The Expectations Leaders Are Trying to Rebuild | Rebuilding the Expectations Students Need – Ep 22

Hosts: Courtney Acosta & Mario Acosta
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Episode Overview

Many school leaders are feeling the same pressure right now: behavior expectations have slipped, academic expectations feel harder to maintain, and too many students seem disconnected from school. In this episode, Courtney and Mario unpack what leaders can do to recommit to behavioral expectations before the next school year begins.

Drawing from current principal concerns, national behavior data, and Mario’s current book on school transformation, this episode focuses on practical leadership moves for rebuilding student behavior systems. The conversation emphasizes that schools cannot simply wish behavior back into place.
The central message is direct: if schools do not rebuild behavior, academic improvement will continue to stall.

Leadership Actions Recommended in This Episode

1. Identify students who are becoming invisible
Track students who are chronically absent, emotionally disengaged, repeatedly disruptive, or increasingly apathetic. Name the students who need support before they disappear further from the school community.

2. Assign every high-need student to a connected adult
Use the “starfish” idea: every adult cannot save every child, but every adult can intentionally connect with a few. Build a system where struggling students are paired with adults who check in, monitor, encourage, and follow up.

3. Create simple check-in systems
Use mentoring, advisory, check-in/check-out systems, PLC time, or team meetings to review student needs and ensure students are not falling through the cracks.

4. Clarify and teach behavioral expectations
Name the specific behaviors students need to demonstrate. Teach expectations directly instead of assuming students know them. Model, practice, reteach, and reinforce the behaviors that make learning possible.

5. Define adult supervision responsibilities
Make sure staff know where they are expected to be, what they are expected to monitor, and how they should interact with students during transitions, arrival, dismissal, lunch, hallways, playgrounds, and other unstructured times.

6. Build common behavior response protocols
Create clarity around which behaviors teachers own, which behaviors require administrative partnership, and which behaviors require immediate administrative intervention. Then align consequences and responses so students experience consistency across the school.

7. Use a consequence-plus-repair approach
Do not eliminate consequences. Instead, combine consequences with reflection, repair, reintegration, and problem-solving. Address the behavior while also identifying what is underneath it.

8. Monitor adult consistency
Define what success should look like if the behavior system is working. Then look for evidence: fewer hallway issues, cleaner common spaces, stronger adult presence, fewer repeat behaviors, improved attendance, and more consistent classroom expectations.

9. Communicate with families early
Do not wait until behavior patterns become severe. Build parent partnership as soon as concerns appear, and make family communication part of the behavior response process.

10. Rebuild behavior before expecting academic recovery
Academic expectations matter, but schools cannot get to deep learning if student behavior, attendance, safety, and connection are not addressed first.

🎙️ Final Thought

Schools don't improve because they add more.

They improve when leaders intentionally strengthen the fundamentals:

🤝 Relationships
🎯 Expectations
🏫 Community
📚 Engagement
❤️ Connection

Sometimes the most important leadership work isn't creating something new—it's restoring something valuable that was lost.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Many educators feel that behavior and academic expectations have become inconsistent. Current data support why this conversation matters. The CDC reported that the percentage of students who reported being bullied at school increased from 15% to 19%, and the percentage missing school because of safety concerns increased from 9% to 13%. Education Week also reported survey findings showing many educators believe student misbehavior has increased compared with the fall of 2019. I'm Courtney.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

And I'm Madium.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

And this is the Ed Leadership Pair podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

We want our listeners to know that we are going to have a couple of events in the summer. Especially right now, I'd like everybody to mark their calendars. June 30th. Mark it. June 30th at 3 p.m. Central Time. We will be going live with our first principal panel. So we have invited a handful of principals from around the country. They're going to sit with us and just kind of talk shop, talk what's on their mind, talk problems, talk solutions, talk celebrations. So we are going to try and go live. You always say about your producer. We'll see if he can handle it. But June 30th, mark your calendar still.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I'm most concerned about you going live and saying things you shouldn't say.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

It's super fair. That is fair. I want to be offended, but I can't even be offended because that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

That's fair. Okay. All right. So today's episode, we are jumping in, and it's crazy because this is, I know this came again from uh a few weeks ago. You reached out to some principal friends that we have and said, what's top of your mind right now? They're closing down school and starting again in the summer, planning for next year, all those pieces. And this was a big one with principals in it. I know it seems weird to be talking about over the summer, but the things that you plan over the summer are the things that you're most prepared prepared for in the fall. So in that vein, it really works. But it was interesting to me because when I reached out and I think on my Facebook or something, I was just like, hey, any topics you guys think maybe would be might be interesting. And um a former now retired educator was like, discipline. We have to talk, we have to hear about discipline and what are the solutions out there and what are people saying about this? How are they solving for this? Because teachers are struggling and administrators are struggling. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about leader actions for recommitting to behavioral expectations.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

We did hear from our colleagues that just the bar has gotten low, but that bar has lowered academically, I think. And I think it might be tied to the behavior, honestly. When kids can't behave, they can't learn. And when they're not learning, we lower the bar. So I think some of this is all tied together cyclically.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

That that would totally make sense. So today we have a lot of practical um ideas that we are throwing out there that come from a lot of different places, but mainly, Dr. Acosta, do you want to share where a lot of these deets came from?

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Yeah, so was great timing because when we heard from the principals that both behavior expectations and academic expectations are top of mind as pressure points right now. Um, I am currently nearing the end of writing another book with a great colleague of mine, Dr. Mike Rule, and a good friend of ours and colleague Connie Williamson, former principal in the Greater Chicagoland area. So the three of us have teamed up as co-co-authors, and we are nearly done with our book uh being published through Marzano Resources called Embracing the Transformation. Really, the point of the book is to support high needs schools, schools that have to have immediate results quickly. And so the book is written just down and dirty. What are the most important things you can do when your school is struggling to quickly turn it around? A lot of the topics from here are well researched. Um, I'm in the middle of researching for this book right now. So it's just a timely topic because it was already on my, it's been on my writing list anyway. And so we'll be able to share sort of like a preview, embracing the transformation. If you hear some of these points and you're like, oh man, how do I get my hands on that? Just keep listening to us because we will be publishing uh a release date. It'll come by winter time, I would assume.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Awesome. All right. So the big thing about this is we want to encourage leaders, and we know a lot of you are doing a lot of these things. Like a lot of you have a lot of these practices in place and you have systems set up to support them. However, maybe there's a nugget here that is just, oh, I didn't think about that, or oh, maybe I could add that or tweak that or you know, whatever. Just sharing ideas. So we're not saying this is the end all be all, we know everything. We did all this. I didn't do all of this when I was a principal.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

And I wish I did do all of this.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Okay. No, you did not. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Wait a minute, who hit that button? That person. Oh, wait, that was me. No, little levity. Courtney's right. We're we're not here to be preaching, we're just here to share ideas.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

No, just sharing ideas that we have gotten over time. Like Mario said, that he's been doing a lot of research, and so this is not coming all from our practices. So a lot of it, if you look at high reliability schools, this all fits definitely right in there. It's so aligned. That's right. It's just yeah. So, okay, let's jump in, shall we?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, let's jump in.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

So Okay, ideas for leader actions for recommitting to behavioral expectations.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yeah, just to kind of center the conversation, I think it's powerful. What can we do about it on the behavioral side?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

So the first one we have on this list of behavioral recommitting to behavioral expectations is how are you identifying students who are becoming more and more invisible over time? So talk about what that looks like a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, I mean, I think right now, what should pop in everybody's head is this national trend of chronic absenteeism. The most recent studies I've seen, chronic absenteeism up is up three times greater than before 2020. Kids are chronically absent. That's issue number one because a lot of educators I work with, they say, and it's fair, how can we help the kids if we don't have them here in the building? So I think that that it looks like that. I think it also looks like very emotionally disengaged. Um, that could be when you are trying to recorrect, re-readjust the student's behavior where they just flat give you the dead bed deadpan look, like I just I don't care. You're not getting through, I'm not listening to you. Um, you can't tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

That type of I think we have one of our own children that does that.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

We I know that looks yeah, that it happens, you know, from time to time, sometimes with one of our one of our children who, you know, she's learned her defense mechanisms and we have to crack that down.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

I think also what administrators would probably be screaming across at their uh headphones, wherever you're listening to this, is this repeated uh uh negative behavior, these these persistent behaviors that just don't fit the norms of school. Um, you know, it's the same kids in the office over and over again with the same issues uh behaviorally. So I think I think you know that that sort of paints the picture of it's apathetic, it's uh a lack of caring about the structures and the systems in school. It's it's maybe I don't even show up um on a regular basis. And so I think that's kind of what we see in the research. It's what I hear from colleagues, it's you know, what what principles what it looks like on boots on the ground right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

So when we say identify kids who are becoming invisible, then are you are you like making a list of these high priority students? Like you're listing them out, you're logging the reasons why they made this list, and you're starting to track them.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yeah. We work with a lot of kids, and so I definitely think that the starting point is we've got to begin to track who are who is it that is struggling, who's not coming, who's repeating these behaviors, who's uh apathetic in class. And and one of the things, Courtney, that I've do a lot with schools right now is I I say to teachers, and I'm trying to help schools work through these issues, but what we're gonna get down to is it's not that the kids don't care, they really do care. It manifests this way because there are deep seated issues. But I think sometimes I've worked with some uh educators who are like, Well, the kids just flat don't care. I don't know that that's true. I know it it looks that way, but I I say this adult behavior precedes student outcomes. That's a quote from this book that's sitting over my left shoulder, the schools our students deserve. Uh it's my book on school culture. It is the basis concept of that book. Schools have to understand that adult behavior precedes student outcomes. In other words, if I don't like something about the way a child is behaving or the outcomes they're producing, I have to change something in what I'm doing to try and change the outcome for my kid. A kid isn't going to just naturally magically self-correct, you know? It's got to take the adults to do something first. It's like cause and effect. And again, educators, what I'm not saying, principals and leaders and teachers listening, I'm not saying it's your fault. If the kids are behaving this way, we're not saying it's your fault. This is like goodwill hunting. Remember when Robin Williams has Matt Damon in the office and he's like, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. That's what I need everybody to hear.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

That's a good moment.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

And these behaviors that kids are manifesting, it's not your fault, educators. It's not our fault. However, if we don't do something different than what we're doing, we can't expect a different outcome for those kids, and we end up in this doom loop. The kids are not well, so we start hating our jobs because it's so darn hard and the kids don't care. And well, teaching's awful now. But it's a it's a doom loop or it's it's a rejuvenation cycle. If we can do something different and the kids start to feel better and act better, guess what that does for us? It makes us feel better and love our jobs again. So I tell staff when I work with them, we can either sit in this muck and continue to blame the kids or blame society, or we can start. And where's the simplest place to start? Is let's start identifying who is having what problems. Let's start to track it, let's start to get it down, let's get clear on who it is and what are the behaviors that these children are manifesting.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Phenomenal. Okay, so we have our list of students who are high needs and we've identified where this need is coming from. Next up is to do two things together. So, number one, we're gonna assign every high need student to a connected adult, and then we're gonna create some kind of simple check-in system. So, what does it look like in practice to assign a kid to a connected adult?

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Well, I can tell you one that we used, and this one is one that we used, and and you will know this metaphor well because I think you did it too, and we might have done it at the same time. But there's the old parable of the child walking on a beach with thousands of starfish that had washed up on the on the beach, and the idea that this kid is picking up one starfish at a time and throwing them back into the ocean, and a man walks by this child just throwing the starfish back into the water, and the man says, There's so many, you can't save them all. Why are you doing that? It doesn't, you're this is a meaningless activity, you're not gonna save them all. And the child says to this person, yeah, but it matters to that one that I was able to throw back in. And so I think this is what it looks like in practices every educator on your campus has to say, Who's my starfish? We all have got to grab these little starfish, and you can't grab them all, but let's say you have a staff of 60, 60 times four, that's 240 kids. What we did was we connected every adult to every struggling child. And it didn't mean that that teacher necessarily had that kid sitting in their classroom all day or every day, even. It was just saying, this is one of my baby starfish. I'm gonna make sure that I am the one who helps throw them back into the ocean. We're not gonna leave them sitting here stranded on the beach. And if you'll divide and conquer that way, but it's gotta take everybody court. Sometimes I've worked with teachers, and I know I'm the one that always calls out the uncomfortable things, but I've worked with teachers who are like, it's not my job to make kids do things. Yeah, you know what I'm gonna say? Hell yeah, it is your job. What if we are going to reset behavior expectations? The only way to correct student behavior is to begin with connections. It is and always has been connection before correction. So this episode, we're gonna talk about some strategies to correct. However, if you don't connect with our most struggling kids, the correction won't matter. Like kids who don't come to school, Court. If I'm a kid who's chronically absent, you think sending letters and taking me to court, and you know what else? By now, nearly all 50 states have laxed all their laws for attendance requirements. So I work with principals across the country, they're like, Dr. Acosta, we can't even take them to court because the courts don't do anything about it. So you're not going to beat them back into school. We're not gonna be able to beat them back into school. We're going to have to connect them back into school. So again, what does it look like to create these connected adults? It's everybody. It's gonna take everyone. A security security guard, the SRO, if they're willing, the front office people, the teacher, everybody's gonna have to say who's a starfish that I can grab. Give me two or three starfish. If everybody grabs two or three starfish to connect to, then we got a fighting shot to get all of our kids reconnected. But I just can't tell you enough that the research and my experience tells us it has to start with a connection before you can get to the correction.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah. And I think too, principles, um, it's gonna be important. If you're asking teachers or staff members to monitor progress, notice patterns, follow up consistently, then you're also gonna need to make sure that you provide these team members with those resources. Like, don't make this connected adult have to track down how they get that data and how they get that information to support the student. You really have to make it really easy on them. So, whatever that looks like for you and your team, but that is a real big philosophical shift if it's not a space that your campus is already in. And I think that takes a lot of pre-work to say this is this is who we are becoming as a campus is someone that is gonna go down this road of focusing on the connection with students that need it the most. And then we talked about um creating check-in systems. So using mentoring, using an advisory period. A lot of a lot of schools and campuses use advisory. How are you using it? What does that look like in practice? Check-in checkouts could be really simple.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

And can I say this right here again? PLC is a very powerful structure, teachers collaborating regularly. And I know as part of the PLC process, we expect teachers to look at student data. I think principals understanding if you've got a group of staff members sitting together, let's say, for example, an hour a week, then why not use some of that time that's already protected while they're sitting together to say we should be checking on kids, pulling up kids, pulling in kids? Why like it doesn't have to always be bubble data? We're when we think about data as I go, well, what's the latest CFA data? Sometimes that doesn't matter if the kids common formative assessments. Common formative assessment, excuse me, good catch. So look at your common formative data, look at your summative data. Where's the data? How about the data of who are the kids that are struggling most behaviorally? And who's their mentor and what are we doing about it? Let's take the time right here to call the parent. Let's take the time to pull the kid in as a team and make sure they have the time and the space. And maybe you teach them a protocol, maybe get them a protocol, get them training. How can they do this stuff? So I just want to make sure I highlight that PLC is not a new idea. And a lot of schools have the time for PLC, but what we do in that time oftentimes is way too rigid and way too focused on students passing academic tests. When what I'm hearing from our principal friends, and I know this when I go into schools, if we don't get our behaviors corrected in students, if we don't reconnect to kids, if we don't get them feeling good at school again, what difference does the academic data make? It's all poopy. If kids don't feel good and won't perform, what good is it looking at a common formative assessment? None of the kids even took it because half of them were absent. You see what I'm saying? So I would urge principals and teacher leaders and folks thinking about next school year, you already have time built into your days. Are you using it for these behavior resets? Because gosh, if you're not, I would say, man, start there. Connection before correction. If the kids aren't connected, then academics aren't going to work either.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah. So I will add the next two pieces, which are clarifying the expectations that need to be retaught and then teach those expectations explicitly. So you can't just say you're doing it wrong. Like we need to have a conversation before school starts about what these actual expectations are. Name them, write them, put them on a piece of paper. They go on to a discipline matrix, whatever it is, but it needs to be named explicitly and then taught to students, modeled, practiced, revisit it, reinforce it consistently.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

So I would tell you, as a high school principal, my assistant principals, myself, the custodial staff, we were a large 6A high school, 3,000 kids. We only had two lunch blocks, which meant we had about a thousand kids at a lunch at a time. And if the children left the tables with trash, the custodians, the AP, whoever saw it, would send the kids back to bust their table. These are grown kids. And at the beginning, scoffs. And what we did was through uh announcements, I would say it, through classes, teachers would say it. We literally specifically taught them we don't leave trash here at Westwood, not in classrooms, not on tables. We expect that you are going to put your trash in a trash can. Now, you know what happened? My student advisory council told me, Dr. Acosta, there's not enough trash cans on the campus. Students struggle to find trash cans. No problem. I love it. I went and spent, I don't know, like it was like three grand, and we bought like 60 trash cans, maybe more. It was like, I don't know, 300 trash cans. Those big, you know, ugly gray ones. And we put them everywhere. And you know what happened? The kids started throwing their trash away. So it's that it's that idea of like, you got to connect with your kids, teach them the responsibility. At this school, you are not leaving trash. And then listen to them because if there's struggles, you ask the question, why are we struggling with this? It's non-negotiable. I'm not lowering the behavioral bar. We are going to throw trash away. I don't care if I have to stop Westwood High School, which was a top 1% Newsweek school. I'll shut the whole school down and we're going to practice throwing trash away. So I think it's whether you're talking about elementary kids or you're talking about a large 6A high school, it is direct teaching the students what it is that you expect inside of your building. And listen, let's say this not all kids come from homes where those expectations are aligned. That doesn't mean you can't hold those expectations in your building. And leaders, I am urging you, hold the expectations in your building that you think are beneficial for the children to take into society. Because I argue this deeply and passionately is that why we need to reset behavior expectations? Because if we don't in schools start to teach kids how to behave in a way that's positive for society, help us all because we see what's happening in the world. And I know I work with a lot of educators who say that's not my job. I would argue at this point in time in education, it is 100% our job. We are raising kids, whether we like it or not. Part of that is teaching the behavioral expectations.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

So and you can't get to the academics but through the behavior first. That's it. It has it has to be done.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

When I when I get hired in schools and people say, Dr. Costa, our kids are out of control, help us. The first thing I ask is, How much time do you spend a day teaching kids how to behave? Direct teaching. That's at the teacher classroom level. Do your teachers teach kids how to behave in school? Because the honest realities are, and I don't have all the time that I want would want to say it here, but the studies are very clear. From the year 2023 on, the studies have proven that children are coming into the school system with far fewer skills needed to be in school. How to share, how to wait your turn, how to sit quietly and patiently, how to be a little bit um compliant when compliance is needed. All those skills are falling away from human society, at least American society. And so what I tell school leaders and teachers is the kids aren't coming with some of the basic pre-wired things that we all used to come in with. They're just not. So you have two choices. Either we teach it to them so that we can get back to some of the fundamental academic pieces, or we sit around and complain that they don't have it and everybody's miserable. Literally, those are your two choices. So I love this is yeah, connection before correction. And then Courtney said the next piece is you have to teach directly what you're expecting in the behaviors. And I'm talking about down to the level of pick up your trash. How do you turn and talk to a neighbor? How do you play safely on the playground? How do you get turned off your technology when it's time to turn off your technology and have conversations with your friends? I'm talking about if if I were if I were a leader right now in a building core, I would be sitting down this summer with my leadership team and I would be going through and making a list of the behaviors that we desire in our students.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

What are the specific behaviors we desire in our students? And then let's figure out how are we going to direct teaching. I think it should be part of the curriculum. A principal can take that bull by the horns. And say, look, in this school, we teach behavior.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yep. Let's talk about defining adult supervision responsibilities. And I know it goes way beyond the cafeteria duty, but such a great example of I expect that the adults will make the kids turn around and go back and clean their space if it's not held to the expectation that we have in place. So making sure making sure that the staff know where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to monitor, how they're expected to interact with kids during transitions, arrival, dismissal, all those pieces, lunch, unstructured time, all those, you also have to set the expectations for your staff before you start getting frustrated about they're not helping, they're not doing what I expect them to do. Well, did you define it for them? Have you had those conversations? Because just like the kids, like you have you have to define what you are expecting, write it out. Yeah, write it out. Belongs on a piece of paper.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Leaders, you've got to teach the staff what they need to do to teach the kids, and then we hold everybody accountable in large spaces, hallways, cafeterias, playgrounds, big spaces at schools. When you're talking about big spaces, when kids are unsupervised, stuff goes wrong. When kids are supervised, stuff goes wrong far less. In other words, it's simple. The more you're around the kids, the less they screw up.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

And to a lesser degree.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

To a lesser degree. Because you're right on top of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

This one I love. I remember grabbing this from you and bringing it over to my campus, but this idea of creating common behavior response protocols. Um, so ensuring that our adults respond to common behaviors in consistent ways so that kids don't get different rules depending on which teacher or adult or hallway they're in, or classroom, or an administrator they're talking to, whatever it is, or the time of day, like it's consistent. And so I remember you had built out this discipline matrix that your campus was using. And I was like, why do we not have a discipline matrix where this behavior occurs and then this is the response and it happens again, this is the next response, and it happened. Like, I don't know why it took me as long as it did to come out with a discipline matrix. But anyway, so yeah, creating a common behavior response protocols.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Well, I would tell you there's two parts to it. So there is the uh the behavior response protocol starts with who owns what behavior. So if I want you to just kind of in your mind's eye, we're talking about three large columns. And and this was something taught to me, you know, through the high reliability schools process by Dr. Phil Warwick. But through through three columns in your mind's left column. What behaviors do classroom teachers own in the classroom? Classic classroom management. Harry Wong, first days of school, capturing kids' hearts, capturing kids' hearts, Bob Marzano, classroom management that works, all of that. So left column, what behaviors belong to teachers? Some teachers want an administrator to intervene when the kid is tapping their pencil. Other teachers never ask for help when they should. You're like, hey, this kid has been punching other kids in the back of your room and everything in between. So there are these common definitions of these are the types of behaviors that you must own as a teacher in your classroom. It's called classroom management. And that is spelled out and clear, all right? Middle column in your mind's eye is persistent and then administrative support behaviors. So these are behaviors. Look, I have asked him and repeatedly and met with parents and done these things, and he continues to tap the pencil. This is not about a nervous tick. This is about the kid is intentionally trying to disrupt class. Administrator, I need your partnership because I've I've had a parent meeting, I've done the parent phone call, I've had the kids stay after school for detention. It's not working. This is bigger than just the pencil tap. This is a persistent behavior issue. So it's those types of things that would rise to the level of referral after uh uh parent involvement and and after like so a repeated issue, and you get the administrator involved, right? Then the third column all the way to the right are what are the behaviors that are immediate administrative referral and removal? You know, students with drugs or alcohol, fighting, um, you know, those type threats, those types of things. So it just the first part of this behavior work is understanding who owns what behavior, what belongs in the classroom, what belongs in the shared space, and then what goes immediately to the administration. Now, what I learned is this, Court, when you have that clarity of who owns what behavior, teachers don't say, my administrators don't support me. Because everybody knows, no, no, no, I'm not, I will support you, but these are the places we support you. Those are yours to own, these are ours to own. Here's where we collaborate and work together. It just clarifies the whole, well, who's supposed to handle this? Okay, there's number one. Now, on the backside is the response of what are the consequences? So when these types of behaviors rise to an administrative level, what is a common response that we will have administratively so that one kid's not getting pounded for the one thing and then the other kid's not? So I think it's it's two ends of it. It is who owns what behavior, and then what are the responses, discipline-wise, when the behaviors manifest. So I would urge all leaders, if you don't have something like that, um, you know, get that in place and uh we we will send that out to those of you who subscribe to our newsletter at www.theedleadershippair.com. I'll send a sample matrix to anybody who will subscribe. Um we'll put that out over the next couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Awesome. All right. The next couple that we're the next few that we're gonna talk about have to do with the idea of restorative discipline, which I know in some circles has gotten a little bit of a bad rap because people are thinking that there it means there are no consequences, which is not at all the case. There are absolutely are consequences, but you are shifting from consequence-only discipline to repair and reintegration. Like ultimately, we want kids in classrooms learning productively. Correct. And it does not mean there are no consequences, but it means there are elements of repair and we want the kid back in the classroom. This is another really big cultural shift to make with your faculty that requires a lot of conversation and a lot of like breaking apart some paradigms that may be in place if you haven't gone down this road before, or if your campus went down this road and it was not done very well, it can absolutely put a bad taste in people's mouths. And so um, you may need to be super careful about how you bring this one about. I know you've had some experience with this. And I worked with this in the district I was in and had a lot of pushback in some areas. Um, but I don't know if you want to share something. No, I really do.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

And again, I'm gonna give everybody a resource that you can go get your hands on right now. If you pick up the book, The Schools Our Students Deserve, and you turn to chapter five, I write about this concept that we came across known as the goldfish and the shark. So here's the idea with restorative type discipline practices. Your description, Courtney, was spot on, which is it is a it is a shift from consequence only discipline to a consequence plus repair and reintegration. So, what was key is the consequences don't disappear. And so I want everybody to hear that who is like restorative of adverse. I was one of those, I'll admit it, I was so anti-restorative practice because what I didn't want was for kids to screw up and for us to give them a hug and a lollipop and say it's okay, because then you're reinforcing the bad behavior. Right. And I'm just, you know, you and I raised our kids that way too. No, no, you don't reinforce the bad behavior. I love this. You taught me this as a young parent when we were young parents together. You said we have to make it less comfortable to do the wrong thing than to do the right thing, right? It has to be less comfortable to do the wrong thing than to do the right thing. And if I'm just gonna give you a hug and a lollipop, well, hell, that's damn comfortable. If I get thrown out of class and I don't have to learn, that's darn comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

So might have been what I was going for because I didn't want to take that quiz. That's usually what's causing it.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

That's right. So I love this a restorative approach. And I came across this, it's really more of a restored additional approach. Restore additional. You're blending those traditional behavioral responses, but you're adding in a restoration. How do we repair and reinstate the kid during the traditional response? So again, in the schools our students deserve, chapter five, the shark and the goldfish, here's what that means. It means all negative behavior in school manifests like a shark fin above the water. That's what negative student behavior is at school. It's it's dangerous, it's scary, it's disruptive. So here's the bad behavior. It's a it's a shark fin above the water. However, 100% of the time, negative student behaviors are being manifested by a baby goldfish under the surface. So it looks nasty, negative, scary, dangerous above the surface, but underneath it is a little baby goldfish who's hurting, who's missing something, who's got a gap, trauma in their life, something's off with them. The idea of this restore additional is you consequence the shark fin. And I'm a big believer in this court. This is how it worked in my schools. We are not going to allow shark fins swimming unchecked in our pool. That's bad for everyone. So we're going to check the shark. We're going to get that shark under control. However, when we pull the shark into our little mini tank for re for for correction, now we're going to get restorative. We're going to figure out what is causing this. Why is this happening? What's at the root of this? Because if you'll feed the baby fish, then the shark fin goes away. Now, we learned this back in the days of being a principal. We used to pull the shark out of the water, put it in a in a tank called ISS or out of school suspension, right? Hey shark, you're being bad. Come over in this tank. All the shark did was sit and copy words out of the dictionary or do worksheets. The shark got more angry sitting in in this other little tank. And after three days by law, what do we have to do with the shark in this little tank? We got to go put them back in the in the big water. And now you got a pissed-off shark that's returned to that same teacher who wrote them up in the first place. So you you're just in this doom loop of kids act bad. We remove them for a second, we put them right back in, they act bad again. So the idea of restore additional is when you pull them out and put them in the small tank, whatever that is, feed the baby fish under the water, get underwater, do your work, get your counselors involved, get your social workers involved, get the parents involved. We got to figure out what's at the root cause of this here. And then when we put them back in the water, their shark fin is gone. Um, I'll tell a quick, quick story. I remember at Westwood we had this kid who was who moved into our school, was new to us. We didn't know her well. And she was just in a fight and then in trouble and was failing and was already deficient in credits. So we put her in our little uh um recovery center that we had built, and we gave her an evaluation. And the social worker came to me and said, Hey, you know what I think is happening? I don't think she can see. She needs glasses, I don't think she can see. So she's struggling with class, and then that pisses like then she's acting badly. So through a community resource, we got her a free optometrist appointment. They hooked her up with corrective lenses, contacts. She came back to school, and court, I'll tell you, that little girl never got in trouble again. So I know it's a small example, but you talk about feed the fish, and it'll get rid of the shark fin. And I think just that's that's the philosophy that can take on a thousand, that can take on a thousand structures. And we could talk about that a hundred different ways. But in the book, the schools our students deserve, that's what I write about in chapter five is how do we build structures to address the shark fin and then feed the fish so that the shark doesn't continue to show up?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah, and I I think there's a part of that too that is when they are returning back into the classroom, what is the plan? You can't just shoot them back in the classroom and expect everything to be kumbaya a-okay because you had this moment of restoration with them in your little mini tank. But like, what is the plan moving forward? What's the communication that needs to happen with the teacher or with another student or whatever that is? But creating a process for reflection, for repair, for some adult communication and so that they can have a successful return back into the classroom. I just would add that piece of it. But that's a beautiful story.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Yeah, and the teachers need to be involved in that restoration because sometimes a teacher doesn't see what all we did. So we had had all these meetings and all these doctors' appointments, and a teacher, if we weren't good about it, a teacher thinks, What happened to this kid? What did you do to the kid? Well, when we got into this and we got really good at it, the teachers were part of it. And I'll tell you, I remember with this particular kid, one of the teachers on her caseload started crying because the teacher, and it might choke me up a little bit, the teacher said, Now I feel like a big fat jerk because all this time I'm hammering this kid and they're sitting in the back of the room and they just flat couldn't see.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

And so I think for staff members, making sure, to your point, not only a reintegration plan, but as you're going through these restoration pieces, there has to be communication back and forth with teachers as to what you're finding. Uh, you know, countless stories. Kids, families are now homeless overnight. And yeah, why are they having trouble at school? Well, they don't live in a house anymore. Um, you know, grandma died, and grandma had been the kid that the the person really raising the kids. I mean, we we know these stories. As you do this shark and goldfish, the idea is yes, consequence the shark. You cannot let student behavior run wild. Make it less comfortable to do the wrong thing than the right thing. But while you are in these consequence structures, now you get under the water and you start feeding the fish. Figure out what is wrong. And as you find that out, you you gotta loop in the teacher base as well. I keep going back to PLC. How powerful is that type of information being given to the PLC? So when they are talking about what do we do for kids that are struggling, the administration is feeding them all of these restorative um discoveries about their struggling kids. All right, guys, we just found out this little girl can't see. Here you go, team. How are you going to readjust the what you're doing for her in the next unit now that you know she can't see? So again, I keep coming back to PLC. PLC is a great opportunity where teachers are already trying to work together. And I think sometimes we just lose the focus on it should be data. And we think about data as kids passing tests and grades. And I'm like, how about let's talk about behavior in these spaces so teachers can work together to solve student behavior in partnership with their administration.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah, and I also want to recognize that it can be tough for schools and districts that do not have the resources needed because of a lack of federal or state funding, that they don't have counseling staff, they don't have truancy officers, they don't have people that can go have some of these communications. And unfortunately, yeah, so that falls on the administrator, that falls on the teachers, that falls on the people that are there. And it's just one of the plights of this, of this job right now that we all kind of have to accept that no, there's never enough counseling, there's never enough resources, there's never enough funding, and it sucks. But like at some point you got to get over it and do the best you can with what you have, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Remember, I said earlier, I'm gonna say it again. In schools right now, we have two choices when it comes to behavior. We can either continue to complain about it, and everybody's miserable, the kids are unsuccessful, we feel awful, people are leaving the profession in droves. That's option one. Or option two is we say, there's no one else coming. There is no cavalry coming to save us. We are the cavalry.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

That's us.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

We got to fix it. Now, you say something all season long. You said, leaders, when you're putting something on your staff, what are you taking off? So I would say this loudly, as loud as my microphone will let me. I'm gonna say this in the megaphone. If we don't fix, if we don't fix the behaviors, the academics don't matter. So what good is it chasing all the curriculum and all the things? Fix the behavior and the academics will return.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Well done.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

So I yeah, I think that's that's gotta be a really critical piece.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Yeah. One thing on on our list um that we have is monitor adult consistency. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about how what does that look like in practice to watch for whether the adults are actually teaching, reinforcing and responding to the expectations in the aligned ways that you want them to. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah, I'm gonna use a word for anybody who is listening to us, who is one of our high reliability school clients. I'm just gonna start there. If you know what high reliability school is, what you know is that Dr. Marzano and Dr. Wart created it because it is a measurement process. Being highly reliable means you're measuring what you're working on. Okay. So if you're an HRS leader, these are lagging indicators. What do you expect to happen? Now, for those of you who are not HRS and say, what is he talking about? Either you can go pick up our books with HRS, it's a great leadership structure, or I'll just give you the nutshell here. With any initiative court, leaders are really, really called to define success criteria. Because, you know, one of the traps in schools is we do a bunch of work, we work, work, work, work, work, work, work, and then it doesn't work, and we just throw it out and say, Well, crap, that didn't work. Let's grab other stuff and work, work, work, work, work. Like we try and solve school in just sheer effort. But what Dr. Marzano has taught us is this idea of whatever you're working on, can you please take one second and write down your success criteria? This is also known as a lagging indicator. And here's how you define a success criteria. It's simple. You ask yourself, what results am I expecting if this work is working? Full stop. What results do I expect if this work is working? So let's apply that here. You ask me the question, how do you monitor for adult consistency when it comes to behaviors? So you answer the question: What results as the school leader am I expecting if my adults are doing what they're supposed to be doing? What results am I expecting in student behavior? I'll give you one. I'd expect less hallway incidents if teachers were in the hallway. That's a success criteria. It back to my story at Westwood. We expected less trash on the tables and in the hallways if our teaching kids to throw their trash away was working. So, Court, it's that simple. And we run so fast in the doing, we forget to take a second to say, like, what is the doing supposed to do? And leaders listening, I don't care if you're HRS leaders or not, I would urge you this is an action step that can change your entire leadership. For every big initiative you have, can you please stop and answer the question, what results am I expecting if this initiative is working? If our adults don't do it, it's not going to trickle to the kids. And as a leader, you won't see it if you don't set these success criterion. What results are you expecting? And then look for it.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

That is a great answer to that question. Thank you. So the last one that I think is really important is that we need to make sure that we are communicating with families before the trust breaks down. So when we start to see patterns that a student is exhibiting, when we um start to have concerns, when we're when we're building out a plan, we need to make sure that we are including our families before it's before we get to the end of everything, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Yeah. And I mentioned this to you a little bit earlier. In our in our behavior response matrix at the classroom level, if a teacher was asking to move from the far left teacher owns it to admin, I need you in on it now, it was a non-negotiable part of our process. Spelled out in print as part of our handbook. It was built in collaboration with my teacher leadership team. It was an expectation. When something goes wrong with a child, you have to immediately, as a teacher, you got to partner with the parents. And last week, you and I talked about how reconnecting to our parents and giving teachers not only the time but the expectation to connect to all parents. This is where you reap the benefits of that fruit. Because now I'm starting to work with Lil Mario in class, and you know, he's starting to act like a real problem on a persistent basis. I've got to tap that parent in from the beginning. And administrators, I would urge you make that part of the process. Partnering with parents has to be like step one of the response process. We got to get our parents in. And it used to drive me kind of crazy when teachers would say, like, well, I sent the mom an email. Have you reached out to the parent? I sent an email. I left a message. That's not what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

We're talking about we really got to get this parent contacted. And that's why I keep saying, admin, we have to build time and space and expectations for teachers to do that. So maybe less bubble data. Maybe I care less about the stupid bubble data. And maybe I care a little bit more about letting my teachers actually connect with their parents and their kids. I know I'm I know I'm being harsh, but I've just caught I traveled the country and our admin are looking so far down the line. Are our kids passing tests? Guys, the kids are failing so much earlier than the test. Yeah. So much more is wrong than the test. We're so far from the test.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

There should have been like five to ten interventions ahead of that.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

That's right. Like this, we're expecting that the kid can uh run uh an Olympic track meet when we got kids that can barely stand up and walk. So you're there measuring how well they can run an Olympic track meet. Hell, they're nowhere close to that. So I am not saying we shouldn't look at our data, but I think we have lost ourselves when we're looking at all this performance data. Who the hell cares? Our kids are barely showing up to school and barely surviving. Let's get back to that level and give our teachers that time and that expectation. Let's get our behaviors fixed. And then we can build ourselves back into this uh academic focus that that we want to talk about. So a big part of this whole story and the whole episode is correcting and restoring our behavior in schools is not something to wish for. It's not something to hope for. We have to rebuild the darn thing. We got to get back to the beginning. And as principals, how do we rebuild the expectations on our campus? How do we connect every kid to an adult? How do we teach the expectations? How do we hold ourselves and the kids accountable to the expectations? How do we monitor it and respond when it's not going well? But what we can't do is say, well, this sucks. Sure, that's then that's your option is to sit and feel bad and everybody feels bad and nothing's going well. Or we got to get back to the to the things we knew from the beginning and rebuild it, maybe from scratch. Great teachers don't have a whole lot of student misbehavior. Why is that? Like it's a one-to-one correlation.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

So great schools don't have as many discipline problems. Doesn't mean they don't pop up, but they know how to head it off. They have the right connections, they have the right preventative measures. And that's universal. Yeah. Our four children, when you ask them which teachers did you like, they're the ones that they connected with. Which teachers did you not like as much? They're the ones that didn't seem to care about me. So it made it really hard to care about them or their subject or their class. And to every child that we have that has lived in our home have said the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

And we've interviewed them. We interviewed them in those.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Our poor kids live with us too. So we're always hitting them up.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Oh, I feel so bad.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

What are students thinking right now? Tell me what students are thinking right now.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Represent all students across the United States of America.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

So they they get a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

God. Good episode, heavy episode. And you know, to the principals, to the principals who submitted over the last couple of weeks, we appreciate your time because this is the time of year when you're like, and you want something from me. I've got to close the year with sign out sheets and all the checklists and finish the master schedule. And I still have three vacancies. And these two knuckleheads are asking me for what am I thinking right now? I'm surprised we didn't get a couple of middle fingers into us. But lovely, lovely principals that that responded. So thank you all for sharing that. This has been really meaningful because we've been able to talk through what it is that's really on your mind. So thank you guys for sharing that. Also, big reminder on June 30th of 2026 at 3 p.m. Central Standard Time, we'll be hosting a live streamed principal panel. So we'd love for you to join us live. We'll be asking for people to send in questions and just be an active part of that conversation.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

That is really scary, but also super exciting.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Thank you for trusting us with your time. Thank you for letting us be part of your drive or your walk or your planning period, your reflection, and your leadership conversations. And most of all, thank you for doing the work that schools need right now. I'm Mario.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

And I'm Courtney. And this is the Ed Leadership Pair Podcast. Have a great summer.