Welcome to the Massachusetts to your system of supports PBIS Academy overview.
During the next few minutes will provide a more formal welcome give you an overview of
positive behavioral interventions and supports or PBIS.
And give you an overview of the PBIS academy in Massachusetts
My name is Brandy Simonson.
I'm a partner with the opposite special education program center on PBIS and I'm the co-director
of the Center for behavioral educational education research at the University of Connecticut.
my colleague, John Freeman and I coordinate the training and coaching within the PBIS
Academy.
My colleagues, Susanna Everett coordinates the evaluation.
And we are supported by George Sugai is one of our colleagues at University of the University
of Connecticut who co-directs the National Center in PBIS.
We're all familiar with PBIS but just to make sure we're on the same page.
PBIS is also known as school-wide positive behavior support.
And PBIS is a framework which means it's not a curriculum.
It's not a package set of interventions are packaged program it is a new way of doing
business.
So we think about a framework as those structures and support that we put in place to enhance
the implementation by staff of supports for students that allow everyone to be successful.
So we think about that framework supporting a continuum of evidence-based interventions
or practices we aim those at helping improve outcomes for students in behavior but also
an academic mental health and other needed domains within your building.
And the goal of implementing evidence-based practices within this framework is to enhance
the outcomes for all students students with and without disabilities and students from
a variety of backgrounds.
School-wide positive behavior support is an organizational approach for supporting and
improving classroom and school climate.
Although the focus is on increasing positive and proactive management a byproduct of that
is decreasing the reactive management that used to characterize behavior supports in
many schools.
By doing that, we're able to help teachers increase the academic achievement of their
students and we're able to really focus needed supports on students who have intensive needs.
So students with emotional and behavioral disorders and we do that by integrating academic
behavior social emotional and other initiatives that might already be in your building.
The thing that makes PBIS a little bit new and different is that we start by asking schools
to identify locally meaningful outcomes.
Those outcomes might be things like increasing students academic achievement decreasing office
discipline referrals or behavioral incidents within your building and increasing the implementation
of positive and proactive supports by staff.
To monitor progress toward those outcomes.
We asked schools to use data for their decision-making largely those data sources are things are
already collecting.
So we're not asking you to do it to do a ton more work with data collection but we are
asking you to invest in systems that allow you to use those data effectively and efficiently
to make decisions.
So will expose you to different online approaches or online applications to allow you to do
that.
And will also give you the option to select your own district wide systems and adapt those
to meet the same needs.
So things like graphing offices of the referral data by date, by time, by students, by in
fraction, by consequence so that you can make good decisions about how to improve the practices,
to support your students practices are those things guided by data that we do to support
students.
So common practices and PBIS are things like having positively stated expectations explicitly
teaching those expectations acknowledging students were following the expectations and
having a continuum of consequences.
When students make behavioral errors those practices should be tailored to your own building,
but those critical features show up across a range of settings to support implementation
of those practices.
We invest in systems and again this is something that makes PBIS unique is that we emphasize
the support staff will need to be six festival with implementation.
So systems include having a strong leadership team.
It's received adequate training is that they can support the staff on that team designating
one or two individuals to function as coaches.
So they can help prompt and facilitate activities within the school building having embedded
explicit professional development to facilitate staffs implementation and having having an
acknowledgement system for staff, so that we can acknowledge them when they are implementing
with success
Part of the way we think about organizing practices and systems features is within a
tier prevention logic.
So, we start by asking that schools consider the interventions that all students will need
to be successful.
So primary prevention supports or tier one supports are provided for all students to
enable most students to be successful.
For practices, again those supports primarily consists of establishing a small number of
positively stated expectations explicitly teaching the expectations.
Having a system to acknowledge students for following expectations and providing a continuum
of responses when they don't most of those responses being instructionally focused to
increase the likelihood they'll be successful the next time with just those basic supports.
Most students approximately eighty percent will be successful.
Some students will continue to demonstrate at risk behavior that indicates that they
need more than just tier 1 supports for those students
We implement secondary prevention or two supports that are targeted to meet their unique needs
those things may include a check and check out program where students carry cards to
increase the prompting that they receive and increase their opportunities for acknowledgement
or for students who need additional instruction and social skills.
There might be a small group social skills instruction small group academic supports
or other targeted small group supports.
For most students require additional support about fifteen percent of the student population
to your two supports in addition to tier1 supports will be sufficient.
It's for some students approximately five percent their behaviour will be chronic or
significant enough that they warn't individualized intensive intervention.
For those students will take the time to do an individualized assessment functional behavioral
assessment for PBIS and within their functional assessment.
We will develop individualized behavior support strategies and emphasize implementation of
those with fidelity.
As you know that continued is not only on the behavior side of things but also the same
approach is used on academics and for other initiatives within the building.
And we actually blend those continuum, continuum were able to them support all students.
So the MTSS or Massachusetts to system of support is that integrated continuum that
addresses all needs of a student.
So in thinking about how we get there.
We always start with a team and as many of you are attending at the school level will
initially think about that at the school but that team structure also exist at the district
in the state and at the regional level.
At the school level that team includes a representative group of faculty.
So thinking representation across grade level or across departments depending on how your
school is organized.
And also thinking about general edu, special edu special support provider's certified and
non-certified staff and also ensuring that there's an administrator on the team who can
commit resources and make decisions and the parent voice and student voice are represented
on the team so that means typically that a couple of parents will be asked to join the
team so they can support each other and that you'll make plans to think about how to incorporate
student voice especially with younger students.
It's probably not as appropriate or meaningful to have them sit through long team meetings
but it might be very appropriate to use your student government or student council to review
key documents key initiatives and get their input before implementation the team comes
together with agreements around supporting students around supporting staff and about
having the principal and the building level team and the superintendent at the district
level team providing support that team then comes together to commit to training activities.
So in the PBIS academy for example that team will attend six days of training together
in the first year during that six day training.
Over the first year that team will develop a data-based action plan after they have the
action plan developed they trained all of their staff and faculty.
And they are ready to roll out.
They'll begin the implementation base for most teams they spend about a year again training
and planning some teams will come in ready to move faster and others might have some
barriers or changes that caused them to move a little bit slower.
But the ballpark estimate is that most teams will be ready to begin implementation a year
after they begin training.
Once teams begin implementation at the school level and at the district level they go back
and look at their data to see how things are going that ongoing evaluation allows them
to tweak their action plan based on how things are working.
And then they go back into implementation so teams for many years stay in that bottom
cycle.
So they action plan the implements they evaluate how it's going and they go back and revise
and start implementing again.
All of this is guided as we mentioned by coaching so there's coaching on to school team level
coaching on the district's team level even on the state and regional team levels and
the goal of all of that again is to ensure that we meet outcomes for all staff, all students,
and all administrators.
At the larger level, so thinking district state and region.
We emphasize a leadership team that coordinates things across either multiple school teams
or the state level many districts.
And at the regional level many states so thinking that most of you are attending at the school
and district level.
Let's focus on the district level leadership team.
So starting with the leadership team and looking down at the district level the goal will be
to have a team that can manage training coaching and evaluation functions district-wide.
To enable that there needs to be at least one person and who has behavioral expertise
at the district level.
And hopefully more than one person of course that's something we will be building during
the academy.
But it's fantastic if you have someone with that background in your district or in your
schools already to bring them and make sure they are on your team.
So they can continue it to enhance their knowledge and continue to use their knowledge to enhance
the team at the district and especially at the state and regional level we look above
the leadership team to think about how we sustain things.
So one key piece is ongoing funding to make sure the initiative is allowed to sustain
to increase the likelihood of ongoing funding.
We use visibility political support and eventually we asked districts to think about how they're
going to embed PBIS in their policy.
For example districts who have been implementing for a while may change their hiring practices
to emphasize PBIS knowledge.
They make sure PBIS logic shows up in their discipline policy and other key policies of
the district and school level.
So in thinking about where we starts obviously we don't jump in and check.
Hit the ground running with everything at once.
As you know most schools and districts go through a series of phases when they're thinking
about implementing a school-wide or district wide initiative.
The first step is exploration and adoption which is where many of you are today.
The second phase is once you've decided to begin implementation.
You start initial implementation and the third and final phase is full implementation.
So initially, we were just thinking about making sure that school climate is a priority
of the district bubble that it's a principle priority at the building level and that within
each building.
The staff have given their acknowledgement that school climate is a top priority for
them as well.
Once you move into initial implementation the key things are the established a leadership
team at the school and at the district level you have selected one or hopefully two individuals
to function as coaches.
You've secured staff agreement so approximately eighty percent of your staff or bought into
the idea implementing PBIS school-wide that leadership team participate in training for
school and class.
Why positive behavioral interventions and supports and that leadership team goes back
and takes the training back to the broader faculty and that leadership team in collaboration
with the broader faculty develop an action plan including a data system to allow ongoing
decision-making after the action plan is developed.
You move into full implementation where you're implementing the action items on your plan.
You're using data to monitor and evaluate implementation fidelity and progress toward
key outcomes and you're continuing to refine your action plan.
And think about ways to increase intensive supports kind of moving up the triangle.
By doing that we expect to see staff implemented with fidelity students benefiting academically
and socially in an enhanced physical and social climate in the building.
So the specific details for the Massachusetts PBIS Academy you have access to the readiness
checklist and that will give you a step by step of the things you need to have in place.
Many of those steps require signatures of commitment from either the principal, the
superintendent or other key stakeholders in the building and in the district.
In terms of what training actually looks like.
In the first year, the school and district leadership teams come together for six days
of team training.
Again, that team is representative at the school level including an administrator grade
level or department level representatives, support staff representatives parent and student
voice.
At the district level, think about building representation and also representation from
other key offices within the district.
In addition to the team training individuals designated as coaches attend three additional
coaches meetings.
And that's again two coaches per building and two coaches at the district level to support
your implementation.
We're also providing two days of technical assistance per district and that technical
assistance might be used to support administrators support coaching support data or some combination
of the above.
And we'll also use some of that time to monitor the fidelity of your implentation.
In the second year that team comes together again for three days of team training.
Coaches come together for three days of coaches meetings.
And there again two days of technical assistance provided per district.
In the third year, we again come together for two days of team training starts to look
a little bit more like a showcase event where we learn and enhance our implementation based
on what other schools have done.
We again come together for coaches meetings to refine advanced implementation and advanced
coaching.
And schools are still offer to days of technical assistance per district.
All of these training and coaching days are focused on tier one implementation for schools
that are implementing teir one with fidelity.
They're offered the option to attend a parallel tier two Academy.
For more information on PBIS nationally and as an overall model pbis.org is the website
of our National Technical Assistance Center everything on that website is free and accessible
to the public.
The first click if you look towards the top of the graphic is a school quick and that
contains overviews of tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 and also some specific information for implementing
in high schools and other settings.
Our regional website, northeast pbis.org or nepbis.org contains the relevant information
specific to our region including an overview of the materials that are used in the Academy.
We do revise those every summer.
So don't spend time downloading and printing things because new versions will be posted
before the beginning of the next academy, but it does give you an idea of what implementation
generally looks like and what materials we use to support implementation.
So the goal of the broader Academy is to create an integrated school and district initiative
to create safe and supporting supportive learning environments for all students and to create
common planning common collaboration and coordinated activities across the district.
So your next steps if you're interested in the PBIS Academy are to complete the readiness
checklist and submit that to Madeline Levine by the date specified and then materials.
Please be aware that all readiness requirements must be met before the first day of team training
and ideally prior to that you're actually submitting the checklist.
If you need additional time for additional support to secure staff buy-in or complete
other items on the readiness checklist please let Madeline know and we would be happy to
provide supports that are necessary.
And just so you have the contact information Madeline Levine is the primary point of contact
with the PBIS academy.
But Paul is also a point of contact and you may hear from either one of them is it mentioned
at the bottom of the last slide priority is given to TPP districts, level five districts,
level four districts, and the level three districts.
So thank you for your time.
Again, my name is Brandi Simonson and we look forward to working with you in the PBIS academy.