Tobias Elementary’s teaching community leverages its entrenched PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) program to help students feel safe, confident and aware of their behavioral environment.
As the Explorers follow their “MAPS”, the community at and around Tobias uses the 7 Mindsets to go beyond behavioral strategies, providing a curriculum and common language supporting each child.
This year, 7 Mindsets explores seven schools from across the United States with a film crew in tow. Our second stop is Tobias Elementary near Austin, TX, a school community that has embraced the Growth Mindset, while implementing The 7 Mindsets as a structure and common language for social and emotional learning.
This is a community of explorers who live by a rigorous, yet light-hearted commitment to each whole child. Enjoy!
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For those unfamiliar with PBIS, the following is credited to PBIS.org:
“What is School-wide PBIS?
One of the foremost advances in schoolwide discipline is the emphasis on schoolwide systems of support that include proactive strategies for defining, teaching, and supporting appropriate student behaviors to create positive school environments. Instead of using a piecemeal approach of individual behavioral management plans, a continuum of positive behavior support for all students within a school is implemented in areas including the classroom and non-classroom settings (such as hallways, buses, and restrooms). Positive behavior support is an application of a behaviorally-based systems approach to enhance the capacity of schools, families, and communities to design effective environments that improve the link between research-validated practices and the environments in which teaching and learning occurs. Attention is focused on creating and sustaining Tier 1 supports (universal), Tier 2 supports (targeted group), and Tier 3 supports (individual) systems of support that improve lifestyle results (personal, health, social, family, work, recreation) for all children and youth by making targeted behaviors less effective, efficient, and relevant, and desired behavior more functional.
Why is it so important to focus on teaching positive social behaviors?
Frequently, the question is asked, “Why should I have to teach kids to be good? They already know what they are supposed to do. Why can I not just expect good behavior?” In the infamous words of a TV personality, “How is that working out for you?”
In the past, schoolwide discipline has focused mainly on reacting to specific student misbehavior by implementing punishment-based strategies including reprimands, loss of privileges, office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions. Research has shown that the implementation of punishment, especially when it is used inconsistently and in the absence of other positive strategies, is ineffective. Introducing, modeling, and reinforcing positive social behavior is an important step of a student’s educational experience. Teaching behavioral expectations and rewarding students for following them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehavior to occur before responding. The purpose of schoolwide PBIS is to establish a climate in which appropriate behavior is the norm.”
