Resource Roundup for a Return to Distance Learning

Did you get the call your school is going remote? We all hoped our days of distance learning were safely in our rear-view mirror, and yet, here we are. If you’re scheduled to do school from home and you can’t quite remember how, we’ve compiled some resources to jog your memory.

Start Here

All of our applications are available online, which means you have access to them wherever you are so long as you have an internet connection. Here’s an overview of how to use PBISApps during distance learning, then come back here and check out the resources related to specific apps.

Keep Collecting Referral Data During Distance Learning

Collecting, monitoring, and using student behavior data is just as important now as it was when students were physically present in your buildings. By tracking these behaviors, you’ll be able to respond faster and provide support sooner to the students who need it most. Read more about how to continue using SWIS to collect and monitor office discipline referral data during distance learning.

Use Distance Learning as a Location in SWIS

We added Distance Learning to the list of locations available in SWIS. Select this location as an easy way to distinguish behaviors happening in-person from behaviors happening remotely. Read more about it in our news announcement.

Update Days per Month in SWIS

If you won’t collect referral data during the days your students are home, you’ll want to update your days per month information to reflect the number of days during the month when referral data was collected. Check out this news article for all the details about how to make this update and why it’s so important.

Keep Those Tier 2 and Tier 3 Interventions Going

Students enrolled in your Check-in Check-out (CICO) intervention or actively engaged with an individualized plan can continue receiving these supports…with some modifications. We’ve got some ideas for how to keep your CICO program going as well as a few suggestions for individual measures you can establish for students receiving Tier 3 support while they’re doing distance learning.

Track Your Implementation Efforts

PBIS is a framework, and that means it works in any context…even remote ones. Your implementation might look different during distance learning, but you can still assess how it’s working and whether it's giving you the outcomes you’d expected. Check out this news article about how to use PBIS Assessment to track your implementation efforts during distance learning.

Dust Off the Distance-learning Protocols for Your Systems and Practices

Beyond collecting and monitoring data, there is so much more you can do to support your students while they’re at home. In our Teach by Design blog and Expert Instruction podcast, we offered suggestions for how to update your systems and practices to match with your new context.

Teach by Design Articles

• Get Back to School by Going Back to Basics – Don’t look for brand new ways to manage student behavior during distance learning; look for small changes you can make to your strong classroom management strategies.
• 4 Tips for Your Families Trying PBIS at Home – While your students are at home, families might benefit from those strong school-level PBIS structures you know and love. This is one family's experience attempting to create normalcy in the middle of a pandemic.
• A 4-step Plan Handling Behavior Remotely – Managing classroom behaviors when students are physically in front of you is challenging. How on earth are you supposed to respond to problem behaviors over the internet? First, breathe…
• Suspension Prevention: Classroom Management in Distance Learning – Find out how one teacher uses classroom management to prevent problem behaviors from getting out of hand.
• Purpose, Trust, & Time: Tips for Team Meeting Online – If your team will meet virtually for any part of this school year, here are some ways to adapt your meeting processes based on your new, remote reality.
• It’s a Wrap: Wins That Inspire from a Weird Year – Check out the strategies these schools implemented that made all the difference.

Expert Instruction Episodes

• Adapting Practices for Distance Learning - Get some quick tips from our trainers on how you can adapt your in-person instruction for distance learning.
• Restorative Practices in Distance Learning – What are restorative practices? How do they work in typical school years and how they can work while students engage in distance learning?
• Making Virtual Meetings Work – Dr. Erin Chaparro joins us to talk about how teams can make the most of their virtual meetings.
• How PBIS Helped Through the Pandemic – We talk to three experts who share their experiences using PBIS to guide them through the crisis that was the 2020-21 school year.
• More Wins from a Weird Year – Hear from three schools about the things they did to make the 2020-21 school year successful in spite of the challenges, obstacles, and ever-changing mandates.

Check Out Our Partners’ Ideas, Too

Back in July, 2020, the strategies were pouring in from around the country with ideas for how to make school work while students were away. We put together a list of some of our favorites so we could come back to them if we ever needed them again. Turns out: We needed them again.