TRANSCRIPT

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports with Rob Horner September 2016 Mary Schuh: Welcome to SWIFT Unscripted. SWIFT podcasts give you the opportunity to hear the inside story and be part of the conversation about All Means All with leaders in the field of inclusive education and schoolwide transformation. Here we are at the SWIFT headquarters recording a live podcast on the topic of Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports. Our guest today is Dr. Rob Horner. Rob is a professor of special education at the University of Oregon. He’s the Director of the Educational Community Supports Research Unit within the College of Education focusing on developing and implementing practices that result in positive, durable scientifically validated change in the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families. He co-directs the OSEP, Office of Special Education Programming, Technical Assistance Center and Research Demonstration Center on PBIS—that’s Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports. Rob has a 25 year history helping schools develop systems for imbedding PBIS into their practices. He’s published over 150 professional papers, six textbooks. Some of us think of him as a father of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. His vita is 54 pages long. I don’t want to embarrass you. Welcome, Rob. Rob: Thank you. Mary: How did you get into this work? What motivated you? Rob: You know, that’s a question we all ask. And there is the temptation to try and make it sound rational and linear. I think these kinds of life changing events almost always happen partly from serendipity, partly from inclination, partly from things that come up. The two big things that I would come back to is 1) my father was a superintendent of schools, so I grew up inside a community of educators and the idea of the value and the importance of education was always there. The other thing is that the year that I was born, my grandmother had a major stroke, which paralyzed the left side of her body and impinged on her ability to communicate. And I grew up in a family where accommodation and modification was not perceived as unusual or exceptional. It was something that just the whole family did in terms of physical adjustments…in terms of the way that family dinners at Thanksgiving would be done. It was just: Who’s helping Grandma? Mary: Did your grandmother live with you?



Rob: She did not. She lived on a farm in rural Oregon, and she was very proud of that. Mary: So you actually grew up in Oregon? Rob: I grew up in Oregon. Yes. Mary: And you’re still there today? Rob: Yeah, I’m still there today. Went away to California and Washington and came back. So anyway, the other thing that was opportunities for me really were early on working with children who had emotional and behavior problems, and then children who had very, very significant disabilities. Mary: What was your work? Were you a teacher? Were you working at a summer camp? Rob: I did the summer camp piece, but that was different. I was a teaching parent in California. So if you think of Achievement Place out of Kansas…there was a variation of that in California. And so for a couple of years I was actually one of the teaching parents with kids who were adjudicated and had extraordinarily impressive problem behaviors, and we were actually quite successful. We organized systematic environments that gave clarity precision teaching support…nurturing opportunities for these kids early on. From there I actually worked as, I worked in actually a segregated school in California for kids with severe disabilities. And again, worked closely with families and worked there. That was actually the place where I learned more about inclusion, because part of my task was to help the kids that were in my class reintegrate into the regular Palo Alto School District. I both had great fun doing that and felt incredibly out of my league. It was one of those things where I had this one little girl who very self-injurious and was just very committed to her way of life and whatnot, and she was great fun to work with. But each day, at the end of the day, I would send her home into an environment that I knew was just a very difficult and dangerous for her and it just broke my heart, and I didn’t really know what to do. So I did the logical thing that you did in those days, which is I went back to graduate school, and have been basically…I went to graduate school at Washington State. I would work with rats and pigeons in the morning doing behavior analytic work and I worked with children with Autism in the afternoon being taught by them how it really worked. That was the foundation that led to the other opportunities for me. Mary: Wow, what a great story. I’m struck by how similar our own paths were to this work. I would describe the same thing around growing up in that type of family and earliest work in segregated environments and really challenging "what are we?", "what kind of outcomes are we producing in these situations?" and learning about inclusive education. Now here we are working with SWIFT!



Rob: There you go. Mary: Now the topic of this podcast is Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports and I’m wondering if you could give us a quick overview of the definition of PBIS. Rob: There’s two different definitions. One is what is Positive Behavior Support; the other is what is PBIS as an approach. Mary: Ok. Thank you. Rob: So think about Positive Behavior Support is really something that’s defined first and foremost by a commitment to lifestyle outcomes. It really grew out of a vision of using behavioral technology to produce substantive change, but there was a misapplication early on of thinking about using behavioral strategies simply to reduce behaviors we didn’t like. Right? Ted Carr, Bob Kagle, Glenn Dunlap, Mark Durand, and others — a lot of early TASH advocates — really recognized that if we were going to use the technology of instruction…if we’re going to use the principals of behavior well…we needed to shift beyond little measures of frequency of behavior and only focusing on what we didn’t want. We really needed to focus on how we used that technology to build capacity that was sustainable…that was durable…that didn’t focus on what happened during 15 minute observation periods, but happened all day long. The language that came out of that is to what extent do we deliver not intervention, but support? To what extent do we change not just behavior, but the actual quality of life of a person? The fascinating thing about doing that is as soon as you start talking about quality of life, you must pay attention to the preferences of the student and the family. Quality of life is not something that you define for someone else. One person likes racing bicycles through mud; another person likes playing in a nice, clean environment. Quality is something that we define for ourselves and the really fascinating thing by starting with quality of life, you start by basically making the science subjective to the values of the people. The second part, though, is saying it (PBIS) really is science. It’s not just what we want. It’s not a philosophy. It really is an approach. It’s approach to actually making a real change, so it’s really around the science of human behavior. One of the differences is there’s a lot of things that we would like to believe about human behavior that don’t turn out to be consistent with the science. So it is harsh in its commitment to empirical foundations. And then a third part that really has characterized PBS from a lot of other approaches is a commitment to the systems. Part of what we’ve learned is you make what you do subjective to the quality of life and the values of the people



you work with. How you do it is driven by the science of medical mental health and behavioral technology. But you pay attention not just to little, tiny isolated things, but also to the organizational systems, the funding, the policy, the teaming structures, the way in which you build ongoing accountability structures so that you actually put things in place that are systemic and likely to endure for long time periods. So one of our mantras is never put something in place that won’t last for a minimum of a decade. When you think about organizational systems in that way, you’re actually talking about putting things in place that build stability and vision for people. PBIS took that approach and said how do we use that knowledge to change the effectiveness of schools in the United States? In large part, we talk in SWIFT all the time about All Means All and how do we actually include people as a vision and as a organizational framework? It’s a great vision, but it’s a hard thing to do and in many ways drawing from Positive Behavior Support has been helpful to us. We want to use the values where we are not simply decreasing the likelihood of disruptive behavior. We are actually increasing academic achievement, goals, communication, social development, the development of relationships, the building of physical and emotional capacity so that children actually…it changes not just their immediate behavior, but the trajectory of their life. That sounds pedantic, but really you need to start at that level if you’re going to adopt the real vision. Mary: When you say "change the trajectory of their life," give us an example of that. Rob: If you change the ability of a young person to communicate, right?... Mary: Right. Rob: … you actually increase their ability to interact successfully with others. Suddenly, 1) they start learning from the children around them, and 2) the children around them start learning from them. That synergy changes dramatically. Mary: And I’d like to add 3): the educators in their lives begin to have higher expectations of those students and reputations begin to change. Wouldn’t you agree? Rob: I would. Mary: Yep, and then suddenly children who might have been considered eligible for separate education for most of their lives are now on a path to meaningful careers and college? Rob: You know, we build different visions that we’ve got some kids are going to go one direction, others are going to go another. Mary: Right. Right.



Rob: We’ve got to listen a lot and we’ve got to give as much power and authority and opportunity. Our job is to create "degrees of freedom" that they can spend as they deem. Mary: Alright. So you are a leader on the evaluation team for SWIFT Center? Rob: Yes. Mary: Now that we’re in the fourth year of this project, what are we learning from the work happening in our schools around the country? Rob: The basic purpose that I see for SWIFT — We have many different things that we talk about, but in its essence I see SWIFT as being a project providing proof of the concept that you can truly do inclusive education under typical conditions. If you look at what SWIFT started with, it went for what…we called them “Knowledge Development Schools,” but basically looking at who’s actually doing this. We learned definitely there are some excellent environments that kids with all types of disabilities and backgrounds are succeeding in. Unfortunately part of what we learned is most of them develop through strategies, mechanisms, and timelines that were non-replicable. They were all based on unique situations. Our real goal is to describe how normal districts, normal states, normal schools, normal families can actually bring together those core features that make schools effective learning environments for all children. And to show that in the 64 schools that are part of the SWIFT project this is possible, feasible, usable. And from that create a vision for scaling up and expanding that will be generalizable across the 110,000 schools throughout all of the United States. Mary: Do you think it’s possible? Rob: Oh, it’s definitely possible. In fact, it’s far more possible than you might believe. SWIFT is pretty complicated. Mary: Actually, I believe. I do believe, so. Rob: But we’re a long way away from having either the political will or the technical capacity to pull it off. Mary: Do you think the political will is growing with the growing evidence around the successful outcomes being achieved by equity-based, inclusive, education? Rob: Yes, I think there’s an increase in the political will, but we’re a long way away from having it reach a level of capacity to make this a generalized construct. I think, in all fairness, the obligation is on us. So remember I said SWIFT is a project to do proof of concept. We’ve got to demonstrate not only that it’s possible, but it is practical and doable. Mary: Mmhmm. Rob: People are not opposed to children with disabilities being successful. They just don’t believe that we can do it in a manner that’s cost effective and in a



manner that doesn’t draw from the resources required by other children. I think that that is an issue…a major issue…in terms of the field. We have operated too often in a zero sum game, and we have not as a nation actually invested well in education. We’ve invested a lot, but in education right now, the major problem we have is that we invest in things that are ineffective and that don’t work. If we used exactly the same resources in ways that were effective, productive, and efficient, I think we would see a much greater interest in doing more or doing things differently and including opportunities for kids from different backgrounds and kids with disabilities is going to be part of that. Mary: Right, in talking about cost effectiveness…and I know this is steering a little bit away from PBIS and we’ll get right back to that…but do you think that if there was greater understanding around the financial support for two separate systems sometimes…more than two separate systems…and when we merge those dollars it sort of knocks out that argument around cost effectivenes? You know, it’s fairly expensive to support two separate systems. Rob: We’re supporting more than two separate systems. Mary: Agreed. Rob: We’re supporting mental health. We’re supporting special ed. We do not have a unified structure. We’ve gone to a model of supporting separate systems in part because when we had unified structures in the past, the funding for kids who had greater needs wasn’t there. Families worried that the targeted resources for their son or daughter were really being syphoned off in other ways. We’ve got to be more strategic. We’ve got to use our data better. We’ve got to demonstrate with a little bit better sophistication how to operate an integrated system that has multiple objectives. Mary: Right and that also merges resources, which leads to a more effective cost approach…or could. Rob: It could. Well, it does a lot. But we’re arguing that the only way you’re going to do that is in part by recognizing that all teachers are special ed. teachers. Mary: Exactly. Rob: And all administrators are special ed. administrators. Tn fact, all students are special in their own ways. I think that that is not part of our tradition to date and it’s something that I think we have the obligation of demonstrating how to do that in a way that is both effective for children and kids, and is practical and successful for administrators and staff. Mary: PBIS is recognized as one (practice) of the SWIFT features within the domain of multi-tiered system of support. Can you talk a little bit about why PBIS



was selected as one of those model features…some of the evidence that was driving that decision to include PBIS as one of the prominent features of inclusive schools? Rob: Basically the place you start is recognizing that all kids in schools have goals not just related to math, reading, and writing, but also to developing the social/emotional competence to be successful adults. Recognizing that social behavior makes a difference is really the foundation for PBIS. If what you do as you say…when we’re looking at schools we expect kids to learn academic skills, social skills, and to be able to work with others to be part of that organizational structure…then you’ve got to back up and say well what are the critical features of a learning community that would make that happen? What PBIS offers is a framework for integrating the knowledge that we have about how to create effective learning environments—environments that both enhance academics and they encourage and develop the social/emotional skills that allow kids to be successful. Mary: Now that framework has a three-tiered approach to it? Can you talk a little about the difference between those tiers? Rob: The old way of doing business was we had regular education and then we had individualized things that we did for kids who were not successful. That turned out to be an expensive and challenging way to operate. So part of what we’ve learned is the multi-tiered system which is called RTI in academics, PBIS… Mary: Right. Right. Rob: And it’s being combined now under this notion of multi-tiered structure. Mary: And the other, under multi-tiered systems of support within the SWIFT framework is, of course, academic instruction. Rob: Yes, in both math and reading. Mary: Right. Right. Rob: So, in part, the great thing about that is it focuses first on prevention. The tier one, the initial level of support… Mary: And should I imagine a triangle? Rob: The triangle… Mary: As I’m listening to this conversation? Rob: Everybody starts by getting things that work. Part of what people miss in the multi-tiered systems is the emphasis on using things that are evidence-based. Mary: Right. Rob: So, evidence-based priority…prevention first…use things that’ll work for at least 80, 85% percent of the kids. But recognize…don’t be surprised that there are some students who need more assistance; plan for it. Actually build in structurally



that they’re gonna need…some kids who are going to need a little bit more support and there are going to be some students who need a whole lot of support. The students who need a whole lot of support need to have that support individualized based on assessments. But it needs to be embedded in an organizational framework that’s efficient and includes access to the primary and secondary supports. It’s not different, but rather embedded. And that framework is far more efficient and far more likely to work. The schools that we see that were early on…one school in Oregon that I’ve been working with for over 18 years and has been doing PBIS…they don’t even think of themselves as doing PBIS anymore. It’s just the way we do education. Mary: The culture of their school. Rob: All the kids know what the expectations are. I mean this is a middle school…528 kids…and they know the five school-wide expectations and… Mary: So example, what might those be? Rob: Be respectful. Be responsible. Hands and feet to self. Follow directions. Be kind. Different schools come up with different ones. One of the things that we learned is that when you move beyond a small number of models and you actually scale up, you have to accommodate cultural and community norms. So one of the things that we’ve learned from PBIS that will be an important part of SWIFT as we go forward is not to over stipulate. Define the core features, but let the path to the core features be driven by the context. Mary: The culture of the community of the school? Rob: You do it differently in elementary than middle. You do it differently in urban than in rural. The Native American communities of Western New Mexico have their own way of doing it. We talk about teaching basic principles of behavior. I did a presentation at one school and this guy came up afterwards and patted me on the back and said, “You know, white guy, this is a really nice idea but we’ve been doing this in our culture for 450 years,” and I said, “That’s great.” And so we actually had the elders of the community come in and teach using their language. We then had the teachers transform those big ideas into what it actually means. They were more about being honorable and being brave. But it turns out being honorable and being brave translate to very similar things of being respectful and responsible when you talk about what you’re doing in the cafeteria and what you do on the playground. Mary: So it’s going to look different in New Hampshire compared to Mississippi compared to Nevada compared to California, but the principles will be the same.



Rob: The expectations will be different, but there’ll be four things that are really similar if it’s PBIS. 1) the environment will be excruciatingly predictable. Everybody will know what the expectations are. It’ll be consistent across people, place, and time. Mary: Excruciatingly predictable? Rob: That’s right. Mary: That scares me a little bit. Rob: Well, the issue is we like to think about what would work for us. Mary: Right. Rob: If we’re really meaning All Means All, I want you to think about the children who come from traumatic backgrounds. Mary: Of course. Rob: Children who come from different languages. Children who actually have learned on the street not just, they haven’t learned what you want. They’ve actually learned the opposite of what you want. Those kids come into environments that privileged kids find easy to manage, and those environments are different and they’re harsh and they’re odd. The way that they are introduced to that is by being told what they are doing is wrong. That’s a lousy way to introduce kids to good social constructs. Excruciatingly predictable means you build it so that everybody knows and that everybody…even kids who have difficulty learning or come from very different environments…can gain access to it. Consistency across people, place, and time. When I was a teacher I was taught "here’s your classroom." In fact, my very first day of teaching the principal took me, opened the door, shook my hand…said, “Here’s your class. Here are your 19 kids. God bless you and good luck.” Mary: Uh, yes. Rob: That was my orientation. Mary: It was mine too. Rob: Okay and that’s a lousy way to run the circus. We need to have a sense that your classroom is an important place for you, but it’s not just part of a school. It’s part of a learning community. The big thing about PBIS is the whole school is perceived as the unit of intervention and support. You think about being part of that school and that’s very important if you’re a student with disabilities, because we don’t want you just in one place. We want you to be throughout the environment with other kids doing other things. So those are elements that we’ve learned. Mary: Now, you mentioned four. I heard Predictability... Rob: Consistency, Positive, and safe.



So consistent…being predictable; consistent across people, place, and time. Positive in the sense that children are acknowledged for doing what’s right at least four times as often as corrected for something wrong. And safe, both emotionally and physically, so that… safety is an interesting thing. It’s both a real…you know, are you safe? And it’s a perception. Do you feel safe? I want you to think about the fact that from our perspective as adults we look at problem behaviors and we see aggression, disruption, what not. From students’ perception, the single biggest thing in their mind is bullying and bullying has not historically been what adults see as a problem, because it’s not a problem for the adults. So we’ve actually got to make the environments feel safe if we want kids to have the physical and emotional foundation that’s going to make them open to learning. Mary: Thank you. Now, many of our schools connected to SWIFT are implementing PBIS…beginning to implement it, thinking about it, moving that forward, and always looking for examples. So, can you give a couple of examples of if I walked into a school that was a school who was fully implementing PBIS school wide, what might I see that’s different than in a school that’s not? Rob: Ok. We actually do that. So if you walk into a school, you should be able within five minutes to be able to define the behavioral expectations of the school. Whether you’re a parent… Mary: So those expectations…be responsible… Rob: Whatever they are. They’re on the ceiling, the wall, the floor, the back of the kids… Mary: The classroom. Rob: …the PA system…they’re everywhere. Mary: The website. Rob: You stop the students. You say, “You know what’s expected here?” And they can tell you, “Yeah. The three B’s, right. Be respectful. Be responsible. Be Safe." Or whatever. Whatever they, here’s what I want you to say. What does that actually mean right here where we are? What does that actually mean? They can not only tell you words, they can tell you what in translates into. You don’t teach mantras. You teach behavioral concepts. Mary: So any student in the room in their own words could explain to you… Rob: In the hallway. Mary: In the hallway. Rob: This is what it means to be respectful, responsible. You always do it in context: What does it mean here?



The second thing is you also would say, “You know, has anybody acknowledged you for doing things right?” And the kids will say, “Yeah.” How do you get acknowledged? Well some of them have little tokens, but the tokens are simply a way of really again helping those kids with greater needs. Typical kids don't really need the physical part, but they do need a high rate and they do need clarity. We do not as a country do a very good job of teaching our teachers basic principles of behavior support. As a result, we sort of expect children to behave well. We don’t actually build the context in which they get the support to behave well. Mary: So that would be maybe examples of what you’d see at a Tier 1 level? Rob: That’s Tier 1. Mary: How about Tier 2? Rob: Tier 2, the basic issues around behavior at Tier 2 are you want to increase structure so that the student has more prompts during the day, but remember, remember, remember. Second is they get more feedback, so the frequency of feedback goes up. The rate of positives goes way up and the precision of corrections improves. The other thing is if they need more help that means they’re engaging in problem behavior and you need to look at ways of minimizing the likelihood that problem behavior is actually rewarded. The Check In/Check Out program is an example of that. The very first thing a child does when they walk into school is they check in with a nurturing adult. The reason for doing that is to give them something to do right at the beginning that they succeed at so the day gets launched successfully. They have a way of approaching adults and when they approach adults they basically prompt the adult to do…to acknowledge them…to use their name…to say they’re happy they’re there. You build in a highly efficient easy way for the student to go through the day and get supported. One of the things that Check In/Check Out is designed to do is to teach children how to get what they need from adults and typical kids are incredibly sophisticated at doing that. Kids who are in behavioral trouble often times learn to avoid adult interactions. That basically is a dangerous pattern. It leads to a cycle of things not working, so we actually teach kids this is how you get attention and support from adults. We make it easy for the adults and then you build…instead of a coercive cycle, you build a constructive cycle. Many little things that build on themselves. The idea of Tier 2 is you do it in a way that is very, very, very efficient. Mary: I just…a memory popped into my head. I was visiting a Knowledge Development School and there was a little boy who was identified as having some pretty challenging behaviors. I think it was a Tier 2 support…he would get



to have lunch with the principal on a regular basis. I just remember watching that interaction between the principal and this little boy and how joy-filled he was by having been so successful that week that he had lunch with the principal. Not every student in the school was eligible for lunch with the principal and this was a kid who clearly had what could’ve been a negative reputation and you just watch that turn around by the connection. Rob: It’s a great story. My similar example would be, I love, there’s a student named Derek. Derek was in fifth grade and he was really having trouble, and he actually got Tier 3 supports. He got individualized support and the last half of his fifth grade year was the best academically and socially that he had ever had. The Tier 3 support always starts by assessing what the individual supports look like, what he needs. What are the behaviors? What are the context it does? What are the things that maintain his inappropriate behavior? Mary: Would that be a Functional Behavioral Assessment? Rob: It’s Functional Behavioral Assessment. What we’re able to do is to build a plan that gives him not just consequences, but actual training in how to become more successful. He had gone through five or six months in his fifth grade year of really doing well and he transitioned into now being in middle school, and middle school transition is a big deal. Part of what he did the very first day of his middle school, the very first day, he walked into the middle school, big school. He looked around and he saw the principal and he knew who she was because she had come to his elementary school, right. He walked up to her and he shook her hand. He said, “Hi, I’m Derek. What are the behavioral expectations here?” Mary: That is a great story. Rob: And the thing I want you to take away from that is both he was nervous and he really expected us to establish things that were going to work. Mary: Predictable, consistent. Rob: Positive and safe. Mary: Yep. Rob: Yep. So those are the things…the thing that we try and do within PBIS is not control behavior but empower. Mary: Ok. What does a Tier 3 intervention look like for Derek? Because I think that’s the spot on the triangle—the tip—that people have the most questions about. Rob: It’s interesting because Tier 3 is what we know the most about. Mary: So Tier 3 would be the Functional Behavior Assessment…



Rob: No, but don’t just do that, but think about this. You start…Tier 3 starts by saying this is a student who has enough needs that we need to individualize the support. So Functional Behavior Assessment is going to say what are the behaviors? What’s the context? Why does it keep happening? But it also is going to look at the setting events or motivating operation. So that’s going to back up and look at what’s happening at home. What are the physiological variables the student is dealing with? What are the larger context? Think about the work around Wraparound Supports. The idea that we’ve got to stop this narrow idea that we’re going to build this skill and reward good and punish bad. It really is a much larger sett of variables. Changing those…including family supports, community supports…building the context where the child actually is actively succeeding not just not failing. The other parts that we’re learning is some children come with really legitimate mental illnesses where they need medical support combined with instructional and behavior supports. In part you pull together the different pieces, not with a 19-person, multi-tiered cosmic group of adults. You actually do it systematically and trajectory based on the unique needs of that child and his or her family in context. Something that’s different than reading or math. A student who does reading and math does them typically similarly in one place or another place. Behavior is not inside people. It’s the interaction of people experience in context. Behavior support is not the altering of a student. It’s the design of environment that allows a child to be successful. The question when you look at individualized behavior support is what are the critical features of an environment where she will be successful? When you ask it that way, you ask it in a slightly larger way and it changes both how you do the intervention and how you evaluate if you’re being successful. Mary: It changes how you think about the student, as well. I really love that approach and taking the responsibility away from the student and putting it on the environment, the context, the supports that exist. That’s a really nice way to look at it. There’s an aspect in PBIS or in our schools and the field of mental health—Trauma Informed Care—that seems to be on the horizon and changing the way that we think about students who have labels of challenging behavior. Could you talk a little about how Trauma Informed Care fits into the PBIS framework? Rob: Absolutely. PBIS recognizes that it’s not just what happens at the moment. It’s the learning history that a child brings. Behavior is a function of physiology, learning history, and social context. We focus a lot on the learning history part and that’s the part that we can actually manipulate. Physiology…everybody brings their own physiology which makes them more accessible to different



things in the environment. But the social context actually changes things. Children who have been through very significant traumas…through things that children should not be having to deal with…are often times hyper-sensitive to things that we think of as being trivial or easily to get around. Just as a child with Autism may experience the buzz of a fluorescent light in a different way than other kids, a student who has seen adults engage in very significant violence responds very differently to even modest reprimand from an adult. Part of that is their learning history; part of it is the narrative that they…the self-instructions that they’re giving. Part of what we’ve learned within trauma informed backgrounds, if you look at the research that’s going on right now, there are a small number of strategies that are actually being demonstrated to be successful. I would argue that this is an area of the field that we have a lot yet to learn about. But at a minimum, 1) if you’re going to create a learning environment that is helpful to kids who come from significant trauma, create an environment that is very clear, very predictable, very consistent, very positive, very safe. Mary: And I’m sure that safety aspect is gonna be a priority. Rob: Second is you actually give the student some tools…and it depends on what her or his background is…but some self-instructional tools. Ways of defining the environment around them…ways of organizing social behavior. Children often times don’t have words for complicated social interaction patterns and so they’re just experiencing them without the linguistic context that gives it meaning and structure and understandability. Giving some of that language so that it fits both their experience and helps them to say this is what you do under these situations; this is what you do under these situations. Actually teaching that can be incredibly helpful. The other thing is recognizing that in a trauma informed background, you don’t expect to have an epiphany where suddenly alright everything’s fine. It takes time to build competence, capacity, and help. Recognizing that, in part, when a student experiences something that places them in a very anxious, physiologically aroused state, that’s not a learning state. Moving back to a state of comfort and control is very important. One good example: even kindergarten and first grade children who come from trauma backgrounds…when you look at their physiology you can either, there’s several different ways in which it gets measured. All kids, when they come into school at the beginning of the day, they’re really excited, right. Their cortisol levels are fairly high. Typical kids, after about half an hour, their cortisol level drops down. Kids from trauma based backgrounds, their cortisol, their anxiety



level, their level of tension remains high all day long. That is not a learning environment. Mary: So they’ve actually done studies on cortisol levels of these kids? Rob: Yes, little mouth swabs. It’s odd research, but it is not enough that we could generalize too much, but it’s enough where we’ve got to be a lot more sensitive. I think we underestimate the impact of trauma for students with disabilities. We infer that disabilities are the reason for X or Y. Really, it’s not just the disability. It’s the experience that the students have had where things have been unpredictable. Things have been damaging and dangerous. Things have been very much what they didn’t want and without understanding how to influence the environment around them. Those are dangerous situations and you’ve gotta give kids a framework for understanding how to influence the behavior of adults. And if you don’t give them that they’ll build it on their own. Usually using behaviors that we find problematic. Mary: …and give adults the strategies to understand the behavior of kids if trauma’s been involved. Yeah, it’s fascinating the research that’s coming out on Trauma Informed Care and how we start to embed new practices in our schools to support students. Rob: One of the things I think is exciting both with PBIS and with SWIFT…part of what you’re looking at is basic ideas are being shaped by new knowledge that’s coming out. Mary: Yes. Yes. Rob: We’re not building strategies and approaches that are cast in stone. We’re building frameworks that are very susceptible to new information being added and shaping the field. That’s something that will add some sustainabilities and legs to the extent of which we’re putting things in place that can endure. Mary: Now, just a couple more questions and one of them has to do with kindness. Do you think that by implementing these approaches that schools are becoming kinder places for learning? That children are becoming kinder? Adults becoming more welcoming and accepting? Rob: I think that’s a framing of a question from the perspective of adults. I think it is not just kindness. I think it’s clarity…accessibility…a sense of being part of rather than subjected to the environment. So, “kindness” is such a wonderful word. You know, the danger of wonderful words is everybody knows exactly what it means and nobody knows… Mary: Exactly what it means, right. Rob: We know what it means for us and many of the schools that actually do PBIS say, “Be kind” is one of the expectations. And that’s cool, but then you have got



to stop and say, “What does that mean?” Well, being kind in school means, in part, reflecting on the fact that your behavior affects everyone else around you, alright. I want you to behave in a manner that’s kind. I want you to take into account the best interest of the other people around you. How do you do that? Now you’ve taken it from this sort of warm word to being something that is actually a logic model that you can use. Let’s talk about being kind on the playground. Let’s talk about being kind in the cafeteria. Let’s talk about being kind when you are with everybody and you’re putting your coats away, right. What does it look like? Until we actually give things reality…I mean, children are very much focused on “make it concrete.” Children who come with the most significant challenges with respect to either their background or their learning abilities need that clarity the most. So yes, I would say schools that are implementing PBIS are kinder environments. One of the reasons I’d say that is I’d back up and I’d say we get an increase in the likelihood that the kids attend school. We get an increase in the likelihood that they engage academically. We get an increase in the social interaction, initiations, and responses to initiations. Those are indicators, crass indicators, of an environment that is more welcoming. But the way we do it has to be done in a manner that fits the perspective of children and the developmental and social level of children, right. You do it differently in high school than you do in…you know, we might have the same construct, but you might label it slightly differently for high school students. And in high school, for example, we never encourage adults to select the expectations. We encourage the adults to work with the students to set the expectations. Mary: Support the students to determine those expectations. Rob: Right. Mary: That makes sense. It helps a lot. I actually did hear you say that PBIS supports greater kindness as an outcome in schools. So in closing, we’ve talked about the impact of implementing a PBIS framework in schools resulting in improved outcomes in social relations, in behavior, in social connections and in kindness, and the research is there to support all those outcomes. As a teacher who might be listening, what might your one piece of advice be on how to begin to implement PBIS in their classroom and their school? Rob: The thing that I would say, if you’re a teacher and you’re thinking about your classroom…create a classroom that is transparent for the student, so that the student is able to infer what are the expectations. T hey should be able to say what is expected and they should be able to take the most common routines and actually describe how the routine operates. Make it so that students are self-



managing rather than following repeated directions and prompts from the teacher. Give power rather than control, and focus everything around building a community of learning rather than a linear model of following instructions. Children too often get the message that behavior support involves compliance. Behavior support is not compliance. It is all about building the sense of understanding what expectations are and understanding that that is both in the benefit of the individual child and in the others. If you do PBIS well, you have children who are as concerned about everybody else in the schools as they are about themselves. Mary: Excellent. This has been a great conversation and thank you, Rob, for joining us this morning. For our listeners, if you like to learn more about PBIS as a feature within the MTSS, Multi-tiered System of Support domain of SWIFT Schools, please go to swiftschools.org. Check out the SWIFT Guide and there are plenty of resources…all kinds of resources…films, strategies to implement in your classrooms, research to support the implementation on the SWIFT Guide. Again, that’s swiftschools.org and I’m Mary Schuh talking to you from the SWIFT Center. SWIFT is a national K-8 center that provides academic and behavioral support to promote the learning and academic achievement of all students, including students with disabilities and those with the most extensive needs. And again, thank you so much, Rob Horner, for joining us today. Rob: Thank you.