Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports
Mt. Scott Learning Center utilizes Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) to support the positive academic, social and behavioral growth for all students. PBIS is a framework or approach that is used by the entire school staff and is founded on the assumption and belief that all children can exhibit positive and successful school behavior if they are effectively taught to do so. This framework begins with teachers and staff members defining what is positive and appropriate school behavior in all settings—the classroom, the hallways, the cafeteria, and off campus—and then to explicitly teach and repeatedly encourage these pro-social behaviors through a process of re-teaching and reinforcement. PBIS emphasizes the fact that classroom management and preventive school discipline must be integrated and working together with effective academic instruction in a positive and safe school climate in order to maximize success for all students.
An important aspect of PBIS is focused on prevention and on arranging the learning environment to intervene with problem behaviors before they occur. Educators using PBIS create teaching and learning environments that are engaging, productive, and focused on preventive success strategies that all students know and use. By intervening early and providing students predictable and focused models of what school successful behavior looks like in all settings, problem behaviors are prevented and a positive school climate is established. When students demonstrate these positive behaviors in their appropriate settings, these behaviors are acknowledged, reinforced and rewarded in order to promote a positive school climate and ongoing student success.
When student problem behavior is unresponsive to preventive school-wide and classroom-wide procedures, specific and targeted data about the student’s behavior is used to (a) understand why the problem behavior is occurring; (b) strengthen more acceptable alternative behaviors; (c) remove antecedents and consequences that trigger and maintain problem behavior; and (d) add antecedents and consequences that trigger and maintain acceptable alternative behaviors.
Through the use of informative, corrective feedback that is informed by specific and individualized data collected for each student, school staff is able to target where and when problematic behaviors are occurring and to make data-driven intervention plans to provide students the support to get back on track. This emphasis on the use of data and the focus on student support ensures that disciplinary issues are processed in a less reactive way, are equitable in delivery, and students are getting the support that they need to be successful. PBIS takes the mystery out of what it means to be successful in school, celebrates positive engagement, and delivers equitable interventions in predictable ways.
The GOTCHA coupon system is one of the components of the PBIS program adopted at MSLC last year. Students earn GOTCHA coupons from staff for demonstrating positive behavior expectations that have been previously discussed and taught in classroom and non-classroom settings. Students have the option to redeem the coupon at the end of the day for a small prize or enter the weekly drawing where they can choose from other prizes, including breakfast and treat deliveries from a MSLC staff person.