Horace Mann PBIS Update
1st Edition - October 2019 Training
What is SWPBIS and why are we using it?
SWPBIS is used when "getting tough" is not working with our students. One big piece of what we learned at our training is that punishing our students is not teaching them skills and to remember that an office discipline referral IS NOT an intervention! SWPBIS helps us to teach better ways. The power for PBIS is in the teaching, not just in the rewards. SWPBIS stems from behavioral theory and is specifically about supporting the whole school to create a system that is effective, efficient, relevant, and durable.
A big misconception with PBIS is that it is only about giving students rewards for good behavior. This is just a very small piece of a much bigger picture!!
About your team (and our individual roles)...
JoAnn Dwyer - Special Education Representative
Laurel Neubauer - Upper Elementary Representative
Wendy Florino - Lower Elementary Representative
Bianca Genualdo - Building Coach
Jessica Patti - District and Building Coach
* Eventually, we will add a parent and student (and possibly a community member) component to our team. We're not there yet, but want to let you know that will be our goal for another time.
Our Team Goals
We've set a lot of goals for ourselves as a building during our team time, and we are excited to set out on this journey with all of you! Much like a SMART goal we set a school wide goal for ourselves during our training. It is: "During the 2019-2020 school year, we will create a positive school culture where our students show positive attitude, act responsibly, work together, and show respect, as measured by a score of 24 on the Tiered Fidelity Inventory in June 2020."
During the next few months, before we return to our next team training, you can expect us to do the following, to work toward this goal:
- Share more about our new PBIS system with all of you!
- Start creating visuals and revisit the started matrix
- Talk to the building about the different levels of behavior (3 tiers) and how this correlates to academics
- Begin talking as a school based team about how we want to teach this system to our students
What does it mean to be a trainer and part of the training?
Here's some resources we've been working on...
Husky PAWS Slips
If you have seen them already, please follow the link to check out the small change we made, as we would like to track the location that behavior is being recognized. We will be using the data from these slips to inform our PBIS team at our monthly meetings!
PAWS up!!!
"Paws up, ready to learn."
And you can add...
"When you're ready to use your paws, your voice is off, your ears are perked up and ready to listen, and your paws are up in the air."