Once upon a time, the teacher filled out a form and included a description of the student’s behavior. The principal completed the section of the form telling what the consequence would be. Typically, a copy would go to the parent, one would be retained in the office, and one would go to the teacher. That way, the referring teacher would know how the incident had been handled.
Schools which still use a paper-based discipline referral system have now added an extra layer of work for office personnel. Since the records are stored electronically, office personnel must re-key both the teacher’s write-up and the consequence issued by the principal into the student information system. If this situation describes your school, this post provides a better way of doing things.
Enter Google Forms
Google Forms can replace just about any paper form you are currently using. In he case of discipline forms, you would construct a Google Form that looks something like this…
Many readers will already be familiar with Google Forms and know exactly how to construct what you see above. If you are new to Google Forms, take a moment to watch the video below. Rather than take the time to construct my own demo video, what you see here is an excellent tutorial from Mickie Mueller, Educational Technology Facilitator for Norfolk (Nebraska) Public Schools. This video, as well as second you will see in this post, are used with her permission.
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As you see in the video, when the user submits a form, the data populates the next blank line of a spreadsheet.  For those who have used Google Forms, everything to this point is probably familiar. You do want to be sure that you turn on notifications, so that when a teacher submits a new referral, the creator of the spreadsheet gets an email. Imagine not even being in the building and getting an instant alert when a teacher submits a referral. This screen shot shows there you will find this setting:
Enter formMule
Google Forms users will likely point out one downside of using Google Forms for discipline referrals: the lack of a way to provide feedback for teachers. An “add-on” for Google Sheet known as “formMule” allows the principal to structure the spreadsheet so that it sends the teacher an email with details on the disposition of the referral.
First, be sure your form includes a field for the teacher email. Adding it to the form automatically adds it to the spreadsheet. Second, create a field for “Disposition” on the spreadsheet. This field provides a place to list items such as “Suspended-3 days” or “Conference held with parent.” Adding a field to the spreadsheet does not add it to the form.
Your objective is going to be that when you enter into your spreadsheet the disposition for a student referral, the teacher receives an email automatiaclly. That’s where formMule comes in. Watch this short video by Mickie Mueller that tells you how to install the add-on and walks you through one practical example for using formMule.
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Now, you are ready to go to your own spreadsheet, install the formMule add-on, and configure it to send emails to your teachers. Be sure that the “form trigger” is set to “send on form submit.”
As you work through the process, the next important step is to set the “send condition.” You want the email to be sent to the teacher when the Disposition field is equal to NOT NULL. (You will key the expression not null; it does not appear in a drop-down.) This step is important. When the teacher submits the form, it goes into the spreadsheet instantly. You do not want the email to be generated at that point. Once the principal has worked with the students, determined a disposition for the referral, and has entered that disposition into the spreadsheet, then you want the email to to be sent.
As you continue through the process, you have the opportunity to choose the wording for the email that formMule will send. Here is an example I created:
All of your merge fields (the columns headers from your spreadsheet) are listed on the right-hand side of the screen. Clicking one inserts it into the email wherever the cursor is located. You will notice that when formMule inserts the merge field, it inserts both the name of the field and the merge field itself. For example, if you click on “Student’s name, ” what will be entered into the email is: Student’s Name <<Students’s Name>>. You will manually highlight and delete the words “Student’s Name” and leave <<Student’s Name>>.
Working with Your Student Information System
If the principal shares this Google Sheet with the school’s administrative assistant, at the end of the day, the assistant can update the school’s student information system by creating a new record for the student and selecting the appropriate offense and disposition. The huge time-saver will be with the teacher’s comments.
Rather than having to key teachers’ handwritten into the SIS, the assistant will copy and paste those comments. You could construct this entire referral system in one sitting.
If it’s something you can use, you have plenty of time to create it and test it before the school year begins. Send a couple of friends the link to the discipline form. Let them create a few “fake” referrals. See if you receive email notifications when the referrals are submitted. Issue some “fake dispositions.” See if your friends receive emails.
What are your thoughts? Is this idea one that would solve a need in your school? Feel free to leave a comment. If you implement this system, I would be interested in hearing about your success with it. Â
Lesley Goodwin
July 30, 2016 5:24 pmThank you for posting this! We are moving toward the digital referral as well. One question… Other than making a phone call, how do you notify parents of the referral?
Dr. Frank Buck
July 31, 2016 7:34 amI started in school administration before we had many of the options technology has given us. Initially, I had a form letter for each consequence (detention, in-school suspension, bus suspension, etc.) where I would add the student’s name, appropriate date, and a copy of the teacher’s referral. The parent would have to sign and return the letter. I kept a list of who I was waiting on a letter from and call the student to the office if they did not already return the letter to me. (Failure to return the letter the next day resulted in a “reminder” letter, and then after-school detention of the letter was not returned after that.)
If I was able to get the parent on the phone at the outset, I did not require the letter to be returned.
If you set up a system using a Google Form and formMule, you would have the phone call plus the email. If the parent did not have an email address, you could put your own email address in that field. That would generate a “parent” email to you. Clip off the header, and you would have a hard copy you could send home with the student or send through the U.S. Mail.
Kelly Boortz
September 17, 2016 3:43 pmI have the “on submission trigger” selected but when I enter the info in the disposition field it does not automatically send. Am I missing a step?
Dr. Frank Buck
September 18, 2016 3:33 pmHi Kelly. It would be hard to tell exactly what is wrong without seeing your setup. In addition to having “send on form submission,” be sure that when you are creating your template (email to teacher), you have the send condition set to send “if disposition is not null.” Keep me posted on your progress. The automation is going to really save time on the evaluation process.
Jessie Prince
May 16, 2022 11:13 amI was working on using this system but I cannot find the formMule add-on. Is this still relevant or is there another add-on that works like formMule?
[email protected]
May 17, 2022 9:56 amJessie,
I have not used FormMule in quite a while now. I just looked, the add-on seems to be active. https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/form_mule_email_merge_utility/968670674230
I also found this video, created in Jan. 2021, so as of that time it would surely still have been active.
Let me know what you find.