Posted: Wednesday, Jun 25, 2008 – 08:13:03 am CDT
New Bloomfield’s positive behavior gets rewarded
By ROGER MEISSEN
The Fulton SunNEW BLOOMFIELD, Mo. – Helping students learn has a lot to do with how teachers approach problems in the classroom and in the halls.
Today, the New Bloomfield Elementary School will be recognized for a different approach to discipline.
It will be one of 80 Missouri Schools honored on the last day of the third annual Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support Summer Institute in Columbia.
“It’s just a different approach to behavior management in schools,” Elementary School Principal Stacy Fick said. “You can think of it as teaching in the same way we teach math, science or social studies. We use this to teach the expected behavior from the kids.
“It starts with the teachers, and we have lots of rewards put in place to keep them motivated, to just be more positive. Instead of saying ‘don’t run in the halls’ we say ‘walk in the halls.’”
This approach aims to stop problems before they start by reinforcing good actions.
“Essentially, it’s an approach that focuses on rewarding positive behavior by students, and recognizing potential causes of and trying to prevent negative behavior,” said Jim Morris, director of public information with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “I think it applies to all students schoolwide, including students with special needs.”
It tries to provide a framework so everybody in the school uses the same sort of approach to discipline. This focus helps make it so the school doesn’t have to spend time fixing negative behavior.”
New Bloomfield Elementary just completed their second full year of the program and this bronze level award helps them know they’re doing something right.
“We get a banner to put in our school and it’s always good when we can find those positive things to put out there to the public, to the community,” Fick said. “We want to tell them about some of the really good things we are doing. So yeah, we’re happy.”
Fick and the nine members of the PBS committee will receive the bronze-level award while in attendance at the conference in Columbia learning new approaches from other schools and professionals that have embraced this approach longer.
“There are guest speakers from other schools who have been doing PBS for awhile and have been pretty successful,” Fick said. “They also have school psychologists from out of state that come in and talk about how to deal with students that have behavioral disorders.
“PBS is for all students, not just special needs, but after you have implementation for awhile you realize it’s not going to work for all kids. Then you’ve got a small number of kids that you have to try to figure out how to reach.”
New Bloomfield uses methods to reward good behavior, such as letting bus drivers hand out tickets that can be redeemed, to help children know being good counts. Part of the program also includes collecting data on office referrals and discipline to show the impact of changes on student expectations.
“We’re probably among five or six schools in the heart of Missouri,” Fick said. “Last year when we went to the Summer Institute we thought we’d really worked our tales off and thought we’d done a good job. Now we’re just pretty excited for this.” |
