The first step for a program implementing the CA Teaching Pyramid model is to establish a program-wide Leadership Team. At a minimum, the Leadership Team consists of:

• An administrator
  • This should include a site-level administrator as well as a program-level administrator if multiple sites from a single program are participating
• Supervisors
• A classroom teacher or teachers
• Support specialists who may be anyone who would facilitate and develop behavior support plans (individuals could work with multiple sites), including mental health partners, school psychologists, disability specialists, educational coordinators, special education partners, etc.

Responsibilities of the Leadership Team:

• Meet regularly to lead program-wide implementation
• Provide support for training, coaching, and classroom practices
• Develop a vision and action plan for long-term systems change and sustainability
• Attend all training sessions to gain an understanding of the concepts and to provide meaningful support for implementation
• Model concepts of the CA Teaching Pyramid:
  • Promote healthy social-emotional development through positive interaction with adults and children
  • Promote the “Expectations for Behavior” in all aspects of the program including the Leadership Team
  • Determine the meaning of challenging behavior
  • Identifies policies and procedures for preventing and addressing challenging behavior
  • Demonstrate the parallel process: treating teachers the way that they expect teachers to provide for children
• Champion and provide support for implementation and sustainability

Leadership Team Meetings

Generally, there are at least five (5) leadership team meetings during the training cycle. The Leadership Team meets one full day prior to the training and continues to meet regularly during the training. This team becomes a model of shared decision-making within the program and continues to meet after training is finished to act as the Steering Committee for implementation of the CA Teaching Pyramid approach, to monitor technical assistance and additional training needs, and to problem-solve as needed for classroom- or site-specific issues.

Provided by WestEd

WestEd provides facilitation for building and sustaining a program-wide Leadership Team. WestEd will work with a contact person or small team to set-up an initial Leadership Team Meeting. In addition to the five meetings with the Leadership Team, WestEd will be available to provide a recruitment session to interested administrators to explain the program and commitment. The Leadership Team also attends the training sessions. This participation is crucial in order to help the training become more meaningful during the training and effective during implementation.

The CA Teaching Pyramid training series is designed to meet the diverse needs of adult learners. Training methods include a variety of interactive strategies, including discussions, video examples, scenarios, and hands-on activities. Each module in the series builds on the key concepts from the previous module(s).

The purpose of the CA Teaching Pyramid training series is to introduce key concepts, provide practical strategies, and engage in meaningful learning experiences to support the integration of the CA Teaching Pyramid approach into everyday teaching practices.

Module 1

Promoting Children’s Success: Building Relationships and Creating Supportive Environments

This module addresses universal strategies for promoting healthy social and emotional development and preventing challenging behavior.

Topics included in this module:

• Building positive relationships with children, families, and colleagues
• Designing environments, schedules, and routines
• Establishing expectations
• Implementing activities that promote child engagement
• Modifying and adapting materials and activities to meet the individual needs of all children, including those with disabilities
• Providing encouragement and positive feedback to children

Module 2

Social-Emotional Teaching Strategies

This module focuses on effective strategies for facilitating children’s social and emotional development and teaching foundational skills to children, including the ability to solve problems, communicate emotions appropriately and effectively, and build friendships.

Topics included in this module:

• Identifying teachable moments
• Facilitating the development of friendship skills
• Teaching children to identify, understand, and express emotions
• Teaching how to manage strong emotions
• Teaching problem solving and conflict resolution

Module 3a

Individualized Intensive Interventions: Determining the Meaning of Challenging Behavior

This module focuses on effective strategies for observing children and identifying the meaning/function of their behavior as a means of identifying skills that could be targeted for instruction.

Topics included in this module:

• Identifying the function of challenging behavior
• Identifying behaviors and social skills to target for intervention

Module 3b

Individualized Intensive Interventions

After determining the meaning of children’s challenging behavior and the skills the child needs to learn to communicate that meaning more effectively, a plan is developed to support the child’s use of the new skills and to decrease the likelihood that the child will need to use challenging behavior.

Topics included in this module:

• An introduction to the Positive Behavior Support process
• Developing a plan for supporting social emotional development and preventing challenging behavior through the use of the Routines Based Support Guide
• Using a team approach to addressing challenging behavior & social emotional needs

Specialized Training for the Top of the Pyramid and Family Modules

At the end of the training series for teaching staff, two additional trainings are offered for a subset of the participants. Each of these is described below:

The “Top of the Pyramid” training is a full day focused on the development of Positive Behavior Support Plans based on the CA Teaching Pyramid materials. Participants will go deeper with materials introduced in the final module (3b) and practice developing plans based on case studies. This training is intended for:

• Administrators
• Anyone who typically supports the process of developing behavior plans (school psychologist, mental health consultant, special education staff, director, etc.)
• Teachers (optional for most teachers, as they are generally participants in the development of behavior support plans, but do not have responsibility for leading the development)

The “Positive Solutions for Families” modules for use with parents will be introduced for use by the programs. The program(s) receiving the training identifies teams of two individuals who can conduct groups for parents or family members.

• At least one member of the team should have experience facilitating parent groups.
• Many programs have classroom teachers as part of the team.
• One staff can be the lead on facilitating the groups with support from various members of the staff.

All interested staff members are encouraged to attend.

Strong partnerships with family members are an important component when implementing the Teaching Pyramid framework. In addition to weaving family perspectives throughout the teacher training, separate materials are designed for parent groups. There are a series of six sessions in the materials WestEd San Marcos provides a one-day “training of facilitators” to appropriate parent meeting facilitators for conducting the parent groups. These materials are also available in Spanish and Chinese.

As a companion to the CA Teaching Pyramid trainings, strength-based coaching is provided to facilitate understanding and implementation of CA Teaching Pyramid practices. An internal coach is identified by the program to provide ongoing, onsite support to classroom teachers in implementing CA Teaching Pyramid Practices. The internal coach can be a curriculum specialist, an assistant director, a lead teacher, or a director. It is recommended that the internal coach not have supervisorial roles when possible. The WestEd coach serves as a mentor to the internal coach.

The coach conducts classroom observations followed by team meetings that include the teachers, internal coach, administrator and other support professionals such as mental health consultants. The meetings give staff opportunities to reflect together upon the meaning of the CA Teaching Pyramid concepts and to strategize about the practical application of the tools in the classrooms. The coach facilitates the creation of a Coaching Action Plan that captures these strategies and the supports needed for teachers to put them into practice. Coaching is an iterative process, with particular attention paid to the importance of the bottom two levels of the Pyramid and the implementation of the strategies over time.

The Internal Coach and other support staff are encouraged to meet regularly with the teachers to celebrate successes and reflect upon the Coaching Action Plan in regard to fidelity of implementation. This type of comprehensive, classroom-based coaching strengthens teacher understanding of the framework and promotes program-wide implementation.

Provided by WestEd

• At least one coaching visit per classroom following each training module
• Observation of classroom teams to identify Pyramid practices in place and possible next steps
• Classroom team meeting to discuss observation and review concepts and strategies presented in trainings
• Development of a Coaching Action Plan used to identify desired areas of focus and strategies for implementation
• Follow-up consultation via email and phone for support in between visits

Programs that have embraced the CA Teaching Pyramid and have completed the minimum recommended training series (i.e., the three training modules for all staff, training of facilitators for parent-education sessions, and specialized training on the top of the pyramid) and coaching may want to provide additional training and support for their programs to ensure sustainability.

WestEd offers a variety of trainings that provide a deeper understanding of topics that are introduced in the training modules, as well as refresher trainings. Refresher trainings may serve to solidify the knowledge base of previous attendees while perhaps introducing the CA Teaching Pyramid concepts and practices to new staff. Follow-up technical assistance and support to Leadership Teams may be needed at the beginning of a new school year to bring new members up to speed and to either ensure implementation of an action plan or to develop a new one. Previously trained cohorts also may be interested in WestEd’s facilitation of Cross-Cohort Leadership Team Meetings to learn about and share ideas and lessons learned with other cohorts. Additional coaching sessions for classrooms or additional sessions for training internal coaches also may benefit sustainability efforts.

Advanced Training Topics

• Diverse Perspectives on Behavior: Honoring Culture and Family Through Dialogue
• Acknowledge, Ask, Adapt: Training Strategies to Improve Communication with Family Members in Collaborative Relationships
• Spunky or Squirrely? The Relationship between Temperament and Behavior
• Using Music, Art, and Movement to Support Social-Emotional Development
• Skills for Life: Going Deeper with Conflict Resolution and Problem-Solving
• Close to Magic: Positive, Descriptive Acknowledgement Can Change Everything
• Practice Makes Permanent! Increasing Language Models while Building the Brain and Developing Social-Emotional Skills

Refresher Training

Focus on Beginnings

• Think about what to emphasize at the beginning of the school year
  • Expectations
  • Visual Schedule
  • Transitions
  • Relationships with children and families
• Share with children and families

Technical Assistance for Leadership Teams

• Leadership Team
• Cross-Agency Leadership Team Meetings to include development of internal coaches, and cross-site sharing

Additional Coaching

• Coaching sessions for classroom teachers
• Special mentoring sessions for internal coaches