Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
When Huck Finn was a second-grader in a local elementary school six years ago, he shoved a fellow student in class and wound up with a long lecture from a very stern teacher, who threatened him with a trip to the principal’s office, and a big time out.
This year, Huck’s little brother Sam was about to shove a fellow student in his third-grade classroom when he caught himself at the last instant. Since he had already gotten caught pushing someone earlier in the year, he knew he was close to having his (disciplinary) card “pulled” and he could end up washing walls after school.
Sam’s decision to employ self-control in this (fictional) example was the result of four years of training in positive behavior that local students have received since the 2001-02 school year.
Now, six years after Sweet Home School District adopted the Positive Behavior Support program to deal with student behavior issues, district officials say the system has made a difference for local schools. Principals say that the number of referrals has dropped and as behavior among the general student population has improved, that they and their staffs have been able to focus on children who need more attention.
PBS was developed by the University of Oregon and has been implemented in schools across Oregon and across the nation. The program’s focus is less on punishment than on using positive incentives to encourage youngsters to adopt personal behavior and mannerisms that lead to successful and productive lives, according to Kristin Adams, who coordinates PBS for the school district.
“PBS is all about social development,” she said. “Today’s society has parents who never received social skill development from their folks.”
One strength of the program, she said, is that children who have received little or no training in social skills are given consistent expectations as they move from class to class and from school to school within the district. School systems that use PBS have to evaluate the culture and environment in which they are operating and determine what type of behavior they will expect in that environment.
The school defines what it means to be respectful in the hallways, what safety on the playground entails, how to be responsible in the classroom. Then it teaches students how to be respectful, safe and responsible, and follows that up with repeated reminders and practice of those principles.
Different schools have taught the principles in different ways, often through assemblies. Oak Heights, for instance, holds an assembly at the beginning of each school day in which Principal Keith Winslow usually gives a pep talk and often recognizes students who are doing well. The gym wall behind him bears a chart that lists the three “pillars of success.”
“One of the things it’s done for me is that the kids get to hear my thoughts, hear my heart, and so does the staff,” Winslow said. “So that kind of sets a direction. Everybody gets to hear what I expect. I think that’s been a huge thing. Teachers go back to their classrooms and say ‘This is what Mr. Winslow said.’ It reinforces some of the instruction they received through PBS.”
After students have been taught the principles, the next step is to publicly reward those who demonstrate kindness, respect, responsibility, personal achievement and other qualities emphasized by a parcular school’s PBS program. Students who don’t follow the rules are dealt with privately, with disciplinary action intended to focus on the type of behavior the school wants to see.
“PBS is a different way of looking at discipline because typically discipline is punishment-based – reprimands, expulsions, that kind of thing,” Adams said. “PBS is prevention rather than punishment. It creates a common environment,” Adams said. “When you’re a child, you walk into an environment where everyone is treated exactly the same.”
Foster Principal Glenna DeSouza said she’s enthusiastic about the program, which was being used in the school in Salem she worked at before coming to Sweet Home two years ago.
“Actually, we are trying to even boost our PBS,” she said.
“The reason I like this program is that whenever something happens, we can go back to the rules with the kids and ask them how what happened fits into those rules. There are three rules (safety, respect, responsibility). That keeps the rules small, easy for the kids to understand.”
School staff members award Paws slips to students who do something responsible or safe or respectful, and children whose slips are selected in a random drawing each Friday get prizes. The school is also holding a contest in which children are designing posters explaining what it means to be safe, which will be displayed throughout the school.
Each morning, older students make announcements and deliver a Thought for the Day, such as “Don’t forget to treat others as you would want to be treated yourself,” over the PA system, DeSouza said.
Elena Barton, Crawfordsville principal, said that her staff has continued to refine their program each year and this year have been working on teaching children to work for delayed positive consequences – rewards for good behavior. Students can choose a handful of peanuts or can put their name in for a drawing for prizes.
“I’m surprised at how many want to take a chance on a drawing,” she said.
Analysis of data collected by the district shows that certain problematic behavior such as aggression and fighting, disrespect and tardiness have dropped at local elementary schools.
The percentage of total referrals for aggression or fighting at Foster School dropped from 61 percent in 2002-03 to 16 percent in 2006-07, while Hawthorne’s dropped from 40 percent to 8 percent over the same period.
The average number of referrals per day at Hawthorne dropped from 4.15 in 2002-03 to 1.21 in 2006-07, while at Foster they dropped from 3.51 to 1.30.
“From the time that they started to last year or even now, the offenses that I see the kids for aren’t as severe as used to be,” DeSouza said of the numbers at Foster.
Aman said he is “very supportive” of PBS at Hawthorne.
“I really believe it has changed our whole student body behavior system,” he said. “This is my fifth year at Hawthorne. Behavior has not been a problem and I think we owe lot of that to PBS.”
The data collection and analysis is a big plus for administrators, since the circumstances, time and location of any problem is recorded at each school. They can pinpoint where problems are tending to occur and then come up with proactive strategies to solve them.
“We can really kind of fine-tune things,” Barton said. “We’ve seen referrals go down quite a bit.”
At Foster School, children receive a gold card at the beginning of school. Those who don’t lose their card, for such things as an office referral, get prizes at the end of the trimester – ice cream, free recess, a hay ride or something of that nature, Principal Mike Aman said.
Sixth-graders who retain their gold card get to go swimming at the SPLASH water park in Springfield and younger children get to go bowling. The school also holds awards assemblies each month to honor students who have done well in particular subjects.
“We try to make sure everybody gets recognized,” Aman said.
Huschka said that the data help junior high administrators isolate problem areas, such as the cafeteria or the hallway, where “we need to increase supervision.” A PBS team of teachers and administrators might also decide they need to reteach expectations for the cafeteria during an assembly.
Last year, for instance, administrators realized they had a problem with students getting into mischief during the mid-morning break. The PBS team recommended purchasing foosball tables for the commons area. Huschka said he wasn’t sure about the idea at first, but the problems went away after the school purchased three tables.
“You have 20 kids standing around each table,” he said. “They police themselves. The ones that need to be doing something are doing something in a positive manner. We’ve had very, very few issues with those foosball tables.”
High school Principal Pat Stineff said the main emphasis on her campus has been on improving “very poor” attendance through positive incentives, such as a plan to start awarding certificates for attendance.
“We’re trying to be more positive, more proactive than punishing, which is what PBS is about.”
She said that by the time students get to high school, a lot of behavior problems stem from drug and alcohol abuse.
“We’ve never really had a problem with fights,” Stineff said. “Because of the drugs and alcohol abuse, and the fact that they can drive, they skip out the back and off they go. I think those are huge factors.”
She said technological progress has resulted in bigger challenges for school teachers and administrators since she started teaching 31 years ago.
“Kids are different today,” she said. “I see an enormous difference. Chewing gum used to be the problem. Now they have technology. It’s totally different than it used to be because of society.”