Stacy Morgan and Mae Coffman met as high school teachers more than a decade ago, working with students whose social, emotional, and behavioral needs could make teaching incredibly hard. Like many educators, they entered the classroom knowing how to teach their content—but quickly learned that effective teaching also required a deep set of behavior and classroom management skills. When those skills weren't yet in their toolbox, even the best intentions weren't always enough. They experienced the frustration, exhaustion, and self-doubt that can come when you care deeply about your students but aren't sure how to respond when behavior gets in the way of learning. Through years of trial and error, reflection, and learning alongside their students, they began to figure out what effective behavioral instruction could—and needed to—look like.

Those early lessons became the foundation for Emergent Tree's approach to behavioral instruction. But their understanding grew as their careers moved beyond the classroom and into district leadership, where they supported teachers and campus administrators facing the same challenges. They began to see that their experiences were not unique. Across school organizations, educators were being asked to meet increasingly complex behavioral needs without always having the knowledge, skills, systems, or support necessary to do it well. The need wasn't simply for better individual strategies. It was a universal need for better systems that could build every educator's capacity.

As Stacy and Mae pursued their graduate degrees in school behavioral systems at Texas A&M University — they began to turn those experiences into a larger vision for how schools could approach behavior differently. On one drive home from class, they began talking about education through the lens of a tree. Everyone notices the trunk and the branches, but the growth of the entire tree depends on something we don't always see: a healthy root system. They realized education works much the same way. We recognize the importance of curriculum instruction as the branches, but too often we overlook the behavioral systems that serve as the foundation or roots—providing the foundation students and educators need for everything else to grow.

That conversation became the beginning of a bigger idea, and the concept of Emergent Tree was born.

That idea shaped their approach to behavioral instruction. What schools needed was an instructional approach to behavior—one that treats behavior like academics: establish clear expectations, explicitly teach the skills students need, provide guided practice, use data to understand progress, and give meaningful feedback along the way. Just as importantly, educators need the knowledge, tools, and systems to make that approach practical and sustainable in the real world.

Every member of Emergent Tree's team knows what it's like to be an educator. We've walked the same hallways, faced the same challenges, and felt the same exhaustion. We know the toll it takes when educators are left to figure out behavior on their own. And we know the hope that comes when schools move from reacting to behavior to intentionally teaching it—and when systems are designed to make that work easier, not harder.

That's why we exist: to help schools move beyond fragmented strategies and constant crisis response to build proactive, equitable, and sustainable systems where every educator has the knowledge and skills to support student behavior—and every student has the opportunity to learn and succeed.