I have had the privilege of attending many back to school kick off assemblies throughout the district over the past couple of weeks! Not only did I get to see many of our district's beautiful schools and interact with some of the state's best educators, I also had an opportunity to see the hard work of PBIS teams come to fruition as they delivered important messages to both the staff and students in their learning communities. The ideas and plans each school team worked to create and implement are specific to their student population and their learning environment. That's what is awesome about incorporating PBIS into your school, you tailor it specifically to your people and your needs.
Although significant time and energy are required to create a highly functioning PBIS framework and implement practices and systems with fidelity, the payoff and reward throughout the year is incredible! Here is just a sampling of the amazing success I've witnessed in some of our schools over the last couple weeks. Stay tuned for more throughout the year! Elementary Spotlight - Borlaug
Entering into Borlaug Elementary for the first time I was blown away by the vibrant and fun hallways, classrooms and common areas! The building is beautifully decorated, full of color, photographs, behavior expectations, and reminders of how to be positive and your best self. I couldn't help but think how lucky students are to be Borlaug Bulldogs!
Look at this beautiful display (full display above/close up below) of all Borlaug staff members! Students see this as they enter the building and when they're waiting in line for lunch. What an opportunity to learn about the adults in the building and foster strong relationships!
The Borlaug Beliefs are:
We are the Borlaug Bulldogs! We are Respectful, Responsible and Safe! On the first two days of the school year a huge focus was on expectations training. The Opening Day Assembly included the Borlaug welcome song, assembly expectations, Bulldog ticket explanation, as well as the Borlaug pledge and school song. On day two of school all students K-6 participated in Expectation Training for the five common areas: Lunchroom, Recess, Bus, Bathroom, and Hallway. Students rotated through the five stations by grade level where the specific common area behavior expectations were taught by the same person for each of the six grades. This is a key component of PBIS - using common language and having consistent expectation teaching/modeling. Having one person lead the training for each area ensures that all students are receiving the same message and that there aren't inconsistent directions/expectations delivered to various groups of students. During the common area training leaders modeled examples and non-examples. In addition, students were able to earn Bulldog tickets for being positive leaders and exhibiting positive behavior! Junior High Spotlight - South east
The South East PBIS team has, for years, spent a significant amount of time establishing the culture of the building at the beginning of the school year as well as doing boost lessons throughout the year. The South East behavior expectations are SOAR (Self Discipline, Ownership, Achievement, Respect). These expectations guide students to success in classrooms and common areas throughout the school.
In past years behavior expectations were taught over the first two to three weeks during Homeroom. This year the PBIS team recognized this took a significant amount of time for all students to learn the expectations and seemed too drawn out. The team recognized the importance of spending a significant amount of time teaching and modeling the behavior expectations, but also wanted to revamp the delivery method. For this reason, the team came up with the idea to create a "PBIS Boot Camp" for the first couple days of school. The format of the "camp" was simple (see schedule below).
The building's 7th and 8th graders were divided into teams based upon their homeroom. These teams rotated through common area expectation lessons, team building sessions, a social media refresher led by the Iowa City Police Department, and 1:1 expectations due to Chromebook roll-out. Not only were students able to learn all of the classroom and common area behavior lessons in the first two days of school, they also had access to a meaningful and eye-opening presentation on social media/digital citizenship. Students were able to spend more time and build relationships with their homeroom teacher and peers in the first few days, and were still able to have face to face contact with all of their classroom teachers in the first two days. Another huge benefit was "Little Hawk Time," South East's intervention block, started much earlier than in years past due to the newly arranged schedule.
Check out the enthusiasm of the new SEJH 7th graders during the kickoff assembly (above)! Last year the PBIS team had new signs printed and posted throughout the classrooms and common areas at SEJH, don't they look awesome?!
Check out this Change your Mindset display in one SEJH classroom (below)!
Way to go Ms. Cook, Ms. Dvorak, Ms. Brewer, SEJH PBIS Team and all Little Hawks!
High School Spotlight - Liberty
After opening last year, the Liberty administrators and PBIS team recognized there was a need for some revamping going into year two. The Liberty PBIS team, staff, and students worked relentlessly over the summer to establish behavior expectations (BOLTS - Belonging, Ownership, Leadership, Teamwork, Safety) for their students and create a positive acknowledgement system where all students are valued and know they belong as members of the Liberty community!
During the staff PBIS kickoff event a significant amount of time was spent explaining the "why" of PBIS. It is essential that all staff understand the why behind what you are doing so they buy in to the process; if staff don't believe in what you're doing it is likely not going to be successful. It was clear, as I attended the staff meeting, that Liberty staff were on board and excited to move forward under great leadership.
The PBIS team led the entire staff through the PBIS lessons to be taught during Liberty Time Day 1 and 2 of school. Interestingly, the team started with the culminating Day 2 activity and worked backwards - a great teaching strategy and learning opportunity for staff. Sometimes it is necessary to see the end result in order to fully understand and appreciate the process and procedure in getting there!
The new Liberty student expectation matrix (above). The team recognized the need to reinvent their expectations and came up with BOLTS - awesome! Liberty Time Day 1 and 2 Lessons (below). One of the most impactful portions of the expectation introduction was a student video on ownership by Moses Bolar. I don't know Moses, but couldn't help being moved by his message!
Liberty Staff shared student experiences through social media the first few days (see below)! How powerful to spread the positive happening in your community!
In their recent PBIS meeting, the team shared out how different, and much better, the year has started off at Liberty! Staff and student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and the team has already been implementing many positive acknowledgements for students and staff.
Way to go Mr. Kibby, Mr. Colbert, Ms. O'Donnell, Liberty PBIS Team and all BOLTS! Thank you!
A huge THANK YOU to all administrators, staff, and students for working so hard to make all of our schools throughout the district positive learning environments for our students to learn, grow, and thrive!
Make sure to tag the amazing things happening in your buildings with #ICpositivity and #ICCSDPBIS as you're using social media. Let's promote the positive!
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AuthorAllison Freitag, Archives
February 2019
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