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Implementing The Pyramid Model Community-Wide In Early Childhood Settings Across South Central Pennsylvania

Speaking: Tyler Hoffman, Amy March, Amy M. Swope Rate This Video: Starts at 01:07 Center on Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning's (CSEFEL) Teaching Pyramid

Starts at 13:36 SPEC (Supporting Positive Environments for Children)

Starts at 22:45 Teaching Pyramid: Tier 1

Starts at 37:38 Teaching Pyramid: Tier 3

Starts at 37:47 Teaching Pyramid: Tier 2
 PBS Coaches

Starts at 45:54 PW-PBS Expansion

Starts at 54:32 SPEC Goals and Objectives

Starts at 1:01:21 Administrative Support

Starts at 1:15:12 
Starts at 1:18:15 
Starts at 1:29:00 0 Comments | Leave a Comment »

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TYLER HOFFMAN: Thank you. It's good to see that everyone's here this afternoon. Normally after lunch, we're on the downward spiral and I understand that, but our goal today is to bring you on the upward spiral
and keep you awake. We have something really exciting that we're here to share with you today, and we hope that you find it just as exciting as we do. My kid actually alluded to turning your phones
off, but we will actually ask that you turn your phones on in a short bit, so don't put them too far away at this point. But what we're talking about today is implementing the pyramid model community
wide in early childhood setting across South Central Pennsylvania. And I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as Tyler Hoffman, and I'm from Early Interventions Specialists. KRIS WOODY: And
I'm Kris Woody from Family Child Resources. AMY SWOPE: And I'm Dr. Amy Swope. I'm a psychologist with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12. TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay. So before we begin -- click, there we go
Thank you. Before we begin, we have a list of objectives that we have planned for you, and here they are. So at the end of our presentation today, we hope that you will have a -- beginning to develop
an understanding of the SPEC, community-wide PBS implementation model. And you're probably wondering, what's SPEC? We're going to get to that. We also hope that you develop an understanding of our
SPEC program development process, so what did we do to get where we are today? And lastly, we hope that you become familiar with the tools and resources available for community- wide PBS implementation
So as I said, I'd like to introduce myself. I am Tyler, but at this point it's a chance for me to get to know you guys as well, so I think I have to tell you a little bit about myself before I go
too far into our process. So I'm a behavioral specialist and I work with early intervention. I have a varied background. I used to work in the classroom setting, but I found my heart to be in early
intervention, so that's where I've stayed. I've worked in the emotional support community. In the recent two years, I've had the opportunity to partner with Kris, and she's from another agency, but
we've been working in our community directly with families and other therapists, working on a positive behavior support grant. And in that chance, we've also had a chance to work with an early childhood
center where we've been working directly with teachers in coaching them in that capacity as well. KRIS WOODY: I have been with early interventions for 20 years, and in those 20 years I have seen
a lot of changes. And none that I'm more excited about than the positive behavior supports that we're implementing in childcare centers, and Tyler and I have been able to work with parents and early
intervention therapists as they go in the home and teaching these skills to parents. It's really exciting to see the benefits happening in those families. AMY SWOPE: Again, I'm Dr. Amy Swope and
I work with the Lincoln Intermediate Unit as a school psychologist. I wear many hats in my role. I evaluate children for eligibility for special education services. I do consultation with teachers
and parents. I assist with program development. I do professional development. And something that's most relevant to this topic, I've been an external coach in the Pennsylvania Positive Behavior
Support grant initiative for the last three years, working with two programs in our area to try to get them up to scale with the positive behavior support pyramid program-wide. And next year, I'm
going to be continuing the process to become a regional facilitator in our positive behavior support network in Pennsylvania. So that's very exciting, I'm excited about that. So today you'll learn
a little bit more about these roles, and hopefully you'll have a better understanding of some of the terms I'm using by the end of the session. TYLER HOFFMAN: A little cumbersome, but we'll get
the hang of the mic here. So as we promised, we'd have an opportunity for you to share who you are. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with this method. Has anyone ever seen this before or seen
okay, cool. So I see a few hands. What we're going to do is you're actually going to use your cell phone to participate in a live survey today. And I know that you all know how to use your cell
phones because I've seen everyone texting throughout the past two days and I've been guilty of it myself, so hopefully we'll have lots of answers. If you arrived today and sat in a seat where there
was a yellow post-it note, you will actually be the ones participating in the survey. So we would like it to be randomized, so if you have a yellow post-it note at your seat, we will ask that you
participate in our survey. So a bit of directions here. We'll see who's good at following them. So as you can see, our first question that we have here is, what role do you play in the early childhood
community? And in order to answer this question, what you will do is text your code of choice to 22333. So you will see up here on the screen, and hopefully you can see them. If not, I will read
the numbers off to you. The first option would be a parent, so if you're a parent, you're going to text the code 330935. That would be your message subject, and your recipient would be 22333
Okay? So if you're an administrator, you're going to text the code 330936. If you are a teacher, you're going to text the code 330937. A therapist, 330938. If you are an educational consultant or
someone that plays that role, 330939. And lastly, if we've forgotten you or -- oh good, it's working. Yay, this excites me. And there's an other section at the bottom here, 330940 if you fall into
the other category. So let's give a few seconds here for you to text your responses and see what type of -- great, it's working. AUDIENCE MEMBER: What's the consultant number again? TYLER HOFFMAN: Thank
you. The consultant number is 330939. We apologize for the size of the numbers. Yeah, we agree. We think it's cool too, thank you. So we actually had 40 post-it note cards out, so we're hoping
that maybe we get 40 responses, but at the moment we have 19 responses. And as you can see, it's tabulating the results live in front of us here, so this is pretty cool. At the moment, we have seven
consultants, we have six as others, we have three therapists, three teachers, and three administrators. So we have a large majority of consultants here, which is exciting. And it's exciting to see
that we have at least something from every group. I was kind of hoping that we'd have a parent here today, but we'll get them, we'll catch them in this process. Those of you that responded as other
would you like to let us know what your title is or what your role is? Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: We're in the same boat. We're both parents and [inaudible]. So we're teaching the pre-service teachers
Okay. So you're parents and you're professors at a university. Thanks for being here, okay? Yes, in the back? AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible]. TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay, that was a mouthful there. You're
at an office. Thank you, the State Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, did I get that correct? Okay, thank you for being here. AUIDENCE MEMBER: I'm a community consultant on a
core leadership team, and I work for the Pennsylvania AYC. TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay, I heard a key term that we're going to be talking about today, core leadership team. What do you represent as part
of that core leadership team or who do you represent? AUDIENCE MEMBER: A former administrator for the program. And when I left the program, I stayed on to support the core leadership team. TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay
Great, thanks for being here. Any others? There were seven others, so we heard from four of you so far. You're hiding out there, huh? Yes, in the back? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm on the governor's advisory
panel for special education. TYLER HOFFMAN: Governor's advisory panel on special education, thank you, thanks for being here. One more? AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] TYLER HOFFMAN: Great. So we're
beginning early, we're trying to hit them early before they even get out there. Awesome. So you're from the university level as well, very cool. So thank you for participating in that portion. We
have another slide, which is loading. Okay. It says, using a Likert scale, zero being no knowledge and five being expert knowledge, we'd like you to rate your level of understanding of the PBS pyramid
model. So it's what we've been talking about for the past day and a half now, maybe even longer for some of us. So here's what we're going to do. If you're feeling like you don't have very much
knowledge, you're going to text a one to 22333 and -- excuse me, you're going to text the code 330809. If you feel like you're a two, what you're going to do is text 330811. A three would be 330812
A four would be 330814. And a five would be 330824. So go ahead and text your responses and we'll see what we come up with. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is that everybody or just the ones with the post-it notes
Good question. Yes, it would be just the people with the post-it notes because we would like to kind of follow you throughout this process. This excites me that I see quite a few responses so far
at the bottom of our scale here. So we have 21 results so far. But this is good to know. So it looks like the majority of us feel pretty confident in our knowledge of the pyramid model, which is
great because we're going to be building upon that today. Okay. Let's hit our last slide. We have one more question that we'd like to ask of you today. Okay. So this time, the response that
you're going to give us is a little bit different. And to answer this question, it seems a little bit cumbersome, so let me walk you through it before you do it. So for those of you that are still
participating, we'd like for you to answer this question. What are you hoping to learn during this presentation or what are your expectations for today? So to answer this question, what you're going
to do is you're going to text the code 330869. Followed by that number, you're going to put a space and then you're going to put in any answer that you want to put in there. So it's going to be
an open-ended question so we could get different responses here. So you're going to text 330869, space, then your message to this recipient: 22333. Do I need to explain that any further
It is a little confusing, I admit. Okay. So more details about our structure, so I'm assuming that you're wanting to know kind of what the system looks like, what's the framework for what we're
doing. Okay. Okay, so we have one answer, which makes me feel good about this. Okay. There we go, phew! How to keep staff motivated, okay, hopefully we can hit on that today. And here's the thing
well here we go, now they're really popping up. This is good. Okay, I'm feeling a little better. If there's things that we don't hit on your questions or your expectations, certainly we are a point
of contact after our presentation today. Feel free to come up to us afterwards, we can chat about things, and hopefully we have a little bit of time for question and answer. Would you like to jump
in at any point? Okay. More information about the pyramid model and implementation. Okay. Well, the comments are great, and we can actually go back and look at these. I can actually go back
and look at these results at a later point, and hopefully if we make this presentation in the future, this will help us guide. So thank you for your participation in this. It's a way for me to get
to know you and what your expectations are and where you're coming from. Okay. All right, so moving on. We said that we were going to, you know, pick you up. We're going to bring you up on
the upward spiral this afternoon. And in order to do that, we would like to share something with you. So how many of you recognize the picture or the character in this picture by a show of hands
Oh, wow. Okay. And who are we looking at here? Horton, okay. This is great. We're on the right track. Okay, so as many of you may or may not know, Horton has a saying, and his saying goes something
like this: a person's a person no matter how small. Give me a head nod, have you heard of this before? Okay, great. So we're going to take an opportunity here to look into the world of Horton
Hears a Who and see exactly what Horton is talking about. So bear with us for a second. We had a little bit of technical difficulties earlier, but we feel that we have this situation straightened
out, so as Amy is organizing the video, should probably be doing a song and dance to keep you entertained, but I won't. There we go, we're getting it now. Full screen. Talk amongst yourselves, we'll
be back with you in just a short moment. Intermission. Aha, okay. Here we go. [VIDEO PLAYS OF HORTON HEARS A WHO] TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay, I'll give Amy an opportunity to get back to our PowerPoint slide
here, but there's a theme. We heard the chant over and over, we are here. And we also heard the word speck, right? Did you guys catch that? Okay, so
this is a really good introduction to where we're going today, and Amy's actually going to pick up for me here as soon as she gets
her PowerPoint back into play. There we go. Amy, I'll hand things over to you. AMY SWOPE: Can
everyone hear me? Is my mic working? Okay. So beyond the obvious speck, SPEC is the same term that's being used for -- is there an echo? It sounds weird, right? Okay, is there still an echo? All
right. You'll let me know, I guess. No, there is an echo. I think I'll just use the -- I think we can manage to pass that back and forth. TYLER HOFFMAN: We didn't say we were tech people. AMY SWOPE: I
guess we need one on the team, right Sharon? Is this on? Okay. Check, one, two. All right, so I was going to share my impressions as far as similarities between our SPEC program and Horton's speck
program. So obviously the word is the same, speck. For us, it's an acronym, Supporting Positive Environments for Children, but there are other similarities. At the beginning of the movie, Horton
finds this flower and it's not an ordinary flower. It's a flower containing precious cargo. And Horton hears the Whos on the flower and he realizes that there's a whole world of people living on
this speck, on this flower. And he decides he needs to carry the flower to safety, carry Whoville to safety. Because what's on the speck, it turns out, is Whoville. And so he goes on this
adventure and he's got this spot picked out at the top of this mountain where he thinks they're going to be safe. But along the way, the other animals in the vicinity become aware of what he's doing
and they're not comfortable with it, especially the kangaroo, Carol Burnett. She's not cozying up to the idea. So they're the -- she's the antagonist and she wants to wrestle the flower away
from him and throw it in a boiling cauldron. She doesn't believe that the Whos are there. She believes that Horton is trying to fill the animals' heads with nonsense. She thinks the status quo is
what they should do, what we've always done. And so Horton has to be brave. And in the scene you watched, he stood up to all the animals and he was willing to be tied and bound and put into a cage
He was willing to risk everything to save the Whos because he really believed they were -- he knew they were there and he cared about them. And so we know that program-wide positive behavior
support is something that works. We've seen it work. We've helped two programs put it into place, there's a mountain of research that says it works, we all know it works. So we also know that programs
need support in order to achieve a systems change, which is what this requires. So we want to be like Horton. We want to help the other animals hear the Whos and we want to help the Whos shout loud
enough to be heard. So this is a momentous time for us because we are about to kick off our program, which has taken a few years to develop, and so we want you all to know we are here. Okay
So you must be asking yourselves, what is SPEC? SPEC, like I said, it's an acronym, and it stands for supporting positive environments for children. We know that it's crucial to help promote social
emotional development in early learners, and that often this is an area where programs and program staff are, you know, faltering. They're not sure which direction to head and they'd like help. You
know, maybe they're not aware of the resources that are out there, but what research shows is that there's this model, this positive behavior support model, that can be implemented program-wide
which means it would be a system change, a whole system change for that program. But research shows that that is very difficult, if not possible, to accomplish without some added support. And the
added support is coaching or consultation. And so as coaches, and a lot of you on our survey said you were consultants, so I don't know how many of you are also coaches in the positive behavior
support network, but coaches can help to -- are crucial pieces to this puzzle. Because the coach can go in and provide the support and assistance that's needed in order to get the model up and running
and not just running, you know, partially. We want it to be running with fidelity. And that means we want the model to be put in place as it was intended. And if that's not done, then the research
tells us that we're not going to get the positive outcomes that we were looking for because when we think about it, our end goal is to promote those social emotional competence in young children
and to reduce their challenging behaviors. So you know, with those being the primary goals, those are -- they're pretty important. So we don't want to do it halfway and then, you know, have our
efforts be futile since we didn't, you know, put some really needed pieces in place here. Okay. So we got a group of stakeholders together in our area. These ladies are some of those stakeholders
and we're on the team as well. And we have a planning meeting committee. It's a SPEC leadership team planning committee, and so we all got together and we said, okay, this is the issue. We want
to help train these preschools and daycares in program-wide positive behavior support so that we can help them create environments in their programs that foster social emotional development. So
how do we do that? And so what we did was we used all the resources at our disposal. We contacted Sue Zyders, the illustrious Sue Zyders, and Sue had had experience helping other communities do
just what we're trying to do. So thanks, Sue, for sharing those resources. One of those resources is called the community-wide benchmarks of quality. And that tool is basically a blueprint, a step
by-step process for systems change using the positive behavior support pyramid model. And so that tool was invaluable to us, and we pored over it. We also used research to inform our decisions. And
then we also used what's going on in our community. We are -- you know, have an intimate understanding of the challenges and problems that we face in our community, and so we put all this together
and started to come up with a plan. And the first thing we did was create a vision statement and a mission statement because we wanted to have something to keep up honest, to guide our efforts so
that we always knew, you know, what's at the end of the road? Where are we trying to head? We don't want to veer off course, go off on a tangent. Okay, so our mission, the mission of SPEC
is to support the early childhood educational community in our area in order to provide positive learning environments for young children. And our mission is -- excuse me. Our mission is to provide
an environment in the early childhood centers and daycares that will foster social emotional development in early learners. The positive behavior support program-wide pyramid model is the framework
that we're going to be using to accomplish our mission. KRIS WOODY: I get the pyramid. We've all seen this numerous, numerous times throughout our efforts in learning this model. We also all know
the statistics of what's happening in childcare centers now with kids being expelled from multiple centers, you know, three, four times before the age of five. Like I said, I've been in this 20
years. When I first started, it was a really rare thing for a child to be expelled from a daycare center. Now it's -- Tyler and I, as behavior specialists, we're called in on a regular basis to
try and fix the problem. And as we go in, fixing that child isn't fixing the problem. Also we know that with the problems of these children going from daycare to daycare to daycare, it just doesn't
stop at daycare, so what happens when they get to school? The problems with truancy and problem behaviors then? And the higher they go in school, then we have juvenile probation and jail time and
detention and a whole host of societal problems that we can impact early on in the process if we can get everybody on board with this. The research, and there's a ton of it, and it's going
back, it's not just like in the last six months, this goes back many years, tells us that earlier is better and that support for the parents matters. That family involvement piece is crucial in
getting, effecting change in these kids. That high-quality environments are key. How many of you go into a childcare center and you're going, I wouldn't let my dog there? Really. I mean, we need
to, instead of sitting and talking about, oh, that's an -- we need to get them on board and bring them up. That way we can raise the standard for everybody. A comprehensive approach is better. Just
targeting those kids is like spitting in the ocean. It just really is not making a big difference. Behavior consultation does make a difference, and the consultation and coaching that is needed
to help these centers come onboard is the key piece of this. And parents and teachers can implement this in -- these practices in natural settings. It doesn't take, you know, we need a whole new
center, we need to move you to a different area. It can be done right where they're at. So it seems like it should be a no-brainer that we should have everybody on board and everybody, yeah, yeah
let's do this. And I think there are many, many centers who want to be onboard, but they get stuck and they don't know how. And that's what our program is hopefully going to do for them is to get
them the support they need to get on board. As we know, the pyramid is four layers. That base is the effective workforce, and this includes everybody who interacts with the children. Tier one is
the high-quality, supportive environments that promote positive outcomes for all children and nurturing, responsive relationships between adults and children that are essential in building healthy
social emotional skills. Tier two is the little more intentional, targeted social emotional supports. And tier three, those are the bad kids. They're the ones that really represent individualized
intensive interventions. It's beneficial for a center to have a clearly articulated and implemented policy and procedure to address behaviors at all levels, and that's one of the things that we
help them put in place. The base of the pyramid, the yellow tier, represents the effective workforce. We all know that teacher burnout and turnover are significant issues facing our childcare
centers. They get in there and they're like, this is a hard job. I'm always surprised when people realize that it's a difficult job. It is taking care especially of toddlers. Who wants to work in
that two-year-old room? That's -- it's a difficult job. And if you have one or two children in there that are really challenging, it can make teachers not want to get up and go to work, and they're
looking for other jobs. So if we put in supports to build an effective workforce through trainings and mentoring and support to the centers, we are seeking to reduce the teacher stress and
in turn increase retention of teachers because we know it's beneficial to young children to have consistency in their lives. The intended outcomes for implementing the pyramid model are more competent
and confident early educators, improved social and academic outcomes for children, and more children with disabilities learning and growing in the same settings as typically developing peers. The
blue tier has two components. The first one represents all providers. We know that social emotional development and behavior is promoted through positive preventive measures. Go into those centers
and you just listen and observe. Do you hear the positive or do you hear the negative? Stop, don't, get down. How many times have I told you don't do that? Oh, good job, but I told you -- get down
don't do that! We need to flip that around and have more positive interactions. This tier also signifies building positive relationships with children, families, and colleagues. Again, with
the families, the teachers may have something -- they don't like this parent or that parent. Well, what do you expect? We need to build those bridges between family and center. And then how many
of you have been in the room when the two or three teachers in the room don't like each other? How's that for modeling positive social skills for those young children? Children really learn what
they see, and if they are seeing that on a daily basis, what are they learning? Exactly. So we need to really sometimes help the centers develop those peer relationships between their staff members
Pre-Counts teachers at York Day Nursery gave us the following statement: participating in PBS has given the teachers an opportunity to look at our center as a whole. We have been given a great opportunity
to work together to solve problems as well as relish in our accomplishments as a wonderful team of educators. That is a glowing endorsement for instituting this model program-wide. Also in
the blue area, we're looking at classroom environments, including room arrangement, the equipment they have, and their daily schedule. Decisions -- at this level also, decisions should be made based
on data collection and review. And we'll talk about that as a piece later on in the program. The data that we collect come from brainstorm lists, anecdotal notes, behavior incident reports, TPOT
and TPITOS summaries -- and those are, does everybody know what a TPOT or TPITOS is? They don't know what TPOT is. Oh man. It's not something where you pour tea, it's a teacher pyramid observation
tool. And the TPITOS is the teacher pyramid infant toddler observation scale. And then we also collect data on the children through ASQSE's, which are ages and stages questionnaires of social emotional
which help identify children who are at risk for social emotional problems. The green area is a little more intentional and supported strategies for classrooms. The systematic approaches
to teaching social skills can have a preventative and remedial effect. These strategies include more intentional teaching about how to get along. The CSEFEL website is a great resource for the classroom
for providing sample social stories, lesson plans, and activities. This level would also include identifying children who are at risk for problems and providing teaching and support before the problems
get really out of hand. The policies and procedures about providing more intentional teaching support should be outlined for all staff and parents so everyone's on the same page so there's that
communication back and forth. And the final red area represents a very small number of children in the center, usually no more than 5% of the kids. And these are the ones that would need functional
behavior assessment, and from that they would develop a behavior support plan. Usually for centers, that's completed by an outside agency. We feel by implementing the pyramid model, the outcomes
across early childhood programs would be reducing challenging behaviors by providing teaching and support for all children with increasing supports as we go up the pyramid. Promotion of social development
for all children, improve staff satisfaction, and decrease turnover because staff is feeling more supported and better trained, more confident and competent. Increased overall program quality, clearly
articulated policies and procedures, more intentional teaching to support children's emotional development, the elimination of time out, and less reliance on outside experts and stronger collaboration
within the center. TYLER HOFFMAN: All right, back to me. So we're talking all about this, this pyramid model. And the question is, how do we implement it now, okay? So implementing the pyramid -- or
excuse me, program-wide positive behavior support typically involves early childhood teams working with state trainers to build local capacity, to establish an effective social culture with an array
of behavior supports. Well, with our SPEC program, the effectiveness of training and team effort is enhanced by local coaches, us, working one-on-one with early childhood program teams. So it's
not the state anymore, now we're pulling it down to a local level. So in a nutshell what's happening, here's what's going on. Centers, they know that the pyramid model is what's right to do and
that positive behavior intervention supports are, you know, supportive practices, they're effective practices, but now we have SPEC. We've come along and are able to assist centers implement that
model with fidelity through intensive coaching and guidance. So you might ask, who are PBS coaches? Well, coaches are also drawn from roles such as school psychologist, social workers, counselors
administrators, behavioral specialists, special educators, teacher consultants, or reading specialists. But you know, as you can see here, coaches have a variety of backgrounds and they each bring
something special and unique to the practice of coaching. Today we're going to be talking about coaches and coaching at different levels of our program. And within SPECs, we have outside coaches
who will be able to oversee or guide the early childhood centers through an overarching process, our SPECs program. There are also internal coaches within the centers that will be identified through
a selective process, and those internal coaches will help ensure that the implementation of the program continues while the external coaches are not present. So the role of a coach. It says here
a coach teaches, models, inspires, and critiques, and continues to do this relentlessly until mastery's achieved, and long after. Coaches work collaboratively with their coachees. They model skills
and observe and provide feedback. Coaches have a set agenda, and they use this agenda to reinforce or target skills and behaviors which need enhanced or changed. Coaches also have a specific target
objectives and goals that guide each discussion or meeting that they have. Each encounter is meaningful and specific in nature. So you might ask, what is the impact of coaching? Well, research
shows that coaching increase the likelihood the implementation will happen with fidelity and is critical for the replication of evidence-based practices. Coaching supports and requires skill-based
learning and a demonstration of these skills for proficiency. So through this process of coaching, we find that staff improvements are more evident when compared to typical trainings associated
with professional development. So we all know that we've been to trainings before where hear information, we take it in, and we take it back to our centers, and then we might try it for a week
and then it kind of drops off, right? Because no one's there to provide us with that constant feedback. Oh, you're doing a really good job, or, oh, you know, tweak this. So you know, coaching provides
that. They provide that, coaching provides that reflection and that constructive feedback to guide change and skill acquisition. This is an ongoing process that is more direct and explicit in nature
and that targets specific skill development. So let's pull this all together now. We have coaching in the context of the teaching pyramid. So we learned from Kris all about the pyramid. Okay, now
we're going to talk about an acronym up here, and it's called LEARN, L-E-A-R-N, and it stands for look and listen, evaluate, action plan, reflect and give feedback, and new skill building. Or you
might refer to this as the 360 of coaching. So when we're looking and listening, we're taking in what's going on around us, so we're using our eyes, we're using our ears. Sometimes we use
video, we might video and we might come back to it. The next process, or the next step in the process, excuse me, is evaluate. And this is when we're organizing and making sense of what has been
observed through the use of data and identifying areas which need attention. The next step is action plan. So here we're going to develop a process to guide the work, and then do the work. Next
we have reflect and give feedback, and what we're talking about here is reviewing the effectiveness of the work that was just done. So we're going to adjust if need be and we're going to change
our action plan. And lastly, if this is all successful, if we followed this correctly, if we look and listen, we evaluate, we use our action plan, reflect and give feedback, guess what we
have? We have new skill building, yeah. How cool, right? So it's a result of all those previously mentioned steps. So LEARN is a method for guiding coaching within the context of the teaching -- with
the pyramid, and it's a continual process that happens over and over. It doesn't just happen once, it needs to happen over and over. Okay. So the SPEC coaching program has been modeled after the
program-wide positive behavior support coaching model. So here's a list of some of the things that, as SPEC coaches, we will do. We'll provide support to the core leadership team at internal meetings
and trainings during the initial steps of the SPEC process. So we're going to be there to kind of hold their hand at the beginning. Because this is new to them and we want to support them through
that process. We're going to use LEARN, what we just talked about, with internal coaches to help build skills and provide feedback so that they have an opportunity to grow and develop new skills
We're going to provide technical assistance throughout the duration of the process and afterward. We're not just going to leave them hanging and say, hey, we're done, adios. We're also going
to attend monthly meetings and be available for question and answer, and general reflection and guidance during these meetings. We'll be responsible for making sure that data is where it's needed
to be and that it's entered and gathered correctly. And we'll help centers learn the skill of data-based decision-making, which is ever so important, which we will get to later. And lastly, but
not least, we will rally support and build enthusiasm through a systems presentation at the beginning stages of the implementation. And what is this going to do? Well, it's going to create buy-in
hopefully. So systems change literature indicates that coaching is associated with the following positive outcomes. First, coaching is key to the success implementation -- or coaching is key to
successful systems change and individual improvement. And coaching is also associated with improved fidelity of implementation. So as we mentioned earlier, coaching ensures that the new information
becomes assimilated. The structure and feedback provide the needed support to facilitate new skill-building and overall change. Effective coaching leads to this improved fidelity of the implementation
that we're talking about here. So let's take a big, deep breath. We take all this information in and what do we do? Well, we decided that we wanted to replicate the pyramid model across early childhood
programs throughout a region, and what did we end up with? SPEC. AMY SWOPE: Fortunately, we didn't have to reinvent the wheel. The wheel was already invented through the work of the ETA consultants
in the RF-funded positive behavior support grant initiative. So we essentially took the pieces of that and adapted them for use in a way that was doable for our project. We kept all of the necessary
and important pieces in place and basically changed the timeline a little bit due to funding. So this has been a very large undertaking and you may say, well, why go to all this trouble
Well, we really know that this is -- this is what's needed. We get countless calls at the IU and at Early Intervention from parents who are just at a loss. We don't know what to do with our children
You know, they've been expelled from, you know, five, six different centers. We don't know who to turn to. There aren't -- there's sort of a gap in the mental health services at this age level. A
lot of agencies will say we don't work with children that young. So there are a lot of barriers out there. And like someone mentioned yesterday, it's a three times higher expulsion rate in
preschool programs than in school age. And I guess cynically, one of the reasons for that is they can expel them in the preschool level, but there also is the implication that they're seeing behaviors
in preschool that the teachers and the program staff don't have the capability of addressing. And they're feeling it's not a safe place, so they're asking for help. They're calling us and they're
asking us for our help and our expertise. And it's just fortunate that we've been involved in this grant and we have these tools at our disposal, so we wanted to be able to use them so we could
help more than just the two centers we've worked with already. We want to expand our efforts and reach as many centers in our area as possible. And so, you know, we took the research and
the literature, we took it very seriously. We know that there's a large body of research that exists for school-age, school-wide positive behavior support dating back 20 years. In recent years, there
has been an ever-growing focus on the early childhood level. And so that school-wide positive behavior support model has now been adapted for use in early childhood. And in early childhood, it's
referred to as the program- wide positive behavior support model. And what that means is in an early childhood program, the model is implemented comprehensively across the whole program, okay? Okay
so we've talked a little bit about this. Our grant funding is coming to a close probably this year, and so that is one of the reasons we all got together, because we wanted to be able to not only
sustain our efforts but expand further and get more early childhood programs involved and onboard with this. And we want to scale up so that we can get our whole community up to scale with program
wide PBS. So one of the goals of the leadership team is basically to increase the level of self- sufficiency in preschools and daycares so that they do feel that they have the tools and capacity
to address these challenging behaviors as they come up, and also to focus adequately on social and emotional development because often we focus on academics, we focus on the other areas of development
And somehow the social emotional aspect of development is, you know, put on the backburner. And it's just a really paramount part of child development, especially at this age. And they're ripe for
the teaching. So we wanted to -- instead of giving a man a fish so he can eat for a day, we wanted to teach the men to fish so they can eat for a lifetime. That was basically the motto. And if we
teach them, if we coach them so that they can implement positive behavior support on a program-wide basis, then they will be able to eat for a lifetime, they will be self-sufficient, they'll be
able to manage and help their children grow in this area especially. And research, there is a large body of research around this. Research does show that if implemented with fidelity, program-wide
positive behavior support causes referrals to outside agencies for behavior problems to decrease, it causes expulsions to decrease, and it causes teacher stress to decrease. It causes pro-social
skill development to increase. So there are some hard data on that, some empirical studies have been done and we know that this works. Okay, so the first steps that we took as a SPEC leadership
team were to get together and sort of talk amongst ourselves, brainstorm, what are our problems? What resources do we have available? Where do we start? And so we decided to start by consulting
with Sue Zyders . We thought that would be a good place to start. And as we mentioned before, Sue was able to give us some guidance and also share some materials that have been extremely helpful
And one of those materials, the community-wide benchmarks of quality, you have those, that is available within your materials for this session. So if you want to refer to it, you'll be able to. So
we used the community-wide benchmarks of quality as a blueprint, as a step-by-step process. You know, what is that we need to do? Because if -- you know, like I said, we didn't want to reinvent
the wheel and we wanted to do something that worked. So we wanted to try to base it on empirical studies and, you know, research. And this document has come from such. So we developed our vision
and mission statements, we contacted Sue, and we got these materials, and then we put them to use. And so we used the community-wide benchmarks to guide our planning for our SPEC program. I'll show
you what I mean by that. It's taken approximately two years for us to get to this point, and those two years, we had a really big, exciting kick-off event. I think -- how many people were there
Sharon? Like 300 people? From all over the state. And Sharon Doubet came to present. She's a researcher from the University of Illinois, is that right? Illinois State University. And she's been
doing this quite some time, even back when she was the director of the Head Start program out there. So she came out and did a day-long presentation to about 300 people, and that was exciting because
it raised awareness and I think it helped get people on the same page, you know, so that we all started to form a shared vision. And so that was crucial, very, very exciting. And also in the last
two years, we developed our leadership team, our planning committee, which, you know, no one man can do this himself. Horton couldn't save the Whos by himself, he had to convince the other animals
that, you know, this was a good idea, that they should listen to what he had to say. So you know, we got together as a team, and so as a village we're trying to raise our SPEC. And we also
have developed goals and objectives, one of which is to identify funding sources. Beginning in the next fiscal year, we'll be ready to start actually putting this into practice sending, as we're
calling them, SPEC coaches. But they can be -- they're akin to the external coaches in the positive behavior support grant initiative, and we are three of those coaches. So the roles will be very
similar to -- I don't know how many of you were involved in the PA PBS grant initiative? Okay, okay so, you know, the way it worked was sort of levels of support from the state down to the local
LIU's and early intervention agencies, and then that support given to the programs themselves, who also had a coach within them, the internal coach. So our SPEC coaches will be acting more as external
coaches and be working along with the internal coach and their core team in each building or center. So that goes a little bit towards structure, and I think one of those questions at the
beginning was about the structure of the program. So that's part of it. And chiefly we borrowed the structure, a lot of it, from that grant initiative. So if we hadn't been involved in that, we would
probably have had a little bit more trouble figuring out how to structure our program. Okay, so if you recall the mission of the SPEC project is to partner with the early childhood community
in order to provide environments that foster social emotional competence in young learners. And the positive behavior support pyramid framework is the method by which we're going to help them do
that. The SPEC leadership team used the community-wide benchmarks of quality as a guide to work on goals and objectives in the following areas in order to accomplish our mission. These areas are
developing a leadership team, coordination, funding, communication and visibility, administrative support, demonstrations, family involvement, professional development, ongoing support and technical
assistance, and evaluation. So these are the basic ingredients that are needed to make system- wide change successful for the pyramid model. And so we wanted to look at this in a very systematic
way. And so we broke each area apart, we developed a focus group who could help us work on developing strategies for how we would accomplish the tasks that fall under each of these elements, and
I'll tell you more about that in a second. Okay, so the first critical element. This document is similar to a document that a lot of you have probably seen called the center-based benchmarks
of quality. Raise your hand if you know what that is. Okay, so that's the blueprint for putting positive behavior support into place program-wide in a center. So our goal is, you know, a little
broader. We want to put program- wide positive behavior support in place in all of the centers, so it's similar in that it's a blueprint, a step-by-step process for how to accomplish a system-wide
change. But as I said, this is broader. It requires us to look at the community as a whole instead of center by center. Okay, so we talked a little bit more about our -- a little bit about
our SPEC leadership team earlier. And it is comprised of members from the LIU, which is where I work, Early Intervention, and some local childcare agencies in our area, including Head Start. Okay
So the next thing we did was we developed goals and objectives based on our mission. So a focus group comprised of SPEC leadership team members was formed in order to identify goals and objectives
We used a problem-solving process to do this. We got together, I think there are five of us, and we started by listing all of the problems we saw. And we considered what the research said as well
but we really emphasized, you know, this has to make sense for our community. We don't want to just have a cookie-cutter approach. We want this to be meaningful for our kids and our centers, and
so we want the problems in our area to be addressed. So we used a process where we identified these problems, we made a list of them, and then we took each problem and came up with, brainstormed
ideas for solutions. And then we also used the research and different resources that are available to us in order to devise goals and objectives. So it really was a process that worked well. We
put our heads together and we really were pretty satisfied with what we came up with. So just as a brief overview, here are the goals. I guess you can't really see that, but I believe this
is this document in their materials as well? It is. So if you really want to look at it, you can take a gander. It's hard to read even in your book? Oh, it's just on the -- well, the benchmarks
of quality was its own separate document, so they didn't give you this as a separate document? AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] AMY SWOPE: Okay, well, we'll see if we can get it posted for you. But
I can just tell you the names of the goals. Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see? So goal one has to do with funding. As I said before, our funding stream is about to
run dry because it was a time-limited grant, as many of you probably know, so the grant is coming to a close and we want to be able to ensure that our efforts will be able to continue in the future
and even expand and involve even more centers. So funding is crucial for that. Fortunately, our leadership team contains members who are very adept at identifying funding streams and we have a lot
of support from our local area agencies, which is also a big help when you're trying to get a community-wide system change off the ground. So funding's key. We think we have funding for next year
Keep your fingers crossed. And goal two is to develop a SPEC leadership team. That leadership has been developed, as we've said, and is in place. We meet on a regular basis and we're very
systematic. We construct our planning based on our goals and objectives, and we're putting pieces in place, pieces of the puzzle in place as we go. And we've made a lot of progress, but that organization
the question about structure, good question because organizing the efforts is so important. If we didn't have the organizational piece, we'd probably be spinning our wheels. We also have
good leadership. The administrators of our agencies buy into this, they're supporting this. And so because of that we're -- you know, we're able to do more. If we didn't have that administrative
support, we might be kind of stuck, but fortunately our community and agency leaders are pretty cohesive and share at least that common vision that this is something that's needed and valuable. Goal
three is to promote social emotional competence in early learners. And frankly, I mean, that's the main goal. That's what we want to do, so everything else we're doing is to support that goal. We
want to -- you know, back to that vision and mission statement, we want to help these childcare center create environments which foster social emotional competence. So goal three is really paramount
and all the other goals are -- they're like supporting actors. Goal four involves providing supports to early childhood programs so that through evidence- based practices, namely the program-wide
PBS model, they can develop positive climates that promote social emotional competence. And lastly, goal five was developed to promote family involvement and to identify a network of supports
for parents and caregivers. As I mentioned earlier, I don't know about your communities, but in our community, sometimes it's hard for parents to navigate that system of mental health. If they do
need something extra, it's not always easy for them to find the service they need and initiate it. So that's something that we're working toward is to develop this network of supports for parents
so that the process isn't quite as arduous as it can be. We want to basically teach parents how to build healthy attachments with their children. And also we want to teach them how to create structured
nurturing home environments. So those are the goals with parents. We want the parents to be very involved in our program because they play a very important role. KRIS WOODY: The second critical
element is coordination. And as you've heard, we've had a lot of coordination with different agencies and groups coming together and working on this project. One of the threads that has been common
through this has been Amy, and she has been involved in it since the beginning. She was an initial coach for the two centers, brought Tyler and I in to help with that, and so mentored and trained
us so that we can now go out and do this with other centers and hopefully build it on top of each other and keeping it going and so on and so on. The next critical element is funding. As we've
said, the initial grant came through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. We know that those dollars aren't available anymore, so we've had to use some different brainstorming and funding
and we have some very creative people who are looking into different things. Some of the things that you can look at in your local community is, are there any organizations that provide grants for
start-up programs to put this into the childcare centers? A lot of agencies and organizations who have -- don't want to provide ongoing money, but that will provide some start-up money for you to
start this initiative. This is going to be a continual area where we will need to brainstorm and be actively looking in perpetuity. It's never going to end. TYLER HOFFMAN: All right, back to me. Communication
and visibility. We're running short on time here, so I'm going to fly through these, so hang onto your seats. And communication and visibility, what we're talking about here, Amy alluded to it earlier
We had a kick-off event, which was November 5th of 2010, and we did have 300-plus participants at this event. Included early interventionists, therapists, psychologists, teachers, and various administrative
staff from childcare centers in our area, which we are south-central Pennsylvania. I'm going to keep going through that, hit the next one. You want me to go? All right. So administrative support
All right, we're going to fly through this. Administrative support. Our mission statement endorses the program-wide positive behavior support model. We've been talking about that all day today, and
the mission statement is our guiding light. Regarding our leadership team, we've identified social emotional development as - - the behavior part of that as a priority. That's what we're really focusing
and targeting here. SPEC's progress news is shared in our local community engagement groups. That includes our mental health and health advisory committee meetings, which we attend, I believe
every three months. And our early childhood mental health advisory committee, which meets every two months. Thank you, I'm getting head nods over there. And development of policies and procedures
guidelines for participating, curriculum, and contractual roles and responsibilities have all also been developed from our administrative support. Okay. Demonstrations, I think that's me. Okay, since
we're out of our flow here -- regarding demonstrations, in our SPECs program, requests for proposals, also known as RfPs, will establish recruitment and acceptance criteria. We'll be looking for
some common elements which have already been demonstrated by two early childhood programs, one of which you heard about yesterday. That would be the York Day Nursery. They were actually recognized
as implementing the fundamental layer to the pyramid model yesterday. And the other early childhood center would be Crispus Attucks. And they were able to commit time and resources, which
is ever so important, and they were also able to establish administrative support, which is important to getting the program up and running. They had a significant low-income population among their
children in the centers, which for one of our funding sources that we're looking at is a criteria for gaining that funding source. They also had a commitment to the inclusionary practices, which
is a part of all childhood development and all education systems. These elements are largely responsible for the successful implementation of the program-wide positive behavior support in their
centers. And due to this successful implementation of the fundamental level, those two centers will serve as a resource for our new SPECs participants. KRIS WOODY: The family involvement piece is
crucial, as we saw at the first tier of the pyramid. Many times, families are looking for information to help them at home. And by reaching out to partner with them, it's a win-win situation. A
quote from the four-year-old teacher from York Day Nursery stated, positive behavior support has really brought the whole center together by working as a team. It has also brought more efforts by
the parents who show interest in what positive behavior support is doing. They also have parents who will send them notes and letters telling them how grateful they are that they're offering those
parent workshops to help let them know what's going on at the center, but also giving them tips on how they can implement this at home. TYLER HOFFMAN: All right, so we're talking about professional
development here. There are four SPEC coaches that have already been identified through a selective process. And as we said, three of us are here today. And contained within the sustainability plan
for each center, there will be a provision for ongoing professional opportunities. The development of such opportunities will ensure that the vision of SPECs is carried out after the 18 visits from
the external SPECs coaches. So as we're going to get, we will get to, we have 18 visits that we'll actually meeting with the centers. Working with the center's core leadership team through collecting
data from the TPOP, the TPITOS, and the inventory of practices, SPECs coaches can help staff identify areas in which they need and would like more training and to be more effective in the work process
with young children and families. Internal coaches can also provide mentoring and coaching in their center classroom when the external coaches, us, are not there. KRIS WOODY: I like this tag-team
stuff. This is the curriculum. This is the plan that we have put together so that when the coaches go out, everybody's on the same page. We're all working from the same model so that we can promote
the program with more fidelity. Before we even go out for our first visit, there's some things that we are asking that the childcare center would do, and we will make contact with that internal
coach. That internal coach needs to have been identified. Who's that going to be? And we would work with the internal coach before the first visit to establish the core leadership team and their
roles. Who's going to be doing what? With the core leadership team, we'll complete their initial benchmarks of quality and we'll work with them to develop the mission and vision statements
and help ensure buy-in from the staff. What kinds of things can we do to help them get the staff onboard? The curriculum contains tasks for the program to complete also between visits, so they have
homework. And this is going to be completed by them independently. Our job as coaches is to help them make their timelines and then try and help problem-solve any barriers that would come up that
maybe are preventing them from making the timelines and from accomplishing the tasks that we ask for them to do. The curriculum is also front-loaded with more tasks and intensity so that we provide
more intensive support in the beginning, and then as they become more competent, we can back off and they can take more ownership as the program goes on. So the first eight visits are weekly
visits, so every week we're going out and we're doing, are you doing this? Have you done this? What are you doing with this? By the time we get to the ninth visit, we start to go to every other
week. And then by the end, we're down to visiting once a month and really just being there as a consultant and guide for them. AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is how long is the overall process of your
SPEC system? TYLER HOFFMAN: It's a good question. We've outlined here is 18 visits. We initially had it as weeks, but we realized that the centers may or may not be able to accomplish those tasks
within that period of time, so there is room for flexibility. But we're looking to accomplish this within one year's time, so. Yes, in the back? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just to piggy back on what you said
before [inaudible]. We know we go into some centers and we wouldn't put, as you said, your dog there. So if you had one of those centers that you want to go into, how do you prep them because you
know they need more than 18 weeks to prep? [inaudible]. TYLER HOFFMAN: All good questions. You're asking, how do we identify potential candidates? And you were asking the question, you know, there're
some centers that we wouldn't send our dogs to. Okay, so to follow up on your question there, that is actually through our request for proposal, the RfP process. We have identified selected centers
that we already have an idea who we're going to send this out to, and then from there if, depending on what types of responses we get back, then we would kind of, you know, pick what avenue we're
going to go down. KRIS WOODY: I also think as long as we have some strong administrative support and buy-in, that we can work with that center. AMY SWOPE: That's what I was going to say. You read
my mind. Administrative support is so huge. If you don't have that, you're almost failed from the door. You really need to know for sure that you have the administrators on board and they're -- because
they're the ones that are going to have to commit the resources. They're going to be largely responsible for staff buy-in because there's that trickle-down effect. The staff are going to look to
the administrators to gauge their reaction to this. How invested are they? And you know, if the staff all see that the administrators really buy into it, then I think we were talking about that
mirror effect yesterday, but the staff will follow the lead. So that's such an important piece and that's part -- in part, that's an answer to your question. Because that's going to be one
of the -- part of the selection process. Do we have that administrative support? And you know, frankly, if we don't have it, I don't know if those programs will be selected. Another big thing is
buy-in. Buy-in is huge, so -- and also time and resources. So does the program have the time? Because this is very time-consuming, it's a lot of work. They're going to have to make a really big
commitment and, you know, be able to devote the energy and the effort to it. Now the programs that we've already done this with, they're singing its praises, so they've done the work and
they're continuing to do it, but they see the value of it. So the programs we will be bringing onboard will have the benefit of seeing that, that these programs are, you know, are touting this as
something that they wish they'd had all along and it was worth all the effort. And believe me, it's a large amount of effort. Now the beauty of the structure of it is that it's spread out, there's
a team of people, so it's not one person doing everything, but it's still a lot of work, so that commitment is big. Now if we have that and, you know, the program is, you know, a program where
you wouldn't want to drop your dog off, then I think we could work with them. You know, we could build this, but -- yeah, right. We want to help these programs. The ones that we're looking at now
have risk factors. They have children, a significant number of children falling at the poverty level. We're getting the five minute warning, so maybe we could talk more after this, but I think we
have to try to wrap this up. TYLER HOFFMAN: Okay, for the sake of time, I'm making an executive decision here. We did have four more slides of our curriculum, but you do have it contained within
your packet, so I think the most important thing is that we wrap up with our conclusion and our final notes, so I'm going to hand that over to Amy to make that final conclusion. AMY SWOPE: All right
So there were two more critical elements left. One of those is ongoing support and technical assistance. So we don't imagine that or plan that when these 18 sessions are over, we're going to just
disappear into the night. We're going to remain available as consultants to these programs, but we really all along, we've been available to these programs as consultants, so the thinking is that
they will need less consultation because they will be more self-sufficient. But the support and the technical assistance will continue. And so far as evaluation, this is a very data-based
decision-making program. We want to teach the programs to use data to make decisions and help guide their implementation. But as a SPEC group, we also want to collect this data and aggregate it
and use it to tell us how we're doing. Is what we're doing effective? Is there anything we need to change or, you know, something new we need to add, something we're missing? So evaluation is a
really big part of this puzzle, so it's last but not least on the benchmarks. So in summary, the pyramid model works, and we are here. So it is our goal to see the pyramid model in place program
wide in all the centers in our area. So we're starting small and building from there, but we want to create that solid foundation and we really think quality over quantity is the best step at this
point. They guidance that we've received from you, Sue and Mike, it's been invaluable. So thank you. And it's been crucial to our development and planning. The fact that we have a really
supportive team and we have administrators on that leadership team, that's also been something that's been hugely beneficial. We need to have that administrative support at our level too in order
to achieve systems change. And then the resources and tools we used were the benchmarks of quality for community-wide implementation. We used all the existing resource that we have at our disposal
which is a bundle, and we used a lot of the resources that were given to us as part of the grant. So that's basically, in a nutshell, what we did. This slide contains tools and resources
websites basically for use. And these websites have definitely been -- we've gone to them quite a bit. So you have that on that slide. And that's all, folks. Does anybody have any questions? Sue
I have a comment and a question. Those of you who are in higher ed and wanted to know how you could get involved in PBS -- I am Sue Zyders, by the way, and she is president of my fan club. We would
love to hear what specifically you are interested in because we do see that as something that we need to build that connection with. So if you're willing, let's touch base after the session. AMY SWOPE: If
you want to join the fan club, see me at the end of the session. Anybody else? Well, thank you so much for all of your attention