SMMS Expectations

Choose wisely
Act responsibly
Take ownership
Show respect

PBIS Family Initiative

Young people today experience many of the same feelings and express some of the same behaviors as adults do. Understandably, children get angry, sad, frustrated, nervous, happy, and/or embarrassed.  Unfortunately, they often do not have the words to talk about their feelings. Along with the staff at each school,  parents can help their child(ren) understand how to appropriately express their feelings by using the following tips.

• When talking to your child, explain different feelings in words s/he can understand. You may use books, videos, or pictures to get the point across.

• Teach your child different ways s/he can deal with feelings and control behaviors. Discuss appropriate and inappropriate ways to behave.

• Build an open line of communication with the school staff to support behavior expectations at home and school.

What is Positive Behavior Interventions and Support?

PBIS 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.

What is PBIS at our school?

We have adopted a unified set of classroom rules. Similar to the CMS Code of Student Conduct, these rules define our expectations for behavior in our school. 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 classroom rules, found in every classroom and non-classroom setting in the school, are as follows:

• C:  Choose wisely

• A:  Act responsibly

• T:  Take ownership

• S:  Show respect

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 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.

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