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Staff Writer
Maggie Newman
Recently Middle School Principal Mark Ernst, Assistant Principal Keri Neubaurer and PBIS Senior member Ann Segner talked about the positive behavioral intervention and support program they have implemented in the Big Lake Middle School.
What is PBIS and how does it work
PBIS stands for Positive Behavior Intervention Support and has been implemented in thousands of school nationwide. PBIS is a national initiative program that finds and rewards students for positive behaviors.
This program proves with data evidence that kids respond better with positivity than they do with negativity. The evidence- based features in which this program functions are to define and teach positive social expectations, acknowledge positive behavior, consistent consequences for problem behavior, on-going collection and data for use in decision making and the continuum of intensive individual intervention supports.If a child does something that is not following the Hornet Way/Hornet Pride, faculty will talk to them in a positive way pointing out things that they are doing right and then ask them to point out in what way they were not showing the Hornet Way and Hornet Pride. The kids can then think about it and discuss with faculty how they can better follow the Hornet Way/Hornet Pride, and know that staff is not just pointing out the bad but also telling them some things that they are doing right.
If a student is constantly getting in trouble and the teacher is always pointing out what they did wrong, the kid will then feel like a failure or think that is the only way to get attention. With this program the kids who have behavior issues are more likely to want to succeed if they are getting positive attention as well as having them point out ways they can make better choices. The students who follow the Hornet Way/Hornet Pride are rewarded in many ways. There are classroom incentives but the most popular is stinger tickets. The kids get stingers tickets and can use them on Fridays at the Stinger store to pick out prizes.
The Hornet Way/Hornet Pride
Hornet Way
Respect - be considerate of self, other people and other people’s beliefs and property; Honesty - be truthful; Kindness - be caring, friendly and helpful; Responsibility -be dependable and accountable; Fairness - be committed to the just treatment of others.
Hornet Pride
Positive, Respect, Initiative, Determination, Etiquette
Big Lake Middle School students learn how to show Hornet pride while walking the Hornet way.
PBIS uses collected data to create a multi-tiered framework for establishing the social culture and behavior supports needed for a school to achieve academic and behavioral outcomes for all students. Teachers and staff document where and how often or how many times a behavior occurs within a specified period of time. Behaviors can be discrete or indiscrete but both are documented to help in the collection.
Teachers also document how long a behavior lasts and how much time elapses between behaviors. With this data they can see where problem areas are and create a goal/solution to get the behaviors reduced. This pyramid consists of three tiers and the percent of students that should be in this range. This is the goal for that is set for the PBIS program.
The top Tier (3) represents between 1 and 5% of students who have the most behaviors and need individualized intervention. The middle Tier (2) represents between 5 and 15% of students with some students receiving targeted intervention. The bottom Tier (1) represents 80 to 90% of students who are where they should be.
The Big Lake Middle School has 6% in Tier 3, 18% in Tier 2 and 76% in Tier 1. This information is for the current year but not up to date from when this was presented to the board. From last year to this year there has been a 32% reduction in Tier 2. They are also projecting a decrease in Tier 3 referrals by 53% and a decrease in Tier 2 referrals by 32%, thus gaining 79 instructional hours for both students and staff.
This is the fifth year the PBIS program has been implemented and is clearly making a difference. Fewer interruptions mean more learning, better academic scores and a brighter future for the children.
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