Home and school should be a place where children are encouraged to grow academically and socially. Both places should pride themselves on providing the support that will prepare children to not only become contributing members of society, but future leaders as well.
Positive Behavior Support (PBS) refers to the application of positive behavioral interventions and systems to achieve socially important behavior change. PBS is the integration of defined and valued outcomes; behavioral and biomedical science; research-validated practices; and systems change to both enhance the broad quality with which all students are living/learning and reduce problem behaviors.
PBS was initially used approximately 20 years ago as an alternative to aversive interventions used with students with significant disabilities who engaged in extreme forms of self-injury and aggression. It has most recently been applied successfully with a wide range of students in a wide range of contexts, and extended from an intervention approach for individual students to an intervention approach for entire schools. Families are also taking advantage of the skills learned and applying them at home.
Teachers and parents all over the country are seeking skills assistance for behavior and classroom management. There are many competing social and behavioral factors that are affecting the learning process in each classroom and at home, making the job of actually teaching and parenting, a lot more difficult. With a higher number of diagnosed learning disabilities in the school population, it can create insurmountable odds in the face of increased academic and disciplinary accountability. PBS helps educators and parents to understand the critical practices and systems of positive behavior support. It is not a single theory, but a compilation of the best practices of proven strategies.
The PBS approach is founded on this science of human behavior. Key messages from behavioral science state that much of human behavior is learned; comes under the control of environmental factors; and can be changed. As problem behaviors become more understandable, so does one's ability to teach more socially appropriate and functional behavior. The process pays attention to important lifestyle results, works from a systems perspective, and gives priority to research-validated practices.
Behavior is a communication tool. It is used to tell another person what it is that we need. Maladaptive behavior is often used to communicate when a person lacks the skills for asking in adaptive ways or the adaptive way in which they communicated was ignored or not heard by others. The child who acts out in the supermarket and is rewarded with a lollipop because it is less embarrassing than yelling, will more than likely act out at the supermarket again in search of another lollipop. An important component of the PBS program at Vincent Smith School in Port Washington is the Self-Advocacy and Mentoring (SAM) Program which has been designed and implemented to allow students to develop the necessary skills for communication, self-advocacy, autonomy, and the ability to access needed services and support.
PBS does not attempt to address negative behavior as much as it attempts to reinforce positive behavior. Research has shown that students do not learn better ways of behaving when presented with aversive consequences for their problem behaviors. Addressing such behavior requires an increased emphasis on proactive approaches in which expected and more socially acceptable behaviors are directly taught, regularly practiced and followed by repetitive positive reinforcement. By doing so, schools can shift from reactive interventions to prevention efforts.
PBS is not a program that displays its full value overnight. Effective practices and systems of PBS must be sustained for several years to maximize its effectiveness. The program aims to assist local and state education agents in their efforts to improve school climate and positive behavior support for all students.
In its first full year at Vincent Smith, the program produced several student and staff successes: a leadership team was formed; staff and students on the elementary and middle school level took self-assessments on their teaching and learning styles; staff agreed to focus on teaching and reinforcing the six pillars of character development - trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship - with a special emphasis on respect; the leadership team designed a survey to measure student and teacher opinions; and everyone on campus participated in a school-wide project in celebration of Earth Month.
"Positive Behavior Support is not just about changing the climate, but the entire culture of the school and/or home," said Dr. Veronica McCue, Principal. "By doing so, children have taken a sense of ownership for their behavior and the environment around them. While they continue to receive external rewards, they are being guided on how to internalize those rewards into specific behaviors. Parents and educators are being challenged to produce global citizens in a world of contradictions."
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