This first session is for the administrator to watch. After watching this on your own, you will choose a group of people to be your universal behavior support team members. They will act as the liaisons between all staff and the team. Universal Behavior Support is a separate seminar listed with the other seminars. This is just a free overview for administrators.

What is Universal Behavior Support?

I like to start with some true stories. I was working with a small school that averaged 42 aggressive acts per day. There were only 45 students in the school. They contacted me to do 42 functional behavior assessments on the students who were showing aggressive acts. I told them when the percentage of students engaging in a certain behavior is more than 20%, then you want a Universal Support because it's a whole school problem, not a student problem.

We began with a universal emergency plan (because it was physical aggression). We made changes to the environment to set the students and staff up for success. We put replacement behavior teaching in place immediately. We also reframed the adult responses so they were feeding the replacement behavior and extinguishing the targeted behavior. Within one month, we had reduced aggressive behaviors by over 90%. Then we were able to implement intensive plans for the students who needed those intensive supports.

While your school is most likely not witnessing 42 aggressive acts per day, instituting universal supports can leave you more time to deal with the tier two and tier three behaviors that really need more intensive supports. By implementing these tier one supports with fidelity and consistency, you should have 80% compliance with your school expectations. Then we can move on to the 15% who need tier two supports and the 5% who need tier three supports (these are approximate numbers based on national data).

This is the closed caption video for those who desire closed captioning.

You will want to have a private zoom or skype discussion with your Universal Behavior Support Team before you begin the whole staff training. This team should be made up of the following people:

• Administration- You don't have to be the leader of the team; however, you must be a weekly presence at all team meetings.
• Grade representation. This doesn't mean if you are a Pre-K through 5 school that you need 6 people. You can have one Pre-K or K teacher, one grade 1 or 2 teacher, one grade 3-4 teacher, and one grade 5 teacher.
• General education and special education representation
• Ancillary staff members (specials, PT, OT, SLP, Psychologists, Counselors etc.)
• Classified and Certified Staff
• Family member (sometimes people like to choose a teacher who also has a child in the school. This is not good. We need someone who gives an honest representation of what is going on in the neighborhoods and community.
• If you have a lot of bus referrals, you may want to have someone from the transportation department on your team.
• Try to keep the number of people to 14 or less.

Here is a sample letter you can copy and send to your staff.

Just so you know the process of what will happen in the full workshop.

1. You will watch an overview video together and then discuss.
2. You will watch a video on how you determine your expectations, then you will discuss and decide on your school's expectations. A group will be assigned to design the posters and be ready to show everyone when you meet again.
3. You will watch a video on how you build your matrix. You will meet virtually and then discuss your matrix and assign a section to each group. They will turn it in to the Universal Behavior Support Team and they will put it all together in one document and send it out before the next meeting.
4. You will discuss how you will teach, imprint, practice, and praise these behaviors to your students. Dr. Riffel shares examples and the book has some examples in it. You will have a groups write lesson plans for each area of the school.
5. You will discuss gotchas and design gotchas for the praise part of the section above. After watching the video, people will understand what a "gotcha" is and how to use it appropriately.
6. You will discuss reinforcers and why tangible reinforcers are not the answer.
7. You will determine as a team what is taken care of in the classroom and what is a direct trip to the office. This will create fidelity and consistency in your school. This is a hard discussion to have; however, Dr. Riffel will explain why this is so necessary.
8. You will discuss data and how to use it. You will learn about the Big Six and why you need to be watching these weekly.
9. You will discuss incorporating your family members and community into your Universal Behavior Support process.

If you would like to get approval for this seminar through your Board of Education, please feel free to download the following.