Common Area Observation

Common Area Observation Data

Educators, parents and students would all agree with the quote; “No one, absolutely no one, has the right to take someone’s happiness away” (“Quotes Frenzy”, n.d). Yet, in our schools, bullying is happening; and the happiness and wellbeing of students are being affected in a terrible way. Initial responses to the increased awareness of the negative affects led many schools to adapt a ‘zero tolerance’ disciplinary approach to handling the prevailing occurrences of bullying (Skiba, Peterson, & Williams, 1997). However, many schools have started to move away from the ‘zero tolerance’ discipline approach and have opted to implement a Positive Behavior Support System (PBSS). This system combines school wide social

skills training, accountability, and consistency in a fashion that develops a positive school culture that maximizes learning, and lead students into self-directed behavior management (Knoff, 2005).
Part of the tiered application of PBSS, is to examine data to determine behaviors that are occurring that are negatively or positively fluctuating the student learning climate. Examining the “special areas” or common areas of the school can lead to better understanding the nature and high frequency of bullying and disciplinary referrals that occur in these areas (Oswald et al., 2005; Long & Alexander, 2010). With a better insight to the specific areas such as the cafeteria, hallways, buses, and playground; a school can implement strategic practices to target bullying or other problem behaviors that are occurring and have beneficial results that are essentially, specific to the school’s individualized needs (Oswald et al., 2005; Long & Alexander, 2010).
This paper reviews data of three observations from a mock school, Lacy Elementary, in the school’s cafeteria during breakfast and lunchtime.

This paper will analyze the trends and patterns of behavior and classify them into five categories: a) student characteristics, issues, and factors, b) teacher/staff characteristics, issues and factors, c) environmental characteristics, issues and factors, d) incentives and consequences, e) resources. This paper will identify areas of concerns based from this data and provide focus questions to consider for a collaborative team to make effective future changes. Finally, ideas for professional development in bullying awareness will be addressed for Lacy Elementary in attempts to support a positive climate needed to deter problematic

behavior.
Observation Findings
Overall
Lacy Elementary School serves approximately 650 students in an urban school district. The majority of the students qualify for federal programs for breakfast and lunch. The building that serves the cafeteria is 60 years old and was designed to accommodate 300 students at a time. Due to an increase in student population from a re-zoning project, an influx of approximately 200 students is being bused to the school.
There is a one-hour period designated for breakfast prior to the start of school. There are two lunch periods within 90 minutes. Lacy Elementary has had difficulties staffing the cafeteria, especially during breakfast time. Teacher’s presence in the cafeteria is not common, as they are not required to be at school during the majority of the breakfast hour and have duty free lunch. Lacy Elementary rely on volunteers to support paraprofessionals, and administration in supervision of the cafeteria.
Student Characteristics, Issues and Factors
Based on the three observations from the cafeteria, in the morning students enter the school building and cafeteria in designated doors and in an acceptable manner.

50 to 75 students enter the cafeteria during the breakfast hour. They use ‘inside’ voices and engage in appropriate activities during the breakfast time. They are observed to ‘grab breakfast, find a seat, eat, chat, and finish homework’. The voice level seems to increase slightly as they exit breakfast, but it is remains at an acceptable level. Most students are responsible for picking up their trash and demonstrating overall correct interactions and behavior choices during this

time.
During the lunch hour, there are approximately 325 students in each lunch period. Students are escorted to the cafeteria by teachers, and wait in long lines for lunch. Pushing and shoving are observed as students scramble for seats. Students talk loud and even shout. Some students do not take a seat and instead wander from table to table. A few students were observed doing homework. Although there is a bathroom checkout procedure, a couple of students persistently asked and was permitted to use the restroom without having the proper ID required by procedure.
Although a bell dismisses students, many lined up at the doors early. Only one door is observed being used and after the bell rang, the students were congested and resorted to pushing. A few students were running while ignoring staff redirects. Students mostly were responsible for leaving the cafeteria clean, but some trays and garbage were left unattended by the students.
Teacher/Staff Characteristics, Issues and Factors
In the morning of the observation, two paraprofessionals and one school administration was present. This ratio of staff to students is around 1:25. Staff rarely has to intervene, as disruptions are not common.
During lunch hour, the teachers escort the students to the cafeteria and leave. Three paraprofessionals, three parents, and two administrators share the supervision of the two lunch periods. This is approximately a ratio of 1 staff to every 40 students in each of the two lunches. The staff is responsible for bringing in extra chairs to help seat additional students. Staff intervenes with the pushing and shoving that is occurring as students are coming in and finding a seat. A bathroom policy is in place, but the administrator initially made exceptions and students were allowed to leave the cafeteria.
Environmental Characteristics, Issues and Factors
The cafeteria is observed to consist of a common area with fold up tables with attached seats. Approximately 25 extra chairs are brought in during the lunch hour to accommodate the extra student. Seating is observed to be a problem as students hustle and push to get seated. Some students wander around from table to table. Another environment aspect that was noted was that the line in which students are getting their lunch is long and the wait time was at least 20 minutes for some students.
Another physical aspect noted during the observation was exiting the cafeteria from one entrance. Crowding and congestion occurred, with pushing and running a contributing addend to the problem. Even though supervision was near the exit, and a command was overheard from a staff to stop students from running, it is not observed whether the cafeteria supervisors, teachers or other staff are held accountable for the monitoring of the transitions of students from the cafeteria to their next destination.

Incentives and Consequences
During the initial observations, there was no mention of verbal praise, positive reinforcing statements, or other reward systems, for students or groups who were demonstrating appropriate, and expected behavior. Staff was intervening to stop certain behavior, but there was no evidence that any neither follow up with practice of appropriate behavior nor were there any follow up consequences observed on this occasion. It seemed as though some procedures were in place (knowing where to line up, bathroom checkout, dismissal by bell, etc.); if students were held consistently accountable to these procedures; some ‘built in’ incentive and consequences would heed.
Resources
The school building is older and was built to accommodate only 500 students. One can infer that having even 300 students in the capacity of the lunchroom was probably not foreseen, therefore crowding is a definite problem. Because of this crowding, the resources, such as appropriate use of space become especially important. The folding tables with attached seats make rearranging of the lunchroom limited. The use of one door as an exit is also a possible limit to the use of the space appropriately.
Utilizing volunteers is an excellent resource to help with the shortage of staffing for monitoring the cafeteria. The presence of administrators ideally should also be a positive resource to the cafeteria climate, as often the presence of an authority figure will deter. In this case, this authority resource did not appear to have this effect.
Data Summary
Results indicated that students were demonstrating appropriate and expected behavior during the breakfast period. The staff ration was 1:25 and very little disturbances occurred. The cafeteria’s environment was accommodating to the students and the transitions into and out of the cafeteria appeared seamless.
During lunchtime, results demonstrated more concerning problems. The students had inappropriate noise levels. Students were in long waiting lines, and although seating was provided, students struggled to remain seated. The staff ratio was 1:40 and although the more severe incidences of pushing had staff intervention and was stopped, very little was observed to limit other misbehaviors. The use of quiet voices, remaining seated until dismissed, entering and exiting the cafeteria in an orderly fashion, and following checkout procedures did not seem of concern or were at least, inconsistently attended to by the staff and administration that were monitoring the behavior.
The incidents and disciplinary intervention was observed to be most apparent during the transitions into and out of the cafeteria. The limited environmental space created havoc while students raced and fought to find seating. The transition out of the cafeteria was limited by only having one door being used, and more chaos was observed.
The presence of positive interaction and/or use of a rewards system as well as use of consistent behavior expectations and procedures with incentives and consequences did not seem apparent. In addition, an administrator was observed making exceptions to one of the procedures in place.
From this data, it is concluded that the staffing and students within the cafeteria or special setting are in need for intervention. The skirmishes that were observed are not direct evidence of bullying, however this “general lack of civility” and atmosphere increases the risk of bullying and is conducive to potentially an unsafe school environment (Sugai, Horner, & Algozzine, 2011).
The areas of concern that should be addressed as part of the intervention plan are:
1. “Physical contact” between students
2. Rules and expectations
3. Adequate use of resources: Adequate arrangement/space of equipment, staffing, and students