Inclusive schooling solutions

I have spent years documenting institutional harm. Documentation feels natural to me, perhaps because my professional background as solution architect and business analyst. Professionally, I’m used to solving problems, but in education, not having classroom experience, I feel very clear that I can say what works for my kid, but I can’t say what works for managing 26 kids. Budget critique feels accessible. Policy analysis feels manageable. I can examine procurement patterns and funding formulas and administrative procedures with reasonable confidence that I understand what I am seeing, that I can name the problems with precision.

Classroom solutions feel harder. Everyday practices that might replace the coercive systems, the actual pedagogical approaches that could transform how educators respond when children struggle, are difficult, for me… Especially in a system of scarce resources. I resist prescribing classroom management strategies because I am not an educator, because I recognise my expertise lies in systemic analysis rather than classroom instruction, because telling teachers how to manage twenty-six children while I work alone at my computer feels both arrogant and absurd. I know what harms children—the room clears, the partial schedules, the safety plans that function as containment—but articulating alternatives requires pedagogical knowledge I simply do not possess.

Which makes finding resources like The Inclusion Podcast’s Episode 35: Why Behavior Charts Fail and What to Do Instead feel like discovering gold, like encountering people who understand both the critique and the alternative, who can dismantle coercive systems while simultaneously building dignity-based practice.

Julie Causton and Kristie Pretti-Frontczak speak with the authority of educators who have lived in classrooms, who understand the pressures teachers face, who can offer concrete strategies rather than abstract principles. Their work fills the gap my advocacy cannot—the space between naming institutional harm and describing what genuine inclusion actually requires in daily practice.

The Inclusive Schooling podcast episode opens by acknowledging that educators continue deploying behaviour charts, clip systems, Class Dojo tracking, public consequence displays because they believe these systems work, because the temporary compliance looks like success, because good intentions mask the relational damage these practices inflict.

Causton describes running an experiment with her college students—implementing a behaviour chart system in her classroom, watching adult learners become silent and compliant out of fear, then processing with them afterward, including:

• how the chart created fear that corroded trust,
• how public consequences made them question their relationship with her, and
• how effectively the system worked to produce compliance while simultaneously destroying the conditions required for genuine learning.

The experiment shows that systems designed to control behaviour through public shame achieve temporary compliance while inflicting lasting harm, that the students most targeted by these systems—neurodivergent children, disabled children, children already experiencing trauma—suffer the deepest damage while appearing to “need” the most intervention.

Pretti-Frontczak articulates the shift from “working on students” to “working with students.” Causton names the language shift from “attention-seeking” to “needs attention,” from “requires consequences” to “requires support”—reframes that acknowledge behaviour as communication rather than defiance, that center unmet needs rather than behavioural remediation. These simple translations carry enormous weight because they redirect institutional focus from pathologising children to examining environmental conditions, from demanding compliance to building relationship, from public consequences to private dignity.

The episode offers alternatives to behaviour charts and public discipline systems, downloadable resources that translate theory into practice. Their eighth alternative particularly struck me: examine the classroom, not the student. Ask whether content engages children, whether students feel safe and seen, whether environmental modifications might reduce struggle. This inverts the logic I document relentlessly in BC district practices—the assumption that struggling children require fixing rather than that classroom conditions require transformation, the framework that locates deficiency in neurodivergent bodies rather than in educational environments designed for neurotypical compliance.

When parents approach their schools requesting dignity-based alternatives to coercive discipline, administrators often respond that such approaches sound lovely in theory but prove impossible in practice, that educators lack capacity to individualise responses, that public consequence systems provide necessary structure.

Having resources created by experienced educators who can describe exactly how to implement alternatives—how to respond effectively in the moment, how to build individual support plans collaboratively with students, how to shift language and lens before attempting strategy changes—strengthens the case that dignity-based practice exists not as abstract ideal but as achievable pedagogy.

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Listen to the full episode at The Inclusion Podcast, and download their nine alternatives to behaviour charts and clip systems. For families navigating districts that continue deploying coercive discipline despite inclusive policy rhetoric, this resource articulates what genuine alternatives require—not just theory, but daily practice that honours children’s dignity while supporting their development.

I also loved Bagging Behavior Charts and can’t wait to read more!

Resources for families