PB4L Conference - Workshop - "Using PB4L SW to support students who are chronically anxious"

USING PB4L SCHOOL-WIDE TO SUPPORT STUDENTS WHO ARE CHRONICALLY ANXIOUS 
High levels of chronic anxiety among children and young people have been shown to have a detrimental effect on both learning and social behaviour. This workshop looks at the effects of anxiety on students’ neurophysiology, and the role anxiety plays in maintaining challenging behaviour. It will also examine the practical challenges of supporting anxious children in schools and suggest ways in which PB4L School-Wide systems and practices can be used to improve outcomes for these students; to facilitate learning, reduce challenging behaviour and build resilience. FACILITATORS: John Ford and Leah Vennell, PB4L School-Wide Practitioners

What does anxiety look like for students?
- crying
- anger
- sore tummy
- defiance/non-compliance
- work avoidance
- don't want to come to school
- isolating themselves
- self harm

What sets them off? (What are the triggers)
- public speaking
- change of routines
- family expectations and personal expectations
- own self-efficacy
- home life/trauma
These can be historically or contextually driven.

Kids have differing levels of resilience as well...

3 key contentions..
1. NZ has high levels of chronic anxiety
2. Anxiety have impacts on learning and behaviour-  Rewards can be punishments, and punishments can be rewards when you are anxious.
3. Good implementation of PB4L Tier 1 can help reduce anxiety as it is routine driven.

What must the world look like for this to be a rewarding option? (from the anxious child's point of view).

Make things predictable. 
- use visual timetable on whiteboard
- explain to kids if something might change and why
- restate PB4L expectations
- set and follow routines (PE on Monday, assembly every Friday, eat morning tea sitting here etc).

Give kids control (or at least a sense of it)
- give them the opportunity to take a break (hand up if you need a 1 minute break etc).

The dentist example

Read this example

PB4L Conference - Keynote/Workshop - Nathan Wallis

Introducing the Structure of your Brain
You will learn about the structure of your brain and how this impacts on everything you say and do. To understand how this structure comes about means re-examining your early life and the first 1000 days.

Working with the Adolescent Brain/ Learning in the Brain
During adolescence part of your teenage brain “shuts for renovations”. This is the part of the brain responsible for controlling the teenager’s moods, for understanding consequences and for thinking about the well-being of others. So whilst you can’t expect lots of those behaviours during adolescence, there are ways that you can enhance and maximise the times when they can. We will also look at what learning looks like in the brain and how your practice can work with or against it.

During the teenage years, children's amygdala doesn't work as an adults does, so they would see these 6 faces differently than an adult would. They would see the first one as neutral, and the other 5 as angry. Clearly to an adult that is not true, but that's how the adolescent brain sees it. This is the cause of most teenager/parent conflict. The teenager perceives anger where it might not be a reality, they respond with anger or defiance, the parent blames the grumpy teenager, etc.

Interesting to learn about the affects of alcohol and marijuana on the teenage brain. 

Marijuana has no permanent affect on the adult brain if taken as an adult - if taken as a teenager, it can cause their IQ to drop by 8 points. That is the only long-term impact. The other thing about weed is that it has NO causal relationships in research (meaning there is no research that proves smoking weed causes depression, causes anxiety, causes whatever. no research whatsoever). There are correlations, such as between depression and smoking weed. However studies have found that in fact, the opposite is true. People who are already depressed are more likely to smoke weed because they want to soothe their depression. But again, weed didn't cause that depression. 

Nathan said that 100% of all money spent on alcohol is caused by teenage drinking. For example police call outs, prison sentences, domestic abuse etc, is not caused by the permanent affects of alcohol on the adult brain. In fact, it is caused by damage done to the teenage brain by alcohol. He also said that the modern adult male brain can take up to 8 units of alcohol per hour without doing any permanent damage to the brain. Women have a lower tolerance, presumably because men have been drinking larger amounts of alcohol for a far longer period of time (thousands of years), so have developed the receptors for it that women have not. 

NZs binge drinking culture is largely to blame. In France, the number of drinks a person can have in one night before considered by their peers to have gone to far, is 3. In NZ, its 13. Thats crazy! 

Watch this for a short version of this talk - 

Nathan Wallis - The Development of the Teenage Brain from Hagley College on Vimeo.

PB4L Conference - Keynote - Sonja MacFarlane

Dr Sonja Lee Macfarlane Associate Professor, University of Canterbury Positive education for learning: Te pikinga ake o te mātauranga
The phrase ‘positive behaviour for learning’ conjures up notions of happiness, success, fun, and wellbeing – all of which are the types of educational experiences and outcomes that families want for their children. As the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, many Māori would argue that education settings must create learning cultures that foster these positive notions, and not be bereft of the cultural values that resonate for Māori. Māori children come into this world adorned with gifts and potential; qualities that are handed down to them by their ancestors. It is incumbent upon adults who are responsible for their care to provide contexts for engagement and learning that enable a strong sense of self-worth, belonging and identity to flourish. It is argued that education settings must reflect the notion that everyone belongs, everyone has a place, everyone has a voice, everyone has aspirations, and everyone can contribute. This requires educators to minimise and/or remove any potential and actual barriers that might obstruct this vision so that positive behaviour, and a positive sense of self are able to flourish. This presentation will explore notions of ‘positive education for learning’ from a kaupapa Māori position.


Masons 3 goals

• to live as Maori
• to actively participate as citizens of the world
• To enjoy good health and a high standard a living

Pastoral care is so important. 

Look up - 

Ministry of Education Wellbeing guidelines - green book - need to review as a school. 
 - te huia grid by Sonja


Think about how are we implementing ToW principles (partnership etc) in everyday school culture?


Sonja shared her new frameworks..

Humanity/Maanakitanga. 
Kaitiakitanga/Guardianship. 

find later 
 - te huia grid
poutama #1 (He poutama tino rangatiratanga) - what it might look like
poutama #2 - what it might feel like
poutama #3 - 

PB4L Conference 2019 - Keynote - George Sugai

School Climate, Culture, & Local Context: Catch ‘em at the Door
Interest in the social, emotional, and behavioral well-being of students, educators, and family members has grown internationally. As a result, attention on understanding and improving school and classroom climate and student and educator relationships has increased. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the importance of tiered systems of support, like PB4L, in contributing to teaching and learning environments that are respectful, responsible, and safe and develop positive supportive relationships and academic and social behavior success for all students.
Slidedeck



Why PB4L in 2019?

When we have all this...

Sometimes it looks a bit like this..

And it needs to be decluttered. PB4L is a framework to simplify all these.

Message 1) 

Kids need to feel safe in order to live.. but this is not an accident, it is purposeful school actions that make kids feel safe.

Can every single kid in our school identify an adult or another student who they can talk to and feel safe with? 

Message 2)

Kids are more likely to be in schools with lower rates of bullying, if they have a adult to talk to. 

PB4l teaches positive relationships building. That, reduces bullying. 

Message 3) 

Kids come to school with risk factors. We can't take them away, but we can encourage 'protective factors'. PB4L encourages all of these.

What is PB4L?

If adults are not doing the systems, students can not do the practises. 

You can't have practises without the continuum, and you can't have the continuum without the framework. If you implement practises into a continuum, and that continuum sits within a framework, it will work. 

1) Outcomes are the starting point for the implementation of the framework. 

2) next is data. is this needed? where/how/how often/what are they trying to achieve? what would you have them do instead?

3) practises.  align practises with desired outcomes.

4) what can adults do to deliver the intervention?

PB4L IS FOR ORGANISING ADULTS.

If you are doing PB4L well, you will have...

THIS IS IT - KEY IDEA.

If you want 5) to happen, you have to deliver 4) correctly. However, 4) won't be effective if 3) is not happening. Kids need to respect and respond to you. You can't do 3) if you don't do 2). you have to engage them and get to know them. Your school systems (1) need to be set up in a way that 2, 3, 4 and 5 can happen. If 1) is not happening, the rest won't be effective. 

Essentially, all of this is about developing positive school climate. 

School climate is perception based. 

Note: always need to check that what you want people to see/feel is what they are feeling/seeing. Check you are all aligned. 

In order to improve outcomes for students, time needs to be spent with adults. The teachers and adults within the school, the systems adults do need to be effective.

The work the adults need to do...

PINK ONES ARE THE MOST CRUCIAL ONES.

Integration of initiatives such as restorative practise under the PB4l umbrella. Any initiative that you are doing needs to be under the PB4L umbrella (E.g. bullying programmes, mana enhancement etc).

"Local content expertise" refers to someone in the school that knows how to implement PB4L. 

As you move "up" the triangle (into tier 2/3), you need more data, more time spent teaching kids, more adults on board to implement systems, etc. MORE, not less. 

Tier 3 is not a solid triangle. It is many, individualised plans for individual students based on their needs. 

There are NO Tier 2 or Tier 3 students. There are students with tier 2 NEEDS> 

LABEL NEEDS, NOT PEOPLE.

We all need tier 3 support in certain areas. 

Activity - write what you need minimal support with, medium support and high need. 

Example of the tier 2 intervention as intensified Tier 1 - alarm clock in the morning is tier 1. two or three alarms is tier 2, asking your partner to wake you up after you sleep through all 3 alarms is tier 3.

PB4L Conference - Workshop 1 "Classroom Problem Solving: The initial step in the tier two process"

CLASSROOM PROBLEM SOLVING: THE INITIAL STEP IN THE TIER TWO PROCESS 

When data indicates that students need more than Tier 1 supports, the next step involves teachers supporting teachers through the classroom problem solving process. This work is primarily done through Classroom Practices Teams where teachers collaborate to address low level problem behaviour by: analysing data, examining their own practice, striving to understand the reasons for problem behaviour, and identifying strategies for changing it. This workshop will unpack the main aspects of the Classroom Practices Team’s role, including how they can co-construct simple functional behaviour support plans, and explore the materials available to support this process. FACILITATORS: Marcus Gough and Wendy Morgan, School-Wide Practitioners

How this works in schools

1) classroom teachers identify issues based on their own data, complete FBA form and bring to team meeting. including strengths and interests of children - 2 minutes max

2) Discuss the replacement behaviour - 1 minute max

3) Team members suggest strategies  - 4 minutes max - Teacher who is having this problem behaviour, stop talking and listen, write everything down. This is so they can't be dismissive/negative about the suggestions. 

4) Monitor and following up - 2 minutes max. Teacher selects one of the strategies they are willing to try. Follow up at the next meeting how that strategy went. Team leader/pb4l coach check in during this interim period, maybe suggest something else. 

In the book - teacher behaviour self-assessment. 

page 106 in the school-wide tier 2 implementation manual.

teachers need to reflect on their own practise. sometimes they can actually be causing bad behaviour.

"teaching for positive behaviour" booklet - 

Tier 1 - strategies for managing minor and major behaviour.

ask practitioner for sorting cards/strategy cards.