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.)? We have a very stable core group of PBS members that represent each grade level of our school. Additionally, we have team members from the assistant level all the way up to the administrative level. The administrator’s role on our team is to both help with data collection and analyzing it on a consistent basis to help our team determine the needs of our school.  

How does your team use data to make decisions on campus? The data is used to determine which expectations to focus in on during morning meetings, as well as on the daily news.  It also helps to determine when we need to have a school wide re-teaching on the focus areas that were done during PBS student orientation.                                                      

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 representatives during our monthly PBS meetings. The PBS team members then go back to their respective grade levels to share the data and discuss.   Individual teachers are encouraged to come to their rep with specific questions that are then brought before the PBS team.

What do you see as the overall strengths of your team?  Please provide details. We are a very creative group of individuals that genuinely care about the students overall education, encompassing both academic and social behaviors. Whether it is a video to show proper bus behavior or an individual “manners” discussion, the students are encouraged to follow positive behavior expectations. We do this in a many number of ways including morning meeting, LES News, Café privileges, and individual classroom incentives.  When our Related Arts schedule had to become a ‘color wheel’ this year, encompassing the mixing of classes, the PBS team worked with the RA teachers to create an easy and reliable way to promote positive behavior within their classrooms.  We also added a visual element to our PAWS posters by including sign language. 

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. We excel most in teaching our expectations and going back to re-teach and reinforce the behaviors that we expect on this campus.  We have a PBS student orientation at the beginning of the year. Then after observing behaviors and data, we determine when we should have a refresher course on our expectations. This year, the data showed that negative behaviors were prevalent on both the playground and in the car rider area. To help students understand what was expected, we gave the refresher course of expectations in both areas and observed the improvement in these areas almost immediately.

Discuss the changes you have seen on campus since PBS implementation (e.g., data, climate, morale, etc.). We have noticed an increase in morale amongst the teachers. They are better able to focus on the job at hand, rather than the negative behaviors that were happening within the classroom. We have also noticed a sense of pride in our students as well as in our staff. We (students and teachers) are proud of the positive atmosphere that permeates throughout this campus. In fact, students enjoy pointing out others first-rate actions.   Students are spending more time in the classroom, where they can have a chance to redeem themselves, rather than being displaced in the office.  Referrals have decreased immensely, particularly in areas where teachers have little control (bus, cafeteria).  Hopefully, this decrease is due to the students showing self-control in situations where there is no teacher “looking over their shoulders”.  They have internalized the philosophy of PBS and are using it on a daily basis to help improve their lives.

What are some obstacles that your team has had to overcome?  Please explain the process for overcoming these hurdles below. Keeping our meetings on a consistent day and time due to district obligations, as well as calendar changes, has been very challenging. Our administration realizes the importance of our group and is committed to making our PBS team a professional learning community with the time to focus further on the needs of our campus. Previously, we have had a major yearly turnover in our teaching staff, so reiterating what PBS was and how it works to incoming new staff became slightly difficult. This coming year, we will have a stable staff, therefore, we will be better able to continue building our PBS program with even more involvement from our community.