Maximize 10 Strategies

Definition: Each student is greeted with their preferred name, a warm and genuine tone of voice, and with an individualized statement that communicates that they are welcomed and valued.

Key Features for Equity: 

1. Gain input about meaningful greetings from students and their families.
2. Pronounce each name correctly and confidently.
3. Offer multiple options to meet the needs of all students, including have an "opt out" choice.
4. Greet all students at least once per day.
5. Recognize how your feelings may impact greetings after a challenging interaction.

Definition: A brief (~1 minute) interaction, often initiated by asking a question, in which the teacher tries to connect with the student personally to increase trust and positivity within the student-teacher relationship.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Ask families and students about student interests.
2. Enhance depth and quality by showing curiosity and authenticity during check-ins.
3. Check-in at least once or twice each week with all students in the class.

Definition: A regular routine that provides an opportunity for students to form positive bonds with one another and their teacher and build a welcoming, cohesive, and inclusive classroom community.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Create a structure in which students can practice positive, collaborative, and inclusive behavior.
2. Focus on helping students learn about each other and their lives outside of schools.
3. Promote social, emotional, and behavioral skill development.

Definition: Statements that teachers post, model, and reinforce to describe how members of the classroom should interact to create a safer, and more productive, respectful, and inclusive environment.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Collaborate with students and families to create a set of classroom expectations that motivate behavior via community accountability rather than compliance with adult authority.
2. Show compassion and flexibility by recognizing that there may be multiple ways to meet expectations.
3. Scaffold supports to meet student’s needs.
4. Communicate that all students have the potential to meet expectations given well-matched supports.
5. Reinforce classroom expectations every day and strategically before activities begin.
6. Promote the expectation that if classroom expectations are not met, class members will repair harm in appropriate ways.

Definition: Genuine, positive, and specific acknowledgment (i.e., praise or positive reinforcement) for behaviors that align with classroom expectations and/or individual student growth.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Provide different styles of praise to match student preferences and needs.
2. Ensure that all students receive praise daily.
3. Prioritize praise of behaviors that facilitate inclusivity and community building (not just behaviors aligned with compliance with adult authority).
4. Gains input from students and their families about strengths and/or what motivates them to inform praise statements

Definition: Feedback about behavior given in a manner that preserves the dignity of the student, prevents escalation of the behavior, and minimizes inadvertent rewarding of negative behavior. Teachers label the behavior, connect it to classroom expectations, and use it as an opportunity for student growth and skill development.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Ensure that the class and all individual students receive specific praise more often than corrective feedback.
2. Respond to challenging behaviors using a range of effective strategies
3. Reduce the use of consequences that exclude students from the classroom environment.
4. Consider which students are or are not receiving feedback and whether patterns suggest a need for change in teacher practices.
5. Obtain information from all students involved in the interaction before responding.
6. Pause to avoid responding harshly and/or to reduce the impact of bias on the response.

Definition: Infuse opportunities to teach and model prosocial skills (e.g., cooperating, sharing, problem solving) throughout the day.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Teach prosocial skills in a way that honors diversity, strengths, and needs across and within students.
2. Help students use prosocial skills to create a welcoming and inclusive classroom community, where all students feel valued and respected.
3. Teach prosocial skills grounded in core values of empathy, compassion, and connection.
4. Teach prosocial skills proactively and in response to challenging social interactions in the classroom.

Definition: A set of predictable daily procedures that promote student autonomy and engagement in learning.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Use language that respects and celebrates all identities (e.g., addressing the class as Scholars, Students, or Everyone rather than Boys and Girls; refer to their family, loved ones, grown-ups rather than Mom or Dad).
2. Apply classroom routines with predictability while accounting for individual student needs.
3. Provide visual depictions of routines with images representing the range of identities and cultures in the broader community.

Definition: A question, statement, or gesture that elicits participation and engagement from multiple students at once.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Consider each student's strengths and needs when planning questions.
2. Use a variety of effective questions to promote engagement in learning among all students.
3. Model for students how to effectively question each other.

Definition: Offering all students meaningful options for engaging in academic and prosocial learning activities.

Key Features for Supporting All Students:

1. Promote diverse approaches to learning or solving a problem.
2. Offer students choices across several learning activities each week.
3. Depict choice options in multiple formats.
4. Encourage students to reflect on their choices to learn about their own strengths and needs.