- Welcome to our "PBIS in 60 Minutes" webinar.
This will serve as just kind of an overview,
a little teaser about what PBIs is,
but we don't expect you to be able to walk away
from this webinar and go and implement PBIS
either as an individual teacher or as a school team.
There are lots of readiness activities
and continued training that we offer
in order to get school teams up and ready
to be implementing positive behavioral interventions
and supports in their schools.
We are Vermont PBIS.
So I'm Amy Wheeler-Sutton,
and I'm here today with Sherry Schoenberg and Anne Dubie.
And we are excited
that, I think, some of you who are on today
are actually from another state.
So, curious how you found us, but welcome,
and then several Vermonters as well.
And most of you from Vermont are in schools
that are already implementing PBIS.
So you might be new to your team,
new to your school, or just looking for a refresher.
So we'll get a sense of that in a minute with a quick poll.
So we will keep you muted during the session,
but this is a small group.
If you wanna unmute and ask a question, feel free.
You can type into the chat box
and feel free to show or hide your video,
whatever you're more comfortable with, today.
We are recording,
so if you need to step away
and would like to access the recording,
or if you wanna send this to a teammate
or colleague at school who couldn't be here,
but you would like to have this information,
we will post the recording on our website in a few days
after it gets captioned and you can feel free to share it.
And Sherry has put the link to the materials
from this webinar in the chat box.
And so right now,
the only material that's up there is this PowerPoint.
But if you download the PowerPoint from Google Drive,
everything that's linked here,
if you're viewing it in presenter mode
you'll be able to click on all of these links
throughout the presentation.
So quickly, just to kind of get acquainted,
if you can type in the chat box what school you're from
and what brought you to this webinar today.
Welcome Cindy.
Al right, Jasmine, you're one of our out of staters
from Maryland, awesome.
Sean, Wyndham Southeast social worker, awesome.
I bet there are a lot of itinerant
and long-term subs out there this year.
Brookside Primary School, awesome.
Okay, well welcome,
and hopefully this webinar meets your needs
for whatever your purpose was for coming today,
but we are available after this webinar for questions.
And then also just ongoing,
you can email us at any time
if you have questions that come up that weren't addressed
in the webinar for you today.
Tina, our good friend, Tina,
validating what she learns, not what she thinks she knows,
and learning new information.
And Shelly from Illinois, awesome,
wanting to expand your PBIS knowledge, welcome.
So like I said, hopefully after this webinar
you will have an overview
and a little bit of understanding about PBIs within an MTSS,
so a multi-tiered system of support.
We will mostly be spending time on the universal level
of PBIS at this point,
but we will briefly talk about targeted and intensive.
And then the last section is really for schools
that are not yet implementing
and are looking to implement some next steps.
So when we get to that part,
I'll probably go pretty quickly
'cause I don't think a lot of people that are on today
are in that position.
So we're just gonna do a quick poll
of your current level of familiarity with PBIS.
So Sherry's gonna bring up the poll
and you'll see it pop up on your screen in a minute.
And I think I won't be able to see it,
so you'll have to tell me what they say, Sherry.
- Okay, we got about 83% know a little bit,
and 14% know a lot, which is one,
and another 14%, I'm just learning, so we got a nice mix.
We got a lot of little bits.
- And as I go along,
if you are in a school that is implementing,
and one of those people who knows a little bit
or knows a lot,
and you wanna share an example
of what a certain element of PBIS looks like
within your building,
feel free to type that into the chat box
so we can get some examples going as well.
So what is PBIS?
You'll see on the right,
if you've been to any of our trainings
you're probably very familiar with this visual,
but this is kind of our anchor
and what we often draw everything back to
because PBIS is really a framework.
So depending on where you are in the country,
what school you're in,
hopefully PBIS has been adapted to meet the context
and the needs of your school.
So it shouldn't necessarily look exactly the same
regardless of where you are.
It as a preventative framework,
so we're working to prevent behavioral challenges
from occurring to begin with,
and then working to develop systems
for how we consistently respond when challenges do occur.
And by tailoring to your school's context and needs
we are creating a culturally responsive framework.
So you'll see in the visual at the right,
equity is at the center of everything we do with PBIS.
We're really working
to create equitable school environments.
And the way that we are doing that is by developing systems
and the systems are really there
to support the adult behavior.
So that is things like a strong leadership team,
making sure that PBIS has been established as a priority
in your building or your district,
and that staff are supported in their implementation.
So they're getting the professional development
that they need to be able to implement well,
they have the resources that they need to do this work well.
So that all comes at the systems level.
And then in terms of practices,
we want to be looking for the best evidence-based practices
and the smallest number of practices that we can implement
to make a difference in our school.
So we're looking to implement a small number of practices
that are going to give us the biggest bang for our buck,
rather than trying to do lots of things
and not doing any of them very well.
And then our data systems are in place
so that we can be monitoring
both our fidelity of implementation
and our student outcomes.
So we'll get a little bit into what that looks like
later in the webinar.
And at the beginning of the year and throughout the year,
we should be looking at what are our behavioral outcomes
that we are looking for in our school.
And this could also include things
like school climate, staff retention.
So you'll see, in a few slides,
what some of the typical outcomes are
when schools implement PBIS with fidelity.
But at your school each year
you should be building an action plan
around what you're hoping to accomplish with your PBIS work.
And PBIS comes from the world of ABA,
which is applied behavioral analysis.
And that is really looking
at how can we alter the environment
so that our students are gonna be the most successful
in school and using really good teaching
and learning practices.
And we're looking to improve both behavior
and academic outcomes by implementing PBIS well.
You'll see down at the bottom there's a link to pbis.org,
which is the national PBIS center,
which has a wealth of resources,
both around getting started with PBIS,
which is where this link will lead you to.
But also if you are implementing
really great resources around equity,
around check-in, checkout, around family engagement,
really, really great resources on the pbis.org website.
And the reason we're really emphasizing
and spending a lot of time in Vermont
working on improving our PBIS framework
is because we know
that traditional approaches to discipline are ineffective.
So when we think about a traditional approach,
we're looking at reactive, non-constructive,
so not focused on teaching,
but mostly focused on punishment
when practices are implemented poorly.
And we're really not seeing results from what we're doing.
So we're working to use these innovative PBIS practices
to improve our school-wide approach
to behavior and discipline.
So, if you grew up in the '60s, let's say,
when this cartoon, maybe, was created,
this might have been what school looked like for you.
So there was lots of lists of rules of things
that we don't want to see happening in our classroom,
but with PBIS we're really trying to teach
what we do want to see.
So if you think about this with a three year old
you might have at home, for instance,
you can tell them, stop and no, as much as you want,
but without teaching them that replacement behavior
of what you are looking for them to do,
it's pretty unlikely that their behavior is gonna change
in the way that you're hoping it will.
So Rob Horner along with George Sugai
we're two of the, kind of, founders of PBIS.
And what Rob is saying here
is that, really, at the root of why we're doing PBIS
in schools is to make them more effective
and equitable learning environments for everyone.
So for all populations that are arriving
in our school building,
how can we really make sure that everyone
has equitable access and opportunity to succeed at school?
And what we know now
is that we can't really say we are fully implementing PBIS
without making sure that our framework
is culturally responsive.
So I can't remember what year it came out now,
but it was updated this past year,
our cultural responsiveness field guide to PBIS.
So really helping you think through each element
of your PBIS framework
and how you can ensure that it is culturally responsive
and meets the needs of the different populations
in your building.
So it goes through these elements of identity,
and that's identity, both for the teachers
and the school staff, and the students, and the community.
How you do really improve student and family voice
within PBIS and within your school?
How can you build a supportive environment for all?
Be thinking about situational appropriateness?
So helping students to examine when there are differences
between their home environment and their school environment
and those expectations in both environments.
Why might there be a difference in those expectations?
Is there a way that we can make our school environment
more accepting of the expectations
that look a little bit different
than what we're typically used to at school?
And how can students really be taught
and have a chance to practice any of those expectations
that might be really different,
but that are really necessary for the school environment
for one reason or another.
And then lastly,
using your data to be able to look
at whether there's disproportionality and disparate outcomes
for different groups.
So without doing those things
we might say that we are implementing PBIS,
but we are arguing that it's not fully implemented
until it's culturally responsive
and you've examined all those areas.
So there really always is room for all schools to grow
in their implementation.
So again, if you've come to anything PBIS related before
you've probably seen this diagram,
but what we're hoping to have you walk away with from this
is that we really need to have
our universal practices in place for all students
in the building
before we can start to think about,
and really know for sure
that a student needs targeted or intensive level supports.
So if you're in a school
that is not implementing PBIS right now,
it might be feeling like 20% of your students
need intensive level supports.
But we wanna be able to push those supports
down the triangle
so that we are giving the best first instruction
for behavior and for academics.
But with PBIS we're specifically focused on behavior
and social, emotional learning,
how can we give the best first instruction to all students
so that we prevent some challenging behaviors
from occurring in the first place
and prevent students, maybe, from meeting
some of these more resource intensive supports
at the targeted and intensive level?
So when we're implementing universal PBIS well,
we expect that about 80% of our students will be successful
just with those strong universal practices in place,
in all settings in the building impacting all students,
and really taking that preventative and proactive approach.
We know that there are always gonna be some students
who need additional levels of support
and we're layering those supports
on top of the universal levels.
So just because the student needs targeted
or intensive level supports
doesn't mean they're no longer accessing
those strong universal supports.
So we know that about 10 to 15% of students
could benefit from a targeted level of support,
so that might be something like check in, check out,
where they're checking in with a trusted adult
in the morning,
having more opportunities to check in
with their teacher throughout the day around their behavior
and their progress,
and then checking out with someone at the end of the day.
And those targeted level supports,
we wanna have really readily accessible.
So you likely have some targeted level supports
in place in your building right now,
but if you were trained at the targeted level of PBIS,
you would have an inventory of targeted supports
that are ready off the shelf
for a student to be able to access
within 72 hours of recognizing that there's a need.
And then our intensive level supports
are intended to be individualized for each student.
Really looking at the function of their behavior,
maybe doing a full functional behavioral assessment
and behavior intervention plan,
maybe creating a wraparound team around that student
so that all of the providers who are involved
with that student and that family are on the same page,
and that's the most resource intensive level of support.
So we wanna reserve those supports
for the students who really need them,
and the way we're able to do that
is by building out our universal
and our targeted systems and practices.
So when thinking about this for a particular student
within a multi-tiered system of support,
sometimes we get into a trap
of saying that a student is an intensive student,
or those are our targeted kids.
But we wanna be really careful with our language
because we know that students have a variety of strengths
and challenges throughout their day,
throughout their time in school just like we do.
So there are probably some areas in your life
that you need some intensive level supports,
but we're not calling you an intensive level person.
So for instance, for Dylan,
he has got really strong reading
and peer interaction skills,
he's successful with just the universal level of supports
that's in place at his school,
but for things like adult relationship, science,
he might needs some targeted level supports.
And then as we get to math and emotion regulation,
those are the areas
where he really needs intensive level of supports.
But if we were simply to call him an intensive kid
that really wouldn't capture his whole self.
And by having emotion regulation
as one of his most challenging areas,
he probably would be one of those students in your school
that you might be calling an intensive kid
because he's likely running from the classroom
or tipping over a desk
because of his challenges with emotional regulation.
But we wanna be really careful
to use person first language and to not be labeling students
and rather labeling levels of support.
So, like I said,
we are gonna talk briefly about the primary outcomes
that schools are seeing when they implement PBIS well.
So they are seeing an increase in academic performance
on task behavior, obviously those two things are linked.
But they're also seeing that parents, students and staff
are more satisfied with their school experience
and therefore staff are being retained.
Obviously this data was pre COVID,
I'm a little bit curious to look at schools
that are implementing PBIS well
and whether they continue to be able to retain staff
despite all of the challenges with COVID.
Maybe a future research study.
And they are also seeing a decrease
in kind of the opposite of those.
So office referrals, suspensions, detentions,
disruptive classroom behavior.
And from one of our schools in Vermont,
what they were really seeing
was that because of the routines
that needed to be put in place because of COVID,
it actually naturally created a school environment
where their students were making better choices.
So they saw a decrease in referrals,
actually, directly connected to their COVID procedures
compared to previous years,
both across grade levels and for individual students.
So COVID kind of forced us to make some changes
in the environment that we may not have made otherwise
that actually ended up helping students be more successful.
So many schools mentioned fewer transitions
throughout the day
because students were kind of trapped in their classrooms,
but that decrease the chance
that challenging behaviors
were gonna occur during transitions.
Things like eating lunch inside the classroom
really decreased behavioral concerns.
So many of these practices,
they brought forward into this school year
even if the COVID guidelines didn't indicate
that they had to
because their students were able to be more successful
as a result of those routines.
And this is just a quote from one of our principals
at People Academy Middle who just really emphasized
that they were able to really lean
on their PBIS framework throughout COVID
as they transitioned back to in-person learning,
because it really set up
how they were going to really clearly define teach, practice
and reinforce all of those new routines
that they had within their buildings.
So some schools that were strong implementers prior to COVID
really found that they were able to lean
on their PBIS framework,
and use it during their recovery planning work,
the reentry work,
versus some other schools
that maybe were not implementing as strongly
or lost an administrator, or lost a school coordinator.
For them, it kind of felt like, "Oh, we'll get to PBIS
once we've got everything else under control."
Versus for schools that were implementing well,
PBIS was kind of a key part of their re-entry
and recovery planning.
So this was a new visual
that came out from the TA Center last year,
but you'll see our familiar visual in the middle,
but really just helps to kind of illustrate
what I was talking about before.
And I'm noticing, at least on my screen
it got cut off a little bit at the bottom.
But basically it's just kind of reiterating
that PBIS is an MTSS,
so PBIS is a multi-tiered system of support.
And so you really should be thinking about it
right in line with if, traditionally, in your school
MTSS has been thought about for academics largely.
So thinking about how we can think about MTSS
and PBIS as one and together.
And really thinking about what we were doing for all
and that's students, families, and educators.
So when we think about that pyramid of all, some and few,
we wanna be thinking about that for families
and educators as well, not just students.
So what do all families need
in order to feel like they belong in our school?
Have the information that they need.
What are some families gonna need a little bit more
and what are a few families gonna need
that are more intensive level supports?
And same for educators.
And that might change throughout the years.
So you might know of an educator
that just has a really challenging class this year,
or has something really challenging going on at home
that could really use some additional supports.
And again, we're not gonna say
that's an intensive level educator,
but right now they are accessing
or needing some targeted or intensive level supports.
Okay, the last, oh, I think I'll get to it in one second.
And then this really helped us
to think about getting back to the basics
during this time of COVID
where everything is really challenging and overwhelming.
So the guidance from the National TA Center
was to really think about how can you boil down PBIS
to its core elements
and ensure that students are able to make some social,
emotional, behavioral and academic growth
despite the challenging times that we're in.
So thinking about what are you doing
to build strong connections and relationships with students
right from the beginning,
how are you screening
to make sure that you're not missing any concerns or risks
that are out there for your students and families right now?
And there are both formal and informal ways of screening,
which is a whole another webinar.
What are you doing to support when support is needed
and to have really strong teachings
so that your students know what is expected of them,
and you're not just kind of hoping, and wishing,
and assuming that they know?
And then what are you gonna do to monitor your progress
both as a team with your fidelity of implementation
and your student's progress?
And how can we, really,
at the root of everything
build positive, predictable school environments
that are safe and that learning is possible then?
So what I was gonna mention on that other slide
was that we really wanna be thinking about alignment.
So if PBIS has something new for your school,
you might already be implementing
a social, emotional learning curriculum,
you might have explored restorative practices,
you might've had trauma informed training.
But how we think about it
is that those are those evidence-based practices
that you're installing as part of your PBIS framework.
So some of those other practices
might not have the systems and data components
that PBIS does.
So our schools that are implementing all of these
as part of their PBIS framework
are really seeing great success
because they're looking at the systems
that are needed to sustain these practices.
They're looking at data to make sure that they're successful
rather than just implementing a practice
and hoping it goes well.
And sometimes there is some maybe competition
between these approaches,
but we really see them
as all working toward the same end goal,
we're all looking for safe, respectful,
productive learning environments,
positive school climate, positive relationships.
And they have a lot in common.
So they're all intended to be whole-school approaches
really coming from a positive perspective.
Thinking about prevention rather than punishment,
and that they all both contribute to,
but also depend on an equitable learning environment.
So to implement something like restorative practices
when your school environment is not equitable
can actually be harmful.
So we really think about all of these together
and are helping schools
to think about how this work can come together
so then you don't have a trauma team, and an SEL team,
and a responsive classroom team, and a PBIS team.
How can you bring all those together
so that school staff are not overwhelmed and committeed out.
- And I just wanna add in, for this year, our recovery team.
- And our team there-
- They're channeling a lot of-
- Similar work.
- Yeah.
- So when we're talking about universal PBIS,
we are talking about coming together as a school community
to define our behavioral expectations.
So we'll generally have
three to five behavioral expectations world wide,
we'll get into a little more detail about each of these.
We're gonna teach that expected behavior
and ensure that all students have learned
what the expected behaviors are throughout the building.
And then acknowledge
when students are meeting positive behaviors
so that they know what we're looking for
and are able to feel really proud of their accomplishments,
and their growth, and their behavioral performance.
Like I said, we're gonna develop some systems
for how we're gonna address behavioral concerns
through a continuum of supports.
Something as simple as how the teacher is gonna respond
in the moment
to a classroom level concern that they're seeing.
Or if a student needs additional support
outside the classroom,
what that process looks like
and making it consistent throughout the building.
And then creating procedures for record keeping
and decision-making,
so that's our data kind of section of our universal.
All of this is done by a leadership team
which is hopefully representative of your school community,
including teachers from throughout the buildings,
special educators, school counselors, the administrator,
and then also thinking about how you can get student
and family voice.
So even if they're not sitting on at every team meeting,
how can you make sure
that their voice is represented on that team?
And one of the first tasks of that team
is to develop a purpose statement.
So what is the PBIS team?
What are they responsible for
and what are they looking to get out of their work?
So in terms of identifying, defining,
posting, teaching the school-wide acknowledgements,
these are just some examples,
some from Vermont and some from elsewhere.
You can see down below from Fleming
a student created this poster,
and this was actually before
they had even formally rolled out PBIS.
The student just really latched on to the expectations
that had been developed and created this awesome poster.
Seeing in Fairfield, down at the bottom,
making sure that the expectations are written
in the languages that the students speak within the school.
The high school example in the back,
you can see that they kind of are context specific,
so you wouldn't have really simple expectations.
You can advance the language
for your high school population.
And also consider what is going to actually be reinforcing
for students at different levels.
So something that an elementary student
is finding reinforcing is likely very different
than what middle school
and high school students are finding.
So thinking about how that PBS framework changes
and looks different at different grade levels
is really important when you're planning.
This is one example from Dothan Brook who chose,
"We are safe," "We are caring," and "We're responsible,"
as their expectations.
And we really like when schools use
this, "We are," language,
because it indicates that the adults
are part of this process as well.
So everyone in the school community
is agreeing to these expectations
and working toward achieving them
rather than some schools have the language of, "Be,"
so, "Be respectful," "Be responsible,"
and that can be fine depending on how it's taught
and how it's messaged,
but it can come off
as "You are students, you will be respectful
toward us as adults."
Rather than "We, as a school community,
are gonna work toward these goals."
- And the otters are a mascot of that school.
- Yes (laughing).
And then this is Proctor Elementary School,
and they chose "Respect self," "Respect others,"
and "Respect the environment," or "Our environment,"
meaning the school environment.
And we're trying to get away from this,
we're redesigning our learning and teaching environment
so that we are helping students understand
what they are expected to do rather than what not to do.
So once the school wide expectations are in place,
you can see down the left hand side
those are the school-wide expectations.
The school had "Respect ourselves," "Respect others,"
"Respect property."
Then you're defining what does that look like
in each setting?
So choosing a few expectations for each setting
that are really key in order for that setting to feel safe,
respectful, responsible, whatever the expectations are,
and then creating lesson plans for each of those.
So for instance,
what does "Respecting ourselves,"
look like in the cafeteria?
What does "Respecting others,"
look like in the library?
So having actual lesson plans
just like you would for academics
about how things should look and feel
in these different locations of the school.
- And I just wanna point out
that that's very different from reminders.
Reminders are helpful,
but we're talking about explicit teaching
and explicit teaching is the evidence-based piece
of the set of practices
that has the potential for the greatest change.
So the teaching piece is pretty critical
to it being effective.
- Yeah, we sometimes would visit schools
and ask, "Have the expectations been taught?"
And teachers would say, "Oh yeah,
we remind them all the time."
We'd say, "Well, that's great, that's prompting.
That's great, but were they at some point,
and then hopefully throughout the year
really explicitly taught?"
And that there were checks in place
to make sure that students were actually learning them
and getting to practice.
Okay, and then just one more example
with some different expectations
and some different settings.
So you'll see this was when online learning was happening.
What does it look like to be respectful
when we are online as part of a group
and as online when you're working independently.
So schools that had PBIS in place
when the online learning hit we're really ready
to be able to adapt their matrices
to fit the online context as well.
And the basic premise behind this
is that when kids don't know
how to do all these other things,
when kids don't know how to re read, or swim,
or multiply, or drive, we teach them how to do that,
and we're not irritated that they don't know
how to do it already.
Although I took a really long time to swim,
maybe my mom was a little irritated by how long it took me.
But when kids don't know how to behave
we often jump to punishment rather than teaching.
And so the key element of PBIS
is shifting that adult mindset to really be thinking
about how we can teach and support students
when they're experiencing behavioral challenges
rather than punish.
So really asking ourselves,
why is it that we jumped to punishment
when it is about behavior?
So after students have been explicitly taught
the expectations, then we're looking to acknowledge
when students have met those expectations.
So that's really a way to give them feedback,
to let them know when
and how they're meeting the expectations in a positive way.
And again, this is about shifting the adult perspective.
So as adults in school,
we are prone to looking for the problem behaviors
that we're seeing in front of us
because they get our attention,
they feel like they need to be corrected really quickly
and maybe publicly.
And when we're able to shift our attention
to looking for the positive behavior,
our classroom environment improves,
the school environment improves,
and students are really able to see
what it is that the expectations look like in practice.
So this was from Charlotte Central School,
they had tickets that were given
that said, "I showed pride in my school by,"
and then which expectation they were seen exhibiting.
And then those went into a school-wide container,
and when the school-wide container was filled,
they would celebrate as a school community
that they have achieved their goal.
And sometimes you might have a classroom container
in between those two
so that your classroom is having a chance
to celebrate their progress
and then contributing to the school-wide community.
So why do we acknowledge students?
Just like for academics,
when we're giving feedback about how students are performing
behavior is learned and guided by feedback.
So we are looking in our environments
for how to exhibit the expectations of that environment.
And when we are given positive feedback
we're much more likely to change our behavior
than when the negative behavior
is just constantly corrected.
So we're really focusing
on the principles of positive reinforcement
to help our students meet the expectations that are needed
in order to be successful at school.
So, like I said,
we're looking to change that adult behavior,
that mindset, to be looking for the positive.
And we're hoping that schools will get to a place
where they're about six,
between six and eight positive statements
for every one correction,
or interaction, negative interaction.
So thinking about how that looks across your classrooms.
So there might be some students in your classroom
that you're able to do this for already
because they're exhibiting more positive behaviors
right off the bat,
but how can we really be looking for the positive behaviors
of all students in our classroom or our school,
and making sure that that ratio
is in the positive direction.
So if you were to keep data on yourself right now
you might be surprised
about how many corrective statements you're giving.
And it might feel like that's gonna change
the student's behavior.
But what the research says
is these behavior specific praise,
or positive reinforcement, or acknowledgement,
whatever language you wanna use
is really where the behavior change happens.
- I felt 'cause it's Terrific Tuesday today,
I challenge all of us
to, next time we're interacting with others
for a period of time today,
try to make your ratio six positives to one reprimand
or something like that and see what happens,
and let us know, thank you.
- Could be your spouse (laughing).
And so I'm gonna wrap up acknowledgement
in just one second and then ask for questions.
But when we're designing our acknowledgement system,
we really wanna be thinking about
how can that individual acknowledgement
contribute to the overall benefit of others.
So for instance, wow,
like when you notice that your milk spilled on the floor
and want to go clean it up right away,
that really kept all of us safe.
So how has that individual behavior
contributing to a more positive school community?
So helping students see that link between what they do
and how it impacts others.
And there is a myth out there that rewards are ineffective,
or maybe even detrimental to students
because of an impact on intrinsic motivation.
But when acknowledgement systems
are designed really intentionally,
this is not the case
because you are moving from that tangible,
consistent, frequent reinforcement
to more of that social praise,
more, inconsistent is not the right word (laughing),
I'm forgetting the word,
but where students don't necessarily expect it
every single time, more intermittent,
and helping them to develop that extrinsic motivation.
But a lot of the behaviors that we expect at school
are not intrinsically motivating.
So for instance, raising your hand instead of calling out
is really not reinforcing.
When you call out, you get attention right away,
you don't have to store what you were saying,
and remember it, and wait for your turn.
So some of these behaviors in school
really require some extrinsic motivation
until that intrinsic motivation is developed.
So you'll see, as you go along in the grade levels,
because of the systems and practices you've developed
at the younger grades,
you will see less challenging behaviors
as students enter fourth and fifth grade
and be able to fade back that tangible reinforcement system
so that students feel that affection and praise
from their teachers
just from the verbal recognition of their behaviors.
And again, making those acknowledgments age
and context appropriate.
So you're not gonna be handing out little fuzzies
to your eighth graders
asking them, "How do you like to be recognized
when you're doing the right thing?
And, how do you like to celebrate
when you're making progress?"
So maybe it's five minutes at the end of the class period
where they're able to use their phones
or able to just chat with friends
might be really reinforcing for them
when they've been able to meet their behavioral goals
for that time period.
So before I move on to addressing behavioral concerns,
does anybody have any questions
about those, really, preventative, proactive parts?
So the leadership teaming, the defining expectations,
teaching expectations and acknowledging expectations.
Okay, well, feel free to keep typing them into the chat box
if you had started typing,
we're not able to see if anybody's typing
and I'll be happy to answer them as we go along.
We know that even when those really positive proactive
strategies are in place,
we likely are still gonna have some students
who exhibit some concerning behaviors.
And we wanna have procedures in place
for how we're gonna address those behaviors
in a way that is consistent throughout the building
so that a parent's child doesn't have to get lucky
and get the teacher who knows how to support
when behavior challenges are occurring, rather than punish,
we want that to be consistent throughout the building.
So what are we gonna do in our classrooms
and our school environments to prevent problem behaviors
from occurring in the first place?
So how can we have adequate supervision
in places like the lunchroom, and at recess,
so that staff are circulating
and interacting positively with students
so that they're not acting out
to get adult attention, at least?
And reinforcing when we're seeing what we're looking for
so that we can prevent those problem behaviors
from occurring in the first place.
How can we have really strong classroom teaching practices,
giving lots of opportunities to respond
so that students are really engaged in their learning
and not prone to having challenging behaviors
because the learning is not engaging?
How can we develop some systems
to distinguish between minor and major problem behaviors
so that teachers know what behaviors are expected,
that they should be able to handle in the classroom,
and what behaviors
might need some out of the classroom support?
Whether that is someone from out of the classroom
coming in to help support the teacher in the classroom,
or whether that student does need,
the behavior has escalated enough
that the student needs to leave the classroom.
And then how are we gonna have a feedback cycle
so that when the student reenters,
the student is ready to reenter,
and the teacher and the classroom
are ready to accept that student back into the classroom?
So really looking
at all of these different kinds of systems
that can be in place
so that school feels really safe and predictable.
And then the data piece is really exciting
for a lot of schools
because before entering PBIS
they might have a system
where they're able to look at individual student's behavior
and see some patterns.
But with PBIS,
we're really looking at the universal level
to look at our behavior across the school.
So these graphs are from a system called SWIS,
which is school-wide information system.
So a lot of our schools,
probably, around 100 in Vermont
are using Swiss to look at their school wide behavior.
So you're able to look at referrals by month,
by time of day, by location, days of the week,
problem behavior, grade level,
and then you are also able to see it by student.
So I just did a webinar last week on how to use SWIS,
so that, I think, might already be up on our website,
if not, it will be soon.
But if you are new to a school that is using SWIS
and are gonna be expected to use SWIS yourself,
that might be a great webinar for you to watch.
But the idea is we wanna look at this data
to be able to make some decisions
about how to change the school environment.
So for instance in the data that we're looking at here,
it looks like eighth grade
is having some, maybe, severe challenges.
I'm seeing lots of referrals so far
by that point of the year.
What might we do to design an intervention
for eighth graders?
And we're able to drill down in the data
to get to not just eighth grade,
but what behaviors are we seeing from eighth graders?
What time of day are they happening?
What's the motivation behind the behavior?
So are they looking for peer attention, or adult attention,
or are they looking to avoid some kind of activity
and really design some intentional interventions
based on our data.
So rather than just having a gut reaction
that there's a problem and jumping to a solution,
we're really spending some time doing some problem solving.
So thinking about what can we do
to prevent this behavior from happening in the first place?
How can we teach and reinforce this behavior
at an elevated level
because we now know it's a concern for our students?
Oh, I don't know why it's pulling this up
on its own (laughing).
And how are we gonna collect data
to know if our intervention is working
or whether something needs to change.
So this is just an example
from Folsom School school's coordinator,
who was noticing that they had a high number of referrals
in the cafeteria,
so they retaught the cafeteria expectations.
And you'll note they retaught them to the staff
and the student.
Oh, now it's just going on its own, I don't know why,
to the staff, and the students, and the cafeteria personnel,
so everyone was on the same page
of what the expectations were,
posted more signs about what the expectations were,
and they really saw just from those simple changes
that referrals decreased markedly.
So that's really what we're looking for,
is what's the simplest intervention we can put into place
that is gonna have the biggest change.
They could have designed something really extravagant
around this problem they were seeing,
and they might not have even had the impact
they were looking to when they were doing this
really simple intervention of increasing teaching
around the expectations and having some visuals.
Where you gonna say something, Sherry?
- No.
- So if you were to walk into a PBIS school,
like I said, they might look very different,
but there are some key components that you should see
regardless of where you are walking into a PBIS school
that's been trained at the universal level.
So students should know what the expectations are
and have been recently acknowledged
for following the expectations,
staff should know what the expectations are
and have recently acknowledged students for following them.
And like we said,
should have explicitly taught the school wide expectations,
so they should be able to point to a time
that they actively taught those expectations
and retaught them when need arose.
And that ratio,
so the positive adults and student interactions
should exceed the negative.
We also wanna see agreement between school staff
about which behaviors
require outside of the classroom assistance.
They should have a strong leadership team,
like I said, that's representative of the school staff,
includes the administrator,
which is a really key piece for sustainability.
They should have an understanding of function of behavior.
So what is the why behind student behavior
and how can we use that understanding
to address problem behaviors
so that we're not inadvertently reinforcing
the problem behavior?
So for instance, if a student is trying to get out
of an activity by breaking a pencil or something
and we send them out of the classroom,
they have now effectively escaped that activity.
So how can we make sure we're not reinforcing behaviors
that we're not looking for,
and how is the school using their data as a team
to really do that action planning
and implementation of interventions.
So briefly, like I mentioned,
targeted level interventions are in place
for students who need additional levels of support.
And there are a variety of ways
that a student might access targeted interventions.
One way to measure who might be in need
of a targeted intervention
is by seeing how many times they had a behavior
that was in need of documentation of some kind.
So you may have heard of office discipline referrals,
we are kind of changing that language
to be behavior observation and data forms
because often it didn't actually include the office.
So it was a bit of a misnomer
and there was kind of a misperception
that it was about writing the students up
rather than writing the behavior down.
So by changing that language
to behavior observation and data form,
that's really why we're writing it down,
is so that we have more information
about the behaviors that are occurring
both across the school and for individual students.
So when a student has,
oh, sorry, this should say more than two,
I deleted the number two,
more than two behavior observation and data forms,
that might be an indicator that student is in need
of some targeted level supports.
So rather than waiting for that student
to have six, seven, eight, behavioral observation
on data forms intervening early,
or when it's requested either by a parent,
a student themselves, a teacher, a staff member,
having a process in place
for how they access targeted interventions.
So a team is in place,
they match the intervention to the student need
based on function.
Like I mentioned, check-in check-out
is our most common intervention
and is an evidence-based practice.
So when schools come to targeted level training
that is what we focus on.
And like I mentioned, those interventions occur
in conjunction with the universal level of support.
So it's not like once the student
is getting a targeted level intervention,
they're no longer part of the universal system.
The targeted interventions are layered on top of universal.
And then we have intensive level of supports
when we're seeing really persistent,
complex, challenging behaviors.
So really getting to the root of the behavior,
what's its function,
creating a strong behavior plan that's based on function.
How are we gonna prevent the behavior from occurring?
How are we gonna teach the student
some replacement behaviors,
and how can the adults respond differently
to reduce the intensity of the behavior?
So for instance, if you have a student who is running,
if the adults are then chasing the student
around the school,
that may actually intensify
the level of running you're seeing
rather than if staff
are just casually positioned around the doors
of the building so that the student can't leave,
but that they're not getting so much activated attention
from that running behavior.
And then lots of progress monitoring.
So keeping data,
really intensive level data for the student to see
whether their plan worked or whether it needs to be revised.
So that is PBIS in a nutshell,
I'm gonna quickly just go over a few Vermont related things
and some information about where you can find out more.
But we currently have 168 schools in Vermont
who are implementing PBIS at some level of fidelity,
which has grown, obviously, exponentially throughout,
well, not exponentially,
but I don't know the mathematical term
for what this graph looks like,
but significantly throughout the years.
This is our website, pbisvermont.org,
also has a wealth of resources,
and you can search in that search bar
to find what you were looking for,
or just start kind of exploring around.
I don't believe we have any schools
that are not yet implementing,
but if you did,
if you were looking to begin implementation in Vermont,
you would click, get started,
and that would lead you through the readiness process.
We have a virtual annual forum coming up on October 7th,
which has, I believe, 17 workshop sessions
throughout the day
on a variety of topics related to PBIS.
Both introductory and more advanced topics
for schools that have been implementing a while.
And then we're excited we recently developed micro-learning,
which is basically the content of this workshop
but taught in a slightly different way.
And so that is linked there,
the Intro to PBIS Microlearning,
so that's a really great thing to send out
if you have new staff in the building
who have not experienced PBIS at all
to give them an overview.
And then, like I mentioned, pbis.org, our website,
and then each school that's implementing PBIS in Vermont
is assigned a state TA person
based on the region of the state that your school is in.
So you have someone who is kind of a dedicated support
for your school.
And if you're looking to figure out who that might be,
you can contact Anne Dubie and ann.dubie@uvm.edu.
And I think that might be it.
Let's see, okay, I'm gonna skip over this
because this is the readiness activities
for schools that are not yet implementing.
But if you are in that boat feel free to reach out to Anne
or to your TA.
And we also have coaches available at the state level
who can really provide some dedicated support
to your school.
Your school should have a SU coordinator
at the district level
and a school coordinator at the school level
to help support your implementation.
These are our TAs and what they can do.
And lastly, we have a Facebook page and a Twitter page
that we try to keep updated,
and love for schools to share what they're doing
around PBIS with us on those sites,
and happy to stay on and answer any questions that you have.
So I'm gonna stop sharing.
And Jasmine is asking,
"Is there available link to the intent implement form?"
(phone ringing)
Yes, so that's on our website
and that is specifically for Vermont schools.
So depending on,
I think you said maybe you were in Maryland.
So each state has a state coordinator that's assigned
if you go to the pbis.org site,
and each state probably has a different readiness process
for how you implement PBIS in your school.
So that intent to implement form
would only be helpful for you
if you were trying to think through your readiness process
but it might not align with what Maryland requires.
- So you might wanna Google PBIS Maryland
and then you'll find your person.
- Other questions, you're welcome, Cindy,
good luck this year.
- For those of you still on,
in a little while you'll get an email from Anne Dubie
asking you how this went for you.
And if you've complete the feedback form
there's a place to press for a link
to a certificate of attendance for your time today.
Thank you so much, Amy,
I hope you're drinking lots of water
because that was a mouthful.
And thank you so much,
hope to see you all in the PBIS Vermont network
as we move on.
- Yeah, Jasmine, go for it.
- [Jasmine] Hi, sorry.
So yes, I am actually a PBIS trainer in my county.
And one of the reasons I joined this morning
is because we are looking for exemplars ways
to break this information down into shorter chunks,
and I wanted to hear from another state
how you all are doing that.
I work very closely with PBIS Maryland.
I think one of the things that is occurring
for me in my county
is that while all of our schools are PBIS schools,
we still have schools,
the reason I asked that question about readiness,
is 'cause we have schools
that inadvertently because of changes in the administration,
lots of times, basically, because of changes in staffing,
they almost put themselves back
into that adoption exploration phase.
And so I feel like I have not trained from that perspective
as much because when I came in
all of our schools were already PBIS, if that makes sense.
So I am looking for as many resources as possible
to guide our schools almost through that process
from the beginning, almost, if they weren't a PBIS school.
So that's why I asked that question.
I do appreciate this, this has been a great webinar,
and I appreciate how succinctly you all put
all this information together.
- Thanks, yeah, something that's helped us recently
that we've developed is, we call it a compelling why?
So getting staff to think about,
and also students and families,
how do they want their school to look like,
sound like, feel like,
and why are they investing time and resources
into this PBIS work?
So kind of coming back to the basics
and really thinking through that process again,
because like you said,
it might be a totally different staff
than when they decided to do this to begin with.
And so, getting back to that place of why is this important?
Why do we wanna devote our time to this?
And helping them kind of get to buy in
almost like they weren't from the beginning.
- [Jasmine] Yeah, and that's exactly where we are
with a lot of our staffs.
Their buy-in is, it may, at one point, have been above 80%,
but now it's not above 80%.
And so I'm looking for strategies, activities,
even little short professional development things
that people can do,
whether it's whole group or in smaller coaching settings
with their staff to increase that,
buying the PBIS specifically through them,
giving their feedback,
understanding what PBS actually is, all of those things.
So I thank you so much, I appreciate that.
I think I did see the Capella
and I did look at the, I forgot what you guys called it,
the little mini lesson.
- The micro learning.
- [Jasmine] The micro learning, yes, thank you (laughing).
- Jasmine, the other thing that we do
is we have the Vermont PBIS networks.
So there's some criteria that keeps schools in our network,
but if they're not engaging
and they're not doing fidelity assessments
over a period of time,
and there's some criteria,
they're not in the network anymore.
So it helps us at least keep our list schools clean
and then you can check out the intent
to implement application materials and checklist
for getting into PBIS either again, or new.
- [Jasmine] Yes, absolutely, yeah, we have something similar
and because it's self reported,
we do a lot of fidelity checks from the district level
where we support our schools and we coach them.
But definitely sometimes there's a mismatch
between their perception and the reality (laughing).
So yeah, absolutely, just being fully honest.
- I think if you can set up mechanisms
where the schools can interact with one another.
So if you have a school level coach or coordinator
that's in a strongly implementing school,
being able to have them share their experience
with the schools that are struggling.
- [Jasmine] Thank you so much, ladies,
I really appreciate it.
- Yeah, no problem, thank you for coming on.
- So I know that Katelyn had a situation with a student,
so I'm gonna move, put her in the waiting room,
and we'll put her in the waiting room.