring went for students. Use this data to determine students who might need additional help or support. Collect data on how participation is going this Fall. This is going to be your "I won't let this student fall through the cracks" list. We often have these lists as we start the year. I like to begin the year with a focus and this would be my focus for the beginning of 20-21.

When you reach out to parents do not talk about participation. This seems counter-intuitive, right? I heard about parents hanging up on the school in the spring, parents telling teachers and counselors they just couldn't do it and opting out. As we move forward with the 20-21 school year, that won't be as much of an option. We're no longer crisis teaching, we. have. to. make. this. work. The first step to building a team is building a relationship. Call and check in. Call and be a listening ear. And, please, don't just send an email. 

Every year, I have a few students that just need me to check on them. We're not really doing deep counseling work. We may not even have super specific goals that they are working on. But I notice that when I forget to check in, they start having a harder time. So I check in. I make sure they have that person that they know is watching out for them. 

How can we adjust this to the virtual setting?

• If your students have email, use email as a simple check in tool
• Ask parents if you can set up a 10-15 minute weekly check in (if this is allowed in your district)
• Ask teachers if you can virtually stop by any small groups this student may be receiving in the classroom
• Send a postcard or just call to say hello

The best way to protect your time as a school counselor, is to be transparent about how you spend it. Keeping a calendar is a great place to start. Talking with your administrator, teachers, and parents about what you do on a daily basis is also important. If you have admin meetings or student support services team meetings, use that time to prepare talking points on your use of time data. Share the details that would matter to your stakeholders while protecting confidentiality. When we are in remote learning, it might be less obvious what the counselor is doing. To be values as a part of the team, we want to clearly show how we can be helpful.

Students don't learn in a vacuum, many of our students are carrying the weight of both a pandemic and racial injustice. These two intersect and overlap in ways that compound stressors for our students and families. This isn't the time to hold on equity work. Continue to interrupt racism as a school counselor, each and every day. 

2020 has been the most stressful year of my professional life. I am sure that is true for many. Make sure to figure out what makes living in a pandemic a tiny bit more manageable and do it. Because sometimes it's too much. What keeps you going during stress?

Mental well being is important for everyone. Just like everyone has physical health, everyone has mental health. As we live as a community in the midst of a pandemic and racial strife, we are facing mental well being obstacles that sometimes seem overwhelming. I think it's safe to say, 2020 is too much.

Oftentimes, teachers and other school staff come to school counselors to find out how to support student mental well being. I've recently discovered the WE Teachers hub that includes a module on mental well being. The module is BIG (the full PDF is 52 pages). Knowing that everyone is rather overwhelmed right now, I thought I would point out a few highlights. 

In this tool, healthy mental and emotional development by age gives tips on typical struggles and growth that are a part of human development. We all know that mood swings might be normal for 10-12 year olds but that doesn't mean it's not hard. This module gives tips on how to support children through the very normal struggles of growing up. I think this section would be even better if they also included a few bullets on when to seek help.

The best practices for supporting mental well being in the classroom include tips for reframing our own mindsets as educators to avoid stigmatizing students or pre-determining that students are going to have a hard time. I appreciate this focus on how the adult enters the educator-student relationship impacts the outcome for the student. As counselors, we need to own this too. 

The best practices section continues to include ways to be supportive of students. There are also tips for working with students who may have mental health concerns like anxiety and ADHD. Seeking help from school counselors is mentioned throughout as a resource. I appreciate both the acknowledgement of what school counselors can do (and also the fact they don't say guidance counselor).

More than ever, we need to be thinking about teacher's mental well being. This was already a hard job. A rewarding, meaningful, and amazing but super hard job. As our world has been flipped upside down, teachers (and counselors, and principals, and cafeteria staff, and custodians...) are being tasked with a way to do school that has never been done before. This is hard. We can't be the educators we want to be without taking care of ourselves and each other too. The guide includes self reflection questions that can be utilized by staff to consider the resiliency factors that support their stress management. I think this would be a great tool to use in staff meetings or PLCs. 

You've got a lot on your to-do list right now. This is a resource that you can use to support yourself and your staff as we move in to the 20-21 school year. 

This post is sponsored by WE Teachers. All opinions and 2020 bashing are my own. 

Hello my school counseling heroes. I know that you are all working hard right now to support your students, staff, and families during the COVID-19 crisis. Our work is always hard and now it's been made harder. One of my colleagues said "it's like our muse is gone." Couldn't agree more, without the kids, it's like the best parts of our jobs are whittled down to the notsofun parts. Hang in there, this too shall pass. 

My co-author, Alicia Oglesby, and I had the opportunity to host a #scchat with ASCA School Counselor of the Year extraordinaire Laura Ross. I feel like Laura was there from the beginning chatting with us and supporting our work. Thanks Laura!  We chatted all things interrupting racism when it comes to being a school counselor during school closures. 

So many people came to the chat and, let me tell you, y'all showed up. I could barely keep up. Here's the transcript, in case you want to take a look at some of the amazing thoughts of our school counselor colleagues. What kinds of things are you thinking through right now? My brain is currently spinning on return to school. Stay tuned for more thoughts!