New school program rewards community, consideration

NORTH CANAAN — The idea behind a new behavioral training system at North Canaan Elementary School (NCES) is simple: Teach students how to be respectful, responsible and make informed choices regarding safety.

Staff at the school have undergone a year of training  and now, after only a couple of months in practice,  the Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support (PBIS) system seems to be bringing remarkable returns on the time investment.

PBIS is a federal program established by the Office of Special Education Programs. The agency describes it as a way to help students “self-regulate� their academic, social and personal behavior. It sounds almost too good to be true, but faculty at the school report that it’s working.

The system was instituted at Housatonic Valley Regional High School a year ago.

There is an 11-member PBIS team at North Canaan, made up of teachers, the school psychologist and counselor and a parent. They came to the Nov. 12 school board meeting to give a PowerPoint presentation. But more telling than the charts and graphs was their palpable excitement.

The overall atmosphere in the school has taken a dramatic turnaround. It’s not that there was mayhem before, but the program has created a whole new culture, team members said.

Students are less focused on themselves, as their eyes are opened to the impact each has on those around them, even in the smallest of ways.

It is eliminating the “group mentality� that often drives disrespectful behavior.

Principal Rosemary Keilty said that she not only has to speak with far fewer students in her office, but she will often be the recipient of random kindnesses, such as having a door held for her.

“The PBIS initiative is not about manners, such as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ but I’m hearing a lot more of it,� Keilty said. “It’s making students more respectful and aware, so that they are using the manners they already have.�

PBIS is designed to make it very clear to students what behavior is expected of them in school — not just in the classroom, but on the playground, on the bus, in the cafeteria and even the bathrooms.

“Before, all they heard from us was ‘don’t, don’t, don’t.’ Now it’s ‘we expect ...’,� Keilty said. “In all the years I taught, we never told the kids how we expected them to act in places outside the classroom.

“Children need structure and constant reminding. With this, we are slowly changing the culture of the school.�

The staff expressed delight with the program.

“The students walk down the hall more in single file, rather than in big, noisy groups that block the hallways,� said teacher Eve Bouchard, who leads the team as a “coach� with teacher Melissa Bachetti.

“It’s a very positive and very data-driven approach,� she added. “It looks at where students are behaving properly and what expectations are being met.�

The initiative comes with its own language, of sorts. Phrases like “leave no trace,� have become oft-repeated reminders to be responsible.

An example would be leaving a classroom in good condition by pushing desk chairs in and picking up papers from the floor. The phrase helps students remember they are in a community setting.

Students receive recognition slips that say  thank you for exhibiting a specific behavior. The slips, which students are treating with respect, go into a weekly drawing for small prizes. The PBIS system recognizes that it could easily become all about the prizes, so they are limited to token items, such as a pencil, or quality-of-life rewards, such as having music played in the cafeteria.

A chart in the school lobby is tallying the number of recognition slips. Team members pay close attention to who is getting them, and who is not.

“After the first week, we made a list of kids who were not recognized. We are very cognitive of the need to recognize all the students. Just because they didn’t get a slip doesn’t mean they didn’t do things to deserve it. During the second week, we went out and easily found reasons to give those kids slips.�

The chart hit the 6,000 mark this week. The reward will be a schoolwide ice cream party.

The initiative recognizes the need for regular reminders and assessments of where problems begins. Even a week-long vacation break is followed by “re-training.� Bouchard said PBIS even looks at how students “flow� around the school, sort of a feng shui approach. Feng shui is a Chinese tradition and pays attention to how positive and negative energy flow through people and space.

School board members noted that PBIS seems to require a lot of time from the team.

“We are spending a lot of time now, but it will eventually run itself,� Bachetti said, adding emphatically that, “It’s worth it.�