Respect and Protect Violence Prevention Program
A Review of a Popular School Behavior Curriculum
Jul 31, 2008
Every school has behavioral issues to deal with in its student body. Since No Child Left Behand mandates the creation of a safe school environment, programs and curriculum packages designed to address those issues have become more popular. One such program is Respect and Protect.
The Program's Strengths
Respect and Protect has a number of strengths. Perhaps the most important is that it brings consistency to a school's program for monitoring and managing student behavior. It achieves that consistency by creating standardized catalogs of offenses, school-wide procedures for reporting and recording those offenses, and a set of expectations within the school that is more-or-less uniform from one classroom to the next. Stop Bullying Now describes the program this way:
- Respect & Protect is a practical, step-by-step violence prevention and intervention program for schools and communities. Using a system of choices, consequences, and contracts to intervene with youth, Respect & Protect helps schools and communities develop anger management training, conflict resolution, and peer mediation programs that effectively prevent or reduce violence among youth.
The program attempts to shape a school's institutional culture and atmosphere. Students say an anti-violence pledge daily that defines violence and states that violence "will not be tolerated" at the school. Students develop a clearer picture of the concept of bullying and are educated in ways to address bullying in their school.
Respect and Protect works primarily by establishing a cause and effect relationship between behavior and consequences. Behavioral offenses are divided up into major and minor infractions. If a student commits three minor infractions (or one major infraction) in a single day, school staff will fill out a behavior intervention form (a "BIF") - a copy of which goes home with the student. The teacher keeps a copy and the school's office files a copy. Minor behavioral infractions do not carry over from day to day, so each day the student gets a fresh start.
Respect and Protect includes a strong family relationship component. It has the potential to build community relations by bringing mentors into the school to work with problem students.
The Program's Weaknesses
Like any program of its type, Respect and Protect has some drawbacks. Among the most obvious initial drawbacks is the transition period required to implement Respect and Protect. The program requires a relatively significant period of professional development, a strong "buy-in" on the part of school staff, and a period of time to familiarize parents with the new program's expectations and procedures. That's all before students are introduced to the new program. Implementing Respect and Protect requires serious commitment on the part of a school and its staff.
The paperwork and record keeping associated with making Respect and Protect work can, at times, seem burdensome to school staff. The program does not work (not well, at least) if teachers don't take time to fill out behavior intervention forms when misbehavior occurs (or shortly thereafter). The process of tracking minor offenses within a single day becomes more difficult in middle and high school environments where students move from room to room as classes change. But the success of Respect and Protect depends upon accurate record keeping.
While in theory the Respect and Protect program is focused on preventing violence, in practice it intermingles a great deal of responsibility issues into the mix of daily discipline. Students may be penalized for being tardy, for not bringing required materials to class, for not having their homework done, for talking or passing notes during instruction, etc. by having those behaviors counted as a minor infraction.
None of those things, in isolation, constitute violence. But the student still ends up with a BIF to take home. And when students without BIF are later rewarded in some way, students may be excluded from those reward activities without regard to whether they received a BIF for violent behavior or for simple irresponsibility. It should be noted that the confusion of violence issues and responsibility issue in students' minds is not necessarily a good thing.
Another shortcoming for Respect and Protect is its potential to become a model for mostly negative behavior reinforcement. While positive reinforcement is embedded in the program, simple punishment ("that was bad; you get a BIF") is a far more common experience for students with behavioral problems.
Finally, the zero tolerance approach that Respect and Protect takes to both violence and irresponsibility can place students with disabilities at a disadvantage. Schools need to consider how they will accommodate special education students - particular in the area of minor infractions that deal with responsibility issues.
Respect and Protect is an effective program in many ways. If your school has no clear program of behavior management, Respect and Protect is an attractive model. School administrators need to consider the program's drawbacks and commitment requirements.
