Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS)

 What is PBIS? Introduction Video

 

The Fort Sam Houston Independent School District strives to create a positive school climate with high expectations for student success.  Together with Region 20 and the Texas Behavior Support Initiative, Robert G. Cole Middle School has a positive behavior intervention support system to educate all students, especially students with challenging behaviors, with a sustained, positive, preventative, and instructional approach to school wide discipline and behavior management.  

 

This approach focuses on giving priority to teaching and encouraging positive school-wide behavior expectations, and increasing school capacity to support sustained use of empirically validated practices. Our school continues to participates in this initiative.

 

What is Positive Behavior Intervention Support?

PBS is a process for creating safer and more effective schools. It is a systems approach to enhancing the capacity of schools to educate all children by developing research-based, school-wide, and classroom behavior support systems. The process focuses on improving a school’s ability to teach and support positive behavior for all students. Rather than a prescribed program, PBIS provides systems for schools to design, implement, and evaluate effective school-wide, classroom, non-classroom, and student specific plans. PBIS includes school-wide procedures and processes intended for all students and all staff in all settings. PBIS is not a program or a curriculum. It is a team-based process for systemic problem solving, planning, and evaluation. It is an approach to creating a safe and productive learning environment where teachers can teach and all students can learn. Being proactive rather than reactive is beneficial for staff and students.

 

What is PBIS at our school?

We have adopted a unified set of school wide rules. You will see these rules posted throughout the school and your child will be learning them during his or her first days at school. Our unified school wide rules, found in every classroom and non-classroom setting in the school, are as follows:   Be respectful, on-time, accountable, prepared and safe (ROAPS).  A copy of the school wide rules follows below. All students receive continuous behavior training on the importance of respect, being on time, accountability, preparedness and safety (ROAPS) while enrolled Robert G. Cole Middle School. 

 

School staff and personnel may issue rewards to students who exhibit positive behavior. Cougar Cash is our tangible reward for positive behavior. The cougar cash can be used to attend social events, for certificates, school supplies, and reward coupons. As part of our PBIS process, teachers and other staff members use evidence-based practices to increase student learning and decrease classroom disruptions. To keep students focused on the rules in a positive manner, we do the following when teaching academics and behavior: 

      Constantly teach and refer to our school-wide expectations.

      Provide students with more praise than correction.

      Talk to students with respect using positive voice tone.

      Actively engage everyone in the class during instruction.

      Use pre-correcting, prompting, and redirecting as we teach.

      Look for the positive first and provide positive, immediate, frequent, and explicit feedback.

 

We also have a school-wide system of consequences: The Opportunity for Improvement (OFI) system is explained in more detail on the 6th grade team website.

If you have questions about Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher. We look forward to a wonderful year of learning with your child.