Positive Behavior Supports Begins!
Our PBS Team has been engaged in training and planning the launch of our new discipline/bullying program since the beginning of the school year. At this time, we are ready to begin the implementation of this plan. Over the next several months, our teachers will be completing an "Expectations Matrix", which will describe in great detail what student behavior should look like in various locales throughout our school. Those identified areas include: restrooms, hallways, lunchroom, playground, church, and classrooms.
PBS is a comprehensive program designed to improve student academic and behavior outcomes and ensuring that all students have access to the most effective and accurately implemented instructional and behavioral practices and interventions possible. PBS provides an operational framework for achieving these outcomes. More importantly, PBS is not a curriculum, intervention, or practice, but is a decision making framework that guides selection, integration, and implementation of the best evidence-based academic and behavioral practices for improving academic and behavior outcomes for all students.
What makes PBS so unique, is that it is customized to each and every school, and should exude the culture and climate of that school. On Monday, November 30th, we plan to unveil PBS to the student body and begin to share with them our expectations. Since we are a Catholic school, it was important that these expectations drew a parallel with our Catholic identity. Therefore, our overriding expectation is: Live the Gospel. How do we do that? by Respecting Ourselves, Respecting Others, and Respecting the Environment.
We have taken steps to identify what each of those expectations look like in the various settings described above. In the coming weeks, we will be developing lessons for each of the areas and delivering this instruction to the students. The week of November 30th, we will be teaching these expectations as they relate to the restrooms. By the time we break for Christmas, our goal is to add in hallway behavior.
An important point to remember throughout this implementation is that the expectations never change, and the lesson that the students learn will be the same, P-8! Part of what makes this research-based program successful is the power of using one singular message. Our goal is for all students to know, understand, and be able to articulate the expectations in our school.
