Behavioral

 

What is Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports?

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an approach to supporting students to be successful in schools.  PBIS was developed from research in the fields of behavior theory and effective instruction.  PBIS supports all students through intervention ranging from a school-wide system to a system for developing individualized plans for specific students. School-wide PBIS focuses on the development and implementation of pro-active procedures and practices to prevent problem behavior for all students and improve school climate. 

PBIS World contains links to hundreds of interventions, supports and resources. 

School-Wide Rules
Committed	Prepared	Respectful	Engaged	Professional

 

Why do we have Campus-wide Values?

Having a few simple, positively stated values facilitates the teaching of behavioral expectations across school settings because students will be learning through the same language.  It is also important for staff because instruction focusing on a few simple values will improve teaching and consistency across staff through the use of a common language.

Positively stated values are important, because research has shown that recognizing students for following the values is even more important than catching them breaking the values.  By stating values positively, the hope is that staff will be more likely to use the values to catch students engaging in the appropriate behavior.

By selecting only a few values it is important that the values are broad enough to talk about all potential problem behaviors.  With the values selected, the PBIS team believes that we can then teach all specific behavioral expectations across all school setting according to these simple values. For example, a staff member might say to a student in the gym “thank you for being respectful by eating outside of the gym.” 

What is our goal?

 

The goal is to help foster a campus-wide environment that is predictable, consistent, positive, safe, and equitable.  

 An example of creating positive expectations with these as values can be seen below:

 

Committed	Prepared	Respectful	Engaged	Professional
Be committed to positive relationships with peers.	Be prepared for classes and arrive on time with the correct materials.	Keep common areas clean and free of trash.	Greet other students with kindness and enthusiasm.	Reside only in common areas that are observed by adults.
Be committed to including peers.	Know where you are supposed to be and arrive on time.	Respect each other's space, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.	Help others who are in need.	Use appropriate language.

 

School Values Posters

School posters, designed using the behavior expectations matrix, will be disseminated and posted in key locations throughout the school.  This will help to prompt staff and students to pay attention to the school values and provide a reference to refer students to when reminding students of those values. 

Why teach the Values, Expectations, and Routines during the first week of school?

One of the major reasons to teach behavioral expectations and routines across settings is that so all staff agrees on what is expected.  This will improve consistency across staff in enforcing the school values. A second major reason is that we cannot assume that students know the expectations and routines.

Why do we want to recognize expected behavior?

It is not enough just to teach expected behavior, we also need to regularly recognize and reward students for engaging in appropriate behavior.  Research on effective teaching has found that teachers should engage in a rate of 4 positive interactions with students to every 1 negative interaction (4:1 ratio).  The goal of an acknowledgment system is to increase the number of positive interactions that all school staff have with students.  You get what you celebrate!At Western Sierra, we hand out CPREP cards to acknowledge students for appropriate behavior.