Since beginning a training program that helps staff reduce the number of student altercations by intervening in a non-threatening manner, School District U-46 has seen fewer suspensions and expulsions.
“What we are doing is providing a method for calling for help first,” said John Heiderscheidt, the district’s safety coordinator. “It is all about how you go into that situation…and you don’t respond emotionally.”
Since 2008, Crisis Prevention Institute of Milwaukee has trained 1,322 teachers and staff throughout the Elgin-based school district on how to approach an altercation, identify the aggressor, and use distraction techniques.
The district of more than 40,000 students in pre- through high school serves 10 communities spanning 90 square miles, and employs 5,938 people.
During the 2007-08 school year, before training began, the district had 909 out-of-school suspensions for fighting in grades seven through 12, Heidershceidt said. In the 2010-11 school year, that number dropped to 722.
Heiderscheidt said CPI training has also decreased the number student on staff assaults.
He said before CPI training, when staff moved in quickly to break up a fight, often their approach would only escalate the fight and end up in the staffer being injured by a student.
In 2007-2008, before CPI training, there were 22 expulsions for staff assaults. In school year 2009-2010, after CPI training, there were just two. In 2010- 2011 there were seven expulsions.
CPI is a prevention-based strategy, in which employees are trained to understand how human behavior leads to acting out. They learn how to monitor behavior and recognize when anxiety levels among students begin to rise.
Staff is trained not to approach the conflict as an example of simply bad behavior, but as the result of something else the student may be dealing with outside of school.
“Today, bad behavior may be based on something else at home,” Heiderscheidt said. “And those experiences are knowingly, or unknowingly, going to affect kids lives.”
The process is one that works with anyone who is upset, said Marie McKee, a licensed clinical social worker and certified school social worker at Hillcrest Elementary in Elgin. She is CPI trained and now trains others in the district.
The process teaches you to approach a hostile situation, whether a fight or a bullying incident, in an “open and inviting stance” and not in a way in which anyone feels threatened or intimidated, McKee said.
Approaching a heated, emotional situation, even when it involves a staff member, in an open and empathetic way allows a person to get to the heart of what is causing the conflict, she said
“It’s a way to build a relationship and help the person de-escalate in a way that is really humanistic and supportive,” McKee said. “It is a way to keep students and staff safer.”
Mike Demovsky, assistant principal at Streamwood High School, said he uses his skills everyday to identify and diminish what could become hostile situations. He trained in CPI four years ago and has since become a certified staff instructor. He has trained about 200 U-46 employees.
“The staff is doing well,” he said. “They are making connections with our students.”
Demovsky said he and his staff recognize there are students who “have issues that go beyond the school doors and students can’t just check that at the door. It is part of who they are.
“You see a student come in to your office and slam a backpack down, you know he is in more than just the anxiety phase,” he said.
CPI training helps staff recognize the cause of certain behaviors, diffuse hostile situations and reestablish therapeutic relationships with students, he said, “and accomplish most important thing in the school which is teaching and learning.”
