Rebuilding Trust: When leadership Promises Fall Short
The markers came zinging by my head.
A few hit my chest.
I was more worried about the classroom chairs that were being thrown one at a time against the wall.
We got the rest of the students out of the classroom, and cleared as many projectiles as possible out of the way.
The twelve-year-old boy with autism loved puppies, legos, and Chinese food. He was really good at coding and creating complex drawings.
He had experienced abuse. He also had a really difficult time taking in new sensory information and processing it.
Someone was inadvertently wearing a scent that escalated him into his current state.
Last year, this student was restrained over sixty times. It took one adult to evacuate other students and two adults to move him through an escalation cycle: holding his body still so that he couldn't hurt himself or others. These incidents are traumatic for the student, family, and staff.
This year we were trying something different.
We had built a sensory menu with the help of his occupational therapist and devised some gross motor “off ramps” as early offerings for when we noticed escalating behaviors. Off ramps are controlled physical outlets that allow the student to release escalation energy before losing self-control.
He was getting better at self-regulating.
This year we had replaced restraint with an emergency response plan that included a preferred staff member, large pads to avoid physical blows, and a set of phrases and pictures that he and his family had helped us choose. These were soothers.
We meticulously tracked every incident, including what caused it, how long it lasted, and its intensity.
If we ever used restraint, we carefully documented and submitted the information.
Our district reported all incidents of restraint and seclusion annually as part of data collection to the Office of Civil Rights with the Department of Education. A federal requirement, and a way of holding ourselves accountable for the civil rights of children with disabilities.
We take this data because each incident is a broken promise. A promise that we made to the family and child to ensure his access to an individualized plan of learning and development.
We set goals around reducing the number of incidents requiring physical restraint. They are an indicator of where we can improve access to educational services. Good things happen with fewer physical escalations:
💥Staff and student injuries decrease.
💥School culture improves.
💥Relationships with families improve.
💥Students without disabilities have fewer interruptions to their learning.
Two points here:
We need the Office of Civil Rights to be fully staffed and functioning. This provides accountability for districts to gather the data needed to understand whether exclusionary discipline is applied disproportionately. It helps us understand patterns of restraint and seclusion for students with disabilities.
This student's data is more than numbers. It is a story. These stories are what allow us to see patterns. Data helps you understand your leadership effectiveness. Involve your team in looking for the places where you could do better. Get curious:
🌱Who are the students that dropped out of high school this year? Go find them. Listen to their story.
🌱Who are the absent students missing 80-90% of school days? Go meet them and hear their story.
🌱Who are the students who are failing all high school classes? Go meet them and learn why.
🌱What can you learn from your aggregate complaint data from Human Resources? Do you see patterns?
Your organization is a collection of leadership promises. Your people deserve a promise kept. Let's build a system where those promises are never broken. It starts with the courage to learn from the broken promises.
Adapt.
Learn.
Lead.
Contact me for help looking at promises you have made, and how to fulfill more of them as a leadership team.