Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2020! After nearly 20 hours of training, and as many hours of work and dedication, 8 Cohort 3 schools will launch schoolwide PBIS in January! When PBIS is fully implemented, students and staff experience a school environment with:

1. Identified and clearly defined behavioral expectations.
2. Explicitly taught expectations.
3. Student and staff behaviors are monitored.
4. Students/staff receive acknowledgement to encourage expected behaviors.
5. Misbehavior is corrected and expectations are re-taught.
6. Data is collected and used to make school the best environment possible.
 
Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 schools continue to implement PBIS, and have been recognized by MIBLSI for their efforts.

PBIS Quick Tip

George Sugai, Ph.D., recently retired professor from University of Connecticut, educator and researcher who over the last 20 plus years with colleagues, developed PBIS for the Office of Special Education, U.S. Department of Education, came to Berrien RESA on October 21, 2019. 

He gave an overview of PBIS and focused on the importance of coaching. 

Big Idea 1: PBIS is about creating predictable environments and feelings of safety through relationships. Quality relationships lead to higher levels of engagement between adults and students.  

Big Idea 2: Coaching is essential to help adults be able to support and engage students. Coaches are sustainability drivers and everyone has a role. 

• Coaches bridge training and implementation.
• Coaches is not just an individual - coaching is shared activities, maximizing implementation fidelity and student benefit.
• Coaches provide constructive prompting, modeling and reinforcement.
• Coaches are involved with continuous progress monitoring.
   

PBIS/SEL Academy

PBIS/SEL Academy meets 7 Wednesdays per school year from 4 to 6 p.m. Initially designed as an outreach tool for teachers wanting to learn more about PBIS, the group has expanded and now includes community members in addition to administrators, teachers, school social workers and school counselors. 
  
At our first PBIS/SEL Academy session we talked about incorporating restorative practices into our daily teaching lives. We also talked about how being restorative is finding the right balance between High Levels of Control (limits, expectations, and discipline) and at the same time having High Levels of Support (nurturing, encouragement, and concern). The two main takeaways we shared were:

     Idea #1: We are more effective when we act as consultants with our students, rather than managers. Managers are        more likely to micro-manage, and to dictate what students should do specifically. Consultants are more likely to facilitate and guide students as the "guide on the side", which is far more effective in helping students develop fluency and independence.

     Idea #2: We can learn with someone; we can't learn to someone, we can't learn for someone. A quote that summarizes this idea well: One of the basic premises of Restorative Practices is that “human beings are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things WITH them, rather than to them or for them.” - Wachtel, 2005.

The second and third PBIS sessions focused on Trauma Informed Practices. The following are the takeaways from those sessions:

     Idea #1: Poker face is a myth -- we carry that which we haven't healed from and it affects our lives, our interactions with others, and our productivity. It doesn't matter how well we hide it, it comes out through the way we interact with the world around us. 

     We talked about how we and our students react and behave within the framework of "fight, flight, or freeze" mechanisms, and we explored how these mechanisms express themselves in the classroom. We also discussed how certain students who have had more adverse experiences have a much more active limbic brain and are therefore more likely to act from fear, triggering the "fight, flight, or freeze" mechanisms.

     Idea #2: We teach what we know: We discussed the difference between asking "what is wrong with you" versus "what do you need". Furthermore, we discussed the formula to help students move from their limbic brain (the downstairs brain) to the prefrontal cortex (the upstairs brain) -- Regulate, Relate, and Reason.  We shared a few examples of how this works and also talked about how the same three Rs are applicable to adults. Finally, we shared the three core elements essential to build safety: Predictability in the environment, Consistency of reactions, and Relationships that include quality interactions.

Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) is one of the best ways to incorporate Trauma Informed practices in our schools and to protect students. We spent time exploring the following areas:

• Our school/classroom values. 
• Common areas (building level) or activities (classroom level) for which we need to teach expectations.
• The role of the adult in the room-an area that is often overlooked.

We hope you will join us for future PBIS/SEL Academy sessions. Register today.