What makes your team work so well?  Please discuss in detail (e.g., what is your administrator’s role on the team, how is staff represented, etc.)? Our team is made up of 10 members who are dedicated and committed to our students and the success of PBS. We know and understand that working with children of poverty demands structure and consistency in implementation to be effective. The team strives to meet all timelines and incentives and to model reinforcing the expectations with tokens. Grade levels pre-k through 5th are represented as well as ESE and ELL on our team. The coach is the assistant principal. Six members of the team and administration attended training together this past summer.  Our principal was a former coach and supported our PBS efforts. We worked together to develop and implement our action plan. Communication was a key for our team. Our monthly meetings were a place to analyze data and talk about what was working, what needed to improve and bring back information from our respective teams. The coach’s (assistant principal) role was as a liaison with the district, providing information from the district coaches meetings to the team. The coach’s role was also informational in providing knowledge regarding scheduling availability for quarterly incentives and school and district policy guidelines for activities. Our team leader, Mr. Valentino planned and facilitated the meetings. Secretary, Ms. Krause prepared for them and maintained our paperwork. Snack person, Mr. Julin, provided a great service to the meetings.

How does your team use data to make decisions on campus? A portion of our meetings is dedicated to looking at out data to see if and where we are and are not meeting our PBS expectations. Then we brainstorm ideas to improve the situation.  Sometimes it is to reteach the expectations for that area on our daily morning show and in our classrooms.  Depending on the place and the time of day, the team may suggest we make sure we are reinforcing positive behavior with our tokens. An example would be that we had a monthly increase in the number of hallway referrals from the cafeteria to the playground for kindergarten. We put more supervision in the hall and made sure we reinforced the positive behavior that we saw after reteaching the expectations.

How do you share information with the rest of your faculty (e.g., emails, newsletters, meetings, etc.)?  How often do you share this information? Information is shared with the faculty on a regular basis. We have held PBS training on our early release days to support the initial training we did at the beginning of the school year and to clarify areas we were not strong in as a faculty. PBS team members shared our meeting information at their weekly grade level team meetings following our monthly meeting. Feedback was brought back to the PBS meeting to enable two-way communication. Of course all PBS team members were available for questions at any time. Our electronic communication system was used to put forth incentive schedules and PBS information by our team leader.  When appropriate, PBS was a topic at faculty meetings. Our quarterly school newsletter has a PBS corner to share information with parents. A parent training was also held to teach our parents about PBS at Lake Trafford and how they can reinforce positive behavior at home. During parent functions like School Advisory Council meetings and evening activities, we give out tokens. This models and shows our families how PBS works.

What do you see as the overall strengths of your team?  Please provide details. The strengths of our team lie in our teamwork and our dedication and commitment to PBS. Our communication with all stakeholders has been invaluable in our implementation. We see that PBS has had a positive impact on our students and staff and ultimately on our school climate. Since we have implemented with fidelity and stayed with our action plan, our students know and understand PBS. They respond accordingly.

In what areas of PBS does your team excel (e.g., rewarding students/staff, teaching expectations, data-based decision-making, etc.)?  Please provide details below. Our team excels in teaching the expectations to the students and in rewarding the students. The students are very excited about the major quarterly incentives and strive to meet the criteria to attend. Our staff trainings have also been well thought out and applicable to our staff. When we presented PBS at the beginning of the year, we incorporated activities from the PBS manual to develop our expectations all together. The team modeled reinforcing the expectations with specific praise and gave out tokens during trainings. We had items for the teachers to trade their tokens for. We really needed our faculty support for this initiative to be successful.  This was our third year of trying to implement PBS. Because the prior principal was not on board, it was not as strong as it should have been those two years. With the team and new administration this year that fully supports PBS, we were very successful.

Discuss the changes you have seen on campus since PBS implementation (e.g., data, climate, morale, etc.). Our school climate has changed. Our students are happy and want to come to school. I truly believe that PBS has helped!  Through PBS, teachers have improved the way they handle their classroom management. Students enjoy and work to achieve their PBS goals to participate in the incentives for their grade level and the major quarterly school-wide events. They also get to spend their tokens at the PBS store each quarter. PBS is part of our School Improvement Plan. Our incentives and PBS store are supported and funded through the plan. Many of our kids don’t have much or get “buying” power. The PBS store incentive reinforces our expectations of responsibility and being resourceful. The store items are presented in a display case in the main hallway for daily viewing. Students set personal goals and earn and save tokens to be able to buy items or lunch with an administrator. Their efforts of following the expectations are rewarded and reinforced. Most members of our school see the benefits and are talking about next steps for next year!

What are some obstacles that your team has had to overcome?  Please explain the process for overcoming these hurdles below. One major obstacle for our team was the consistency among faculty about the differences between major and minor referrals. Additional training was needed and we developed and played “Minor, Major, or Me” to help clarify the differences in a game show setting. In two instances, the teachers still have classroom management issues. We have suggested professional development to build their classroom management and learning environment skills. Then they will be more ready to embrace and implement PBS the way that it is intended.