Welcome to the start of the new school year! I would write more but this is my 3rd post of the day, the previous 2 were mysteriously deleted! Feel free to check out my pictures and use my “Office Staff Roles” in principals 200 to help you implement this at your school. More info to come – promise!
First off, I apologize for the lack of updates this year. Some major life changes (did I mentioned I’m engaged?? he put a ring on it!) and also a career change (guidance counselor, woopwoop!) have taken a toll on my free time. My goal is one post every two weeks, so please check back often for updates!
Today is day one of decorating my guidance suite for the 2013-2014 school year and I couldn’t be more trilled! I work at a Charter School in Philadelphia (same one that I worked as a special education teacher) with grades kindergarten, 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th & 8th grade. There will be approximately 450 students across these six grades. School starts September 9th and I’m working on decorating (obviously…its the best part!) and putting my schedule together (HELP!). I will also be researching the topics for this coming school year. Does your school have a monthly character trait? If so, tell me more!
Positive Behavior Intervention & Support (PBIS) is in FULL SWING this coming school year! “School Culture” is very important to us, so we’ve changed the title of PBIS to The School Culture Team. We are working on our “big 8” systems and modeling/role playing with the staff during orientation. We spent a lot of time this summer with our School Culture Team and designed these school-wide and in-class systems such as arrival, dismissal, hallway transitions, getting supplies in the classroom, etc. Our staff will hear all about of these proposed systems during the next few weeks and work within grade teams to choose what works well for them. These systems are written as scripts and seem so silly to write but even sillier to act out (and super entertaining, I must say). When you act out your plan (literally pretend your staff is your students) you realize what works and what is too wordy. It can be as small as saying “collect materials” instead of “put your materials away”. Practicing through role play has also been effective in showing teachers exactly what we mean – when we say repeat, we mean it. When you do it the way it is written, it will be more effective (especially since we spent so much time tweaking it!). Have you had any experience writing “scripts”? if so, how did it go over with your staff?
One more small change we are making this year is that students are allowed to be in zone 2 (quiet) in the hallways and during transitions instead of zone 1 (silent). The reason for this is we are modeling REAL LIFE. Have you ever had to be silent in a mall hallway? how about an office building? We want to show our students how to act in the real world. I’m hoping teachers find this as a blessing and that this maximizes learning time. Do students have to be silent in your hallways during transitions? How does that work for you?
Best of luck with your school year! I have a feeling this will be the BEST ONE YET! enjoy!
Remember, your students & school are a reflection of YOU! (quoted by my amazing Principal) 🙂
It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to make a complete update to my behavioral world so here is a mini one to keep you interested!
Penny wars was a HUGE success! We were able to raise $650 in a 2-week period…we collected over 37,000 PENNIES…amazing. Thank goodness for TD Bank’s Penny Arcade is all I have to say! Since it was a competition between homerooms, all students will be receiving their incentive this week (who doesn’t love pizza and ice cream!)
January has come with a complete reset plan for our company. It is a time to reflect on practices and reset to ensure that everyone understands. We did it at the corporate level, school level and now classroom. I’ve seen a BIG impact in the overall compliance in my classroom and it started with this reset.
On Saturday, our core SWPBIS team went to a PaTTAN training. With all the hard work we’ve put in this year, much of the training was review but we were able to see data from staff surveys. From there we created our action plan for better implementation. It was a great feeling when the presenters from PaTTAN recognized me from the videos on our website!
Tomorrow we will be having our first assembly of the new year, “Positivity Promotes Peace” celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s real birthday and all the successes we’ve had in the past few months! We will have student performances on drums, we will showcase our award-winning basketball team and kickoff our PSSA countdown in style.
I will be back to update more as time goes on and give some tips for starting SWPBIS and what i’ve learned from this time last year! Hope you are having a wonderful New Year
First thing first – hope you are home safe with your family! Second, hope you are using your time wisely and getting work done before the power goes out! Philadelphia is getting a direct hit so anyone here, please be careful!!
Back to work – On November 16th we will be hosting our 1st Annual World Tour Day! This will be an incentive for students because they will have to use tickets to participate. Each teacher will host a country and come up with culture, food, music, and dance activities for rotating classes to experience. Has your school hosted an International Day or Culture Day? Share your thoughts and ideas! More info and documents to share coming soon.
Here we go again teachers! After an AMAZING summer (mine was filled with the beach, camping, puppies and sleeping) its time to go back to the world of education. As you can see, my classroom is already finished and I still have a week to do some planning so I feel somewhat prepared for kids to come back. I was pretty blessed this summer to be able to spend numerous days in a coffee shop designing our new behavior model! Hopefully that makes you as excited as it does me! 😉
Our Vare Cares Behavior Model is the is now the example behavior model for all 6 of our schools – wohoo! I was able to present (along with my principal) the Vare Cares Way to all of the administrators in the company. Below you will find some of the key items for the 2012-2013 Vare Cares Behavior Model. We are also currently working on lesson plans for the first few days of school to teach our students the behavioral expectations for each location in the school. I plan on video taping some of the lessons to put together for another Vare Cares video but you’ll just have to wait to see that. More info to come and I’ll keep on sharing resources!
Best of luck and have a POSITIVE 2012-2013 school year!
So now PBS is really taking off!!! After attending the AMAZING PBIS Conference in Hershey, I then met with fellow schools to discuss implementation of PBS. My school definitely has the most positive behavior supports happening right now…and together with this new PBS team with reps from all the other schools, we will create guidelines for implantation at the district and school-wide level. My hope is that we are still able to be flexible at our schools and that together we can share data and ideas.
Oh and BTW our PBS Kickball School-wide incentive was a big success! Students and teachers LOVED it and really enjoyed the special time together. Our next incentive is Monday, students and teachers will be having a picnic in the park across the street with an extra 1/2 hr of recess! Here is our June newsletter with information on summer programs for students and adults!
School will be out this time next week so I hope to add lots of PBS info this summer! Thanks for reading, enjoy!
DAY 1: Workshop Name: Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports: Providing a Continuum of Supports for All Learners
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 8:30AM-5:50PM
Workshop Name: 1. Implementing 3-Tier Models for Supporting Children’s Behavior: A Seamless System
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 8:30AM-10:00AM
Workshop Name: 4. Family and Community Involvement in District-Wide Implementation of SWPBIS: A Panel Discussion
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 10:25AM-11:55AM
Workshop Name: 9. Keynote: Practical Classroom Strategies at the Targeted Group and Intensive Need Levels
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 12:45PM-2:15PM
Workshop Name: 10. Practice Based Coaching: Supporting Teachers to Implement Effective Practices with Fidelity
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 2:40PM-5:50PM
Workshop Name: Implementers´ Reception & Poster Session
Date(s): 5/23/2012
Scheduled Time: 6:00PM-8:00PM
DAY 2: Workshop Name: Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports: Successful Strategies and Practices
Date(s): 5/24/2012
Scheduled Time: 8:30AM-3:25PM
Workshop Name: 21. Building Tier 2/3 Capacity for PBIS
Date(s): 5/24/2012
Scheduled Time: 8:30AM-10:00AM
Workshop Name: 24. SWPBIS Coaching: More than Reminders
Date(s): 5/24/2012
Scheduled Time: 10:25AM-11:55AM
Workshop Name: 30. Wow! Watching Outstanding Warriors Succeed within a PBIS Framework
Date(s): 5/24/2012
Scheduled Time: 1:00PM-2:30PM
Workshop Name: 36. Keynote: PBIS Implementation: Current Trends and Future Considerations
Date(s): 5/24/2012
Scheduled Time: 2:55PM-3:25PM
So I got some pretty good news this week! 🙂 My company is going to pay for me to go to a PBS Conference! It is a PaTTAN Conference:
“The Pennsylvania Positive Behavior Support (PAPBS) Network Implementers´ Forum “Going to Scale: 3 Tiered Logic” is sponsored by the Bureau of Special Education, Pennsylvania Department of Education, with support from the member agencies of Pennsylvania’s State Leadership Team (SLT) for School Based Behavioral Health (SBBH). The forum is designed as a venue for stakeholders who are interested in advancing supports for all students, including students with disabilities, in the implementation of school or program-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). The forum serves as a means to provide participants with information about establishing, maintaining and expanding PBIS through a three-tiered decision making framework that guides the selection, integration and implementation of evidence-based practices for improving behavior outcomes for learners.
The Implementers’ Forum addresses five specialized program strands at the early childhood, elementary, middle and high school levels:
It is happening this week in Hershey, PA – I’ll miss 2 days of school, one of our incentive days…but I’m super pumped. I’ll update all the amazing stuff I learn! Wish me luck.
Also, here is the link to watch our PBS Expectations Video!
Hello Education World! Just a quick update about our School-wide PBS! We had our kick off celebration today where students learned about our POSITIVE BEHAVIOR SUPPORT plan and incentive program! See the Prezi students followed (Vare C.A.R.E.S Prezi -just click the play button) which shows all our school-wide expectations! In addition, students watched a Behavioral Expectations video (starring our students, of course) that showed students how to follow our new behavioral expectations. Our PBS team did a great job presenting about each area (cafeteria, hallway, stairway, office, bathroom & classroom).
Students really enjoyed the presentation which also included a clip from The Electric Company starring Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman about “Honest John” so we could have a discussion about honesty – which tied all of our expectations together. It was an awesome feeling to see all the positivity today and hopefully this school wide program will help our students become the best they can be!
The Urban Educator 
