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I recently had the opportunity to attend my first
conference as not only an educator, but as a stakeholder, in the PBS
practices at the middle school. The 2013 PBIS Conference was filled with
invaluable resources and information that can be applied to the upcoming
school year and beyond.
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My big takeaways from
attending the many keynotes and breakout sessions were the use of increasing
technology in all aspects of PBS, including more teachers into the Check-in
Check-out (CICO) process with the students, and many incentive ideas at the
school-wide level.
We watched some incredible examples of PBS videos. While we already include
videos in our GRR lessons, the conference offered more ideas of how we can
improve these videos. Whether it was rewriting lyrics to a popular song about
the expectations and then creating a music video, or creating a recurring
character to appear in a series of videos, these techniques could make the
videos more interesting for the students and staff to watch. One other facet
of video-making the presenter highlighted was to use videos to remind staff
of our own expectations, such as supervision. One short video about
supervision was more impactful than a dozen emails about the same thing.
A couple breakout sessions I attended during the conference suggested using
more than just one person as the CICO facilitator. Instead of having all of
our Tier 2 students go to the same teacher at the end of the day to check
out, they can be assigned a specific teacher to check in and out with. This
helps form that positive relationship between student and teacher and gives
the student another person to talk to if they are having a particularly good
or bad day. This could also help with a buddy room situation if needed
instead of all Tier 2 students wanting to go directly to the recovery room.
Throughout the entire conference there were dozens of ideas tossed around
about positive incentives at the Tier 1 level. Some of these include earning
music during lunch, cutting off the principal’s tie, and using a privilege
card. Of course, some of these will be better received than others by our
students, but the best way to figure out what works for our school-wide
climate is to try some new things and update what needs to be updated.
The PBIS conference
was a huge success and a great learning opportunity. It truly got me fired up
for the upcoming school year and how we can motivate our students to be their
best.
Written by Chelsea Wallace
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