PROJECT NEST: Essentials
Practices Behind Every Decision the Program Makes
Essentials is the largest strand, about eleven hours, and it holds the practices everything else runs on. A referral decision. A behavior plan. A mediation. A classroom check-up. An exit plan. None of it is optional equipment. This strand covers how a behavior gets defined and assessed, how a whole classroom gets tuned before any one student's behavior is interpreted, how a student comes through the door and stays on the agenda afterward, and how they leave well. These are the practices that separate a program from a room.
You will move from describing behavior precisely enough to measure it, through working out what the behavior accomplishes for the student, to building and teaching a replacement for it. You will read classroom observation data as a pattern rather than a verdict, resolve conflict between students through structured mediation, and teach expectations with a class rather than at it. You will design how students reach an intensive support and stay on a team's agenda afterward, run a problem-solving meeting that produces decisions instead of sympathy, and repair harm before reaching for consequence. It closes on planning a student's exit from the day they arrive.
PROJECT NEST
What's in the Essentials strand?
From Description to Intervention
Turn a description of behavior into a plan to change it.
From Description to Intervention teaches educators to move from describing behavior to changing it. The module builds definitions precise enough that two observers would score the same event the same way, works through the methods available for collecting behavior data and how to choose among them, and uses a functional behavioral assessment to establish what a behavior is accomplishing for the student. It then turns that finding into a written plan, selects a replacement behavior that meets the same need, and breaks that skill into steps small enough to teach — so every adult around the student reinforces it the same way. It closes with a decision model that turns an assessment result into a specific intervention rather than a strategy chosen from a menu.
Tuning the Whole Classroom
Read the classroom before you interpret the student.
Tuning the Whole Classroom examines the classroom itself as the unit of support. Educators learn to read classroom observation data as one pattern rather than a set of separate scores, so a room's conditions are understood before any individual student's behavior is interpreted. The module then covers peer mediation — what governs it, how a session runs, how student mediators are prepared, and what keeps sessions consistent enough to trust. It finishes with expectations taught and practiced with students rather than posted at them, praise specific enough to name what a student actually did, and the moves that make behavior change hold while preserving a student's dignity through correction.
The Door and the Table
Build the door. Then build the table.
The Door and the Table covers how a student reaches an intensive support and what keeps them on a team's agenda afterward. The module works through noticing and screening, the design of a referral process, and the information that should travel with a referral — including the questions about instruction, curriculum, and environment a team owes a student before locating a problem inside the learner. It then places the access decision with the building team, treats placement as a question of intensity rather than category and takes on the eligibility disputes that strand students in the meantime. The second half teaches structured team problem solving: who does what, what the record must hold, and how a team knows the process is being followed.
Repair Before Consequence
Repair first. Consequence second.
Repair Before Consequence emphasizes repair as the first response to harm rather than the last. The module defines restorative practice and shows how it raises accountability instead of lowering it, then puts it to work in the everyday routines that build a class into a community and in the conversations that follow harm, matched to the scale of what happened. It sets that alongside the code of conduct, walking the range of formal responses a school can take, where traditional discipline still applies, and how a student is welcomed back afterward. It ends with exit and aftercare: planning the return to a local classroom from the day of entry, fading support in stages, and keeping contact after a student leaves the roster.