Lucy Craft Laney

Student Support System

Final Report

Christian Alberto Ledesma

December 14, 2016

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Overview

When meeting Principal Mauri Melander at Lucy Craft Laney Community School, it is
clear she takes pride in the work done to build Lucy Laney into a place where students and staff
want to be. Her focus over the last five years has been to create a new narrative for the school.
The work done to build the positive culture of Lucy Laney hs led to a tenfold decrease in student
suspensions
The foundation for the sharp reduction in suspensions and the improvement in school
climate and culture is relationship. From the moment students get off the school bus, they are
greeted with smiles, high fives, and hugs. Throughout the day, adults are constantly checking in
with students, asking them about their day, checking in on newborn siblings, or asking if they
need a new coat.
Principal Melander, in providing the historical context for Lucy Laney, explained that the
school had gradually reduced Behavior Support Staff from six to one last year. While she felt the
reduction had gone relatively smoothly and was working, she requested a program evaluation of
the Behavior Support System at Lucy Laney. The current system comprises of one School
Success Program Assistant (called a Student Support Specialist over the usual term Dean), one
generalist Associate Educator, and a series of support staff that includes social workers, a
school psychologist, a parent liaison, and a hallway security monitor, among others.

Data Collection
The two week residency at Lucy Laney allowed for a limited amount of data collection
from a variety of sources. This evaluation includes information gathered from two days of
shadowing the Student Support Specialist, Morgan McDonald, tracking behavior referrals and
their origins, qualitative classroom and hallway observations, teacher interviews, informal
tallying of language-use in staff, and results from the 2015 5 Essentials survey.

Morgan McDonald: Student Support Specialist

Morgan McDonald began as the Student Support Specialist in the Fall of 2015 but was
not new to the school building. He clearly knows the students, their families, and is an active
member of the local community. Mr. McDonald was shadowed for two days on Monday,
November 28, 2016 and Tuesday, November 29, 2016, from 7:30am to 4:30pm.
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Table 1: Calls to Morgan McDonald

Day/# of Calls Calls By Grade/Specialist Calls by Time of Day

Day 1/17 calls K: 3 (all three calls were about one child) 8-9am: 1 call
1: 2 9-10am: 1 call
2: 1 10-11am: 3 calls (2 calls
3: 4 on one issue)
4: 3 11am-12pm: 2 calls
5: 4 12-1pm: 4 calls
1-2pm: 4 calls
Art: 1 2-3:15pm: 2 calls
Music: 1
Gym: 2
Media: 0

Day 2/15 calls K: 1 8-9am: 0 calls

1: 4 (3 of 4 calls were about one issue) 9-10am: 4 calls (2 calls
2: 2 on one issue)
3: 5 10-11am: 2 calls
4: 2 11am-12pm: 3 calls
5: 1 12-1pm: 2 calls
1-2pm: 3 calls
Art: 1 2-3:15pm: 1 call
Music: 1
Gym: 1
Media: 1

Staff reach Mr. McDonald via text, phone call, or in-person. At the start of each day he is
greeting students at their bus, checking in with bus drivers regarding any safety issues,
participating in a daily Admin/Support Staff briefing, and walking through every pod to do
proactive check-ins. Mr. McDonald is rarely found in his office due to the proactive nature of his
check-ins and due to his quick response to calls. Most calls were attended to within three
minutes.
Most of the calls on new issues to Mr. McDonald each day occurred in between the
hours of 11am and 2pm. The vast majority of those could be considered Level 1 behaviors:
students refusing to comply with directions, name-calling, or non-verbal disrespect. Only two
incidents were recorded, one on each day, that could be considered Level 3 or higher: one
student scratching another during an argument and another involving a student bringing
medication against school policy. All of the incidents observed during those two days followed
Minneapolis Public School Behavior Intervention and Response policy.

Classroom/Pod Observations
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Classroom observations took place over two and half days, focusing on the student
experience while keeping a focus on response to behavior. Half hour blocks were spent
observing the hallway behaviors in each pod and over 12 hours of classroom observations took
place.
Each pod operated independently of the other pods. Though adults walk in and out of
pods and students use resources in other pods, like the music room, students and their
teachers tend to operate within the confines of their pod. Some patterns noticed across most,
but not all, pods include: students always accompanied or actively supervised by adults in the
pod common areas and all adults actively supervising transitions between classrooms. In pods
where students were unsupervised in the common area, students were using the bathroom or
retrieving supplies from a locker.

Table 2: Unsupervised Students by Pod (during 30 minute common area observation)

Grade K 1 2 3 4 5

Number of 0 0 0 8 2 3
unsupervised
students

Each pod has a unique social and operational culture. In the fourth grade, for example,
one teacher from each class monitors transitions from just inside the classroom and another
stands in the hallway. Students do not move to the next class until they show, with calm bodies
and voices off, that they have met the expectations for transitions. Movements of students
during the transition happens at the same time for all classes. In the third grade, by contrast,
students line up with adults but there seems to be variation in what the expectations of each
adult are - some are asking for students to be quiet and still and others do not voice those
expectations. Some classes in the third grade were noted to spend two to five minutes lined up
and ready for transition before other classes were ready. This created movement in the common
area that was asynchronous. In the primary grades transitions are led by a teacher, usually
leading from the front of the line.

Language Use
Another piece of data that may be valuable in discerning the effectiveness of a behavior
management system is the particular language used by adults in preempting or redirecting
behavior.
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Table 3: Language Use

Types of Positive Reinforcing/ Reflective Direct Negative

Language Language Reminding Language Language Language
Language

Tally 11 0 6 5 0

Examples Good morning! What do you Quiet down.

heard Looking sharp! need to do Tell me what
Hows the baby? right now? happened.
Have a good How can you Go back and
day! do that better? walk.

Over the course of one day, 11 instances of positive language were heard during
classroom observations and 6 instances of reflective language during a conversation about
behavior. However, no examples of Reinforcing/Reflective language were heard. Phrases that
might be heard in Responsive Classroom, like I see 16 students walking in the hallway safely
or I noticed you helped your friend today were not apparent during that day. There was also no
Negative Language used with students - phrases like Youre lazy or Youre being a bad girl
today were notably absent. A note must be made here that Reinforcing/Reflective language
was heard throughout the two week study, however, it was not apparent the day language was a
focus of data collection.
Care is evident in how teachers and administration speak about students. During the
daily announcements, Principal Melander ends with an affirming message that reminds students
they are worth the cost and that the Laney family is the brightest, most intelligent, and the
best-looking in North Minneapolis and beyond. The actions of staff show the individual students
that they are cared for: staff check-ins about babies in the family, ensuring that students have
proper winter gear, and coaching conversations around long-term issues.

Teacher Interviews
Teachers referred to Lucy Laney as a special place throughout the two week residency.
They spoke of a climate and culture of care that they are proud of. When asked about how that
came to be, they pointed to the vision and work of the administration. In an effort to get more
information on how that was built, 12 teachers were interviewed to find out: a) how supported
they feel by the Student Support System at Laney; b) what changes, if any, they feel are
necessary to make Lucy Laney feel safer for students and staff; and c) if they feel comfortable
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making suggestions to the administration. Additional questions were also asked about strengths
and areas of improvement at Laney.

Chart 1: How supported do you feel regarding student behavior at Lucy Laney?

Chart 2: Describe your comfort in making suggestions to administration.

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Suggestions for changes to the Student Support System ranged from the creation of a
Behavior Room to inter-pod observations to clarification on the subjective feel to the response to
behaviors, but there was no one common thread or theme towards a particular effort. When
asked what is going well at Lucy Laney, the responses were overwhelmingly about the love and
care for students, and the positive schoolwide culture. When asked what could be better, four
teachers replied that they sought a greater academic focus from school leaders, the rest were
individual requests for better communication amongst staff, a behavior intervention room, and
better family engagement. These last two questions yielded little with regards to the Student
Support System but may be something that school leaders keep in mind as they plan forward.

Student Shadowing
In order to capture the fullness of the student experience at Lucy Laney, a fifth grade
student was shadowed for an entire day. This provided a unique opportunity to observe
instruction, transition, student and adult behavior, and responses to behavior from a student
perspective. Students throughout the day seemed engaged, were responsive to teacher
expectations, and rarely needed redirection. Teachers and staff planned for learning and
activities that kept students active and engaged throughout the day.
Towards the end of the day a particular incident occurred that could be traced back to its
origin. During English Language Arts students were having a celebration with various activity
stations and root beer floats. While working together on an activity two students started calling
each other names. A teacher, noticing a disturbance, walked over and asked students to lower
their voices. The students responded to the redirection but soon after started calling each other
names and expanded to insulting one anothers family members. Again, teachers noticed the
volume increase and asked students to quiet down, which they did. When the class was over,
students were asked to line up to transition, teachers reminded students of expectations, and
students transitioned to the Math class. Once there, the same students who had been
disrespectful to one another almost forty five minutes earlier, began using harsh words with one
another again. A math teacher asked one of the students to step out of the room and the student
proceeded to throw a folder onto a desk and storm out of the room.
While the incident described above had been simmering for a while, over the course of
two content areas with two different sets of teachers, the math teacher was the first of five
teachers to concentrate and give more attention to the behavior. One student ended up
debriefing with a Special Education Resource Teacher and talking through steps to be able to
return to the classroom, while another student shut down, stormed out of the pod, and refused
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to engage with adults. When asked, the student being shadowed said that while the incident
was distracting, she felt safe and only lamented the brief loss of learning time for her class.

2015-2016 5 Essentials Survey

The 2015-2016 5 Essentials Survey was provided to students and staff in 2015. The
results showed that safety at Lucy Laney was considered Weak according to the metrics.
However, a deeper dive into the results shows that perceptions of safety improve the closer you
get to the classroom. 50% of students felt Mostly Safe or Very Safe Outside Around The
School and Traveling Between Home and School. In the bathrooms of the school, 63% of
students felt Mostly Safe or Very Safe. When you move into the classroom, 76% of students felt
Mostly Safe or Very Safe, with only 8% feeling Not Safe. Another key indicator for student well-
being is Student-Teacher Trust: 84% of students said they feel safe and comfortable with their
teachers at this school and 83% said teachers treat them with respect.
For teachers, 31% reported having little to no influence on setting standards for student
behavior. On teacher collective responsibility, only 63% of teachers believe that Most or Nearly
All teachers Help Maintain Discipline In the Entire School, Not Just Their Classroom. 80% of
teachers said they had Observed another teachers classroom to get ideas for their own fewer
than two times.

Implications
The staff at Lucy Laney feel well supported with regards to student behavior and
students feel safe with their teachers and within their classrooms. Together these are strong
indicators of success in the work around school climate and culture. While the Student Support
Specialist is busy, responding to calls, making proactive check-ins with students, the number of
calls Mr. McDonald is responding to daily is comparable to Dean positions in both elementary
and secondary public schools. While all systems have the potential for growth, a theme that
emerges from the data above is the potential lack of common expectations. While each pod has
been given a certain level of autonomy in their daily operations, this may have fostered a lack of
common behavior expectations in some pods and across the school.

Potential Actions
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The following lists include potential short-term and long-term actions to help refine
Laneys already successful student support system. School leadership, ILT, and Support Staff
can use these suggestions or create their own, to home in on an area of focus.

Short-term, Focused:
Inter-pod observations of Morning Meeting, with particular focus on how
expectations are set to start the day.
Inter-pod observations of transitions in common areas.
Pods can plan how to re-set norms and expectations for transitions with their
students.
Allow students time to re-center at the end of an active class or in-class party,
before transitioning to the next class.
Take time at the beginning of class to center, check-in, and set expectations
before beginning academic work. While this takes time on the front end, it may help
mitigate behaviors during academic work.
Create class tracking sheets in departmentalized pods that follows class from
period to period and allows teachers to communicate between blocks. Alternatively, any
form of clear communication between classes so that any simmering student issues are
identified.
Instead of leading a class from the front of the line, adult staff can move back and
forth from front to end as the class line moves down the hall.

Long-term, Systemic
Returning to classroom model in the third grade, to be more developmentally
responsive to student needs and allow students and staff to build stronger relationships.
Research on relaxation/tranquility rooms for students needing behavior
intervention and trained staff to lead calming techniques.
Whole-staff training/PD on restorative practice, with particular attention to student
re-entry to the classroom.
Formalizing a Student Support System organization chart: identifying who
receives referrals, how help is sought, who is available to help, and so on.
Creating a feedback loop so that post-response debriefs are held soon after a
referral. This may help diminish the appearance of subjectivity in behavior response.
Whole-Staff refresher professional development on Responsive Classroom
techniques.

Conclusion
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Ms. Melander asked for an evaluation of the Student Support System to assess how
things were going after reductions of Student Support staff over the last five years. The
unquantifiable data at Lucy Laney - the big smiles from students, the love and care emanating
from staff, and the overall positive environment - is hard to capture in research but is evident in
staff and student responses to survey or interviews. Staff feel supported by the Support Staff
and Administrative team and students feel safe in their classrooms. When incidents do occur,
the response is immediate and limits the loss of learning time for students.
The administrative team, along with the ILT, and Student Support Staff may choose to
use a potential action listed here or create their own in order to further refine their practice.
Either way, the leadership teams of Lucy Laney are well-equipped to continue the conversation,
seek more input, and determine next steps based on the needs of their students. The Laney
family should be commended for their hard work in creating a place where students and staff
want to be.
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