Vincent Smith School Provides

School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS)

The Vincent Smith School has a warm, friendly environment where students are encouraged to grow academically and socially. The school prides itself on offering programs and activities that prepare its students to not only be contributing members of society, but future leaders as well.

Last year, students and staff at Vincent Smith School began participating in the School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS) program, which refers to the application of positive behavioral interventions and systems to achieve socially important behavior change. SW-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.

Teachers 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, making the job of actually teaching, 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 accountability.

Vincent Smith teachers have received extensive training from VSS staff member and clinical psychologist Dr. Valerie Gaus, who serves as the PBS coach under the direction of Principal Veronica McCue, who serves as facilitator. An initial two-day workshop provided general information and allowed staff to develop common language. SW-PBS helps educators 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 an educator’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. An important component of the SW-PBS program at Vincent Smith School 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.

SW-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.

SW-PBS is not a program that displays its full value overnight. Effective practices and systems of SW-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 has borne several student and staff successes: a leadership team has been formed; staff and students on the elementary and middle school level have taken self-assessments on their teaching and learning styles; staff have 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.

“We are not just changing the climate, but the entire culture of the school,” said Mrs. McCue. “By doing so, students 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. Educators are being challenged to produce global citizens in a world of contradictions.”

Caption: Vincent Smith School School-Wide Positive Behavior Support leadership team members discuss strategies for the remainder of the school year.