Once we established our positive behavior expectations, our PBIS team’s next big goal was to create a sitewide behavior intervention flowchart. In this flowchart, the goal was to:
- Clearly define the difference between minor and major behaviors
- Outline a process for minor and major behaviors
- Create consistency across the entire school
We found a TON of great resources online that guided our conversation. We started by looking at a variety of flowcharts to see what would best fit our needs. Once we found the style that we liked the best, we created a template and began adding in our own information. Here is what we created:
As you can see, the behaviors were added to the center and differentiated by minors and majors. By aligning them side by side, it helped teachers to understand the difference between a minor and major behavior in each category (ex: disruption, defiance, etc.). On each side of the behaviors, there are the interventions that are put into place for students when a minor and/or major behavior occurs. Minor behaviors can escalate to major behaviors if repeated, sustained, and/or the minor interventions have already been implemented.
Here are some best practices we had for implementing this flowchart:
Run it By Leadership
Once this was created, we took it to our leadership team for feedback. This is SO important! Don’t forget to run big decisions like this by your leadership team and staff. 🙂
Align with your Referral System
Currently, we use a combination of PBIS Rewards and Infinite Campus for logging behavior incidents on campus. In PBIS Rewards, teachers log any minor and major behaviors. The minor behaviors stay in PBIS Rewards but we move over the major behaviors to Infinite Campus so that future schools can also see these behaviors.
In PBIS Rewards, we aligned the categories (ex: disruption, defiance, etc.) to the system as the “problem behavior”. In addition to this, we aligned all of the interventions (on the far left and right side) to the “redirections” section. By doing this, it created consistency across referrals and further implemented the flowchart.
Train Your Staff
Implementing a sitewide, behavior intervention flowchart was a huge change! It was something that our teachers asked for to create consistency but there was a lot of training that was needed up front. First, we trained teachers on the flowchart and what each step meant. Afterwards, we trained them on PBIS Rewards and how to use the program to log and track the behavior information.
Shift from Discipline to Interventions
One of the biggest shifts for our staff was the difference between “interventions” and “discipline”. The left side (the minors) are interventions. They are strategies that are done in the classroom to intervene and prevent future behaviors. It is an opportunity to reteach and help students grow. The right side (the majors) are considered discipline. Discipline is something that is done by administration (ex: class suspension, referral) in response to repeated, sustained, or severe behavior incidents. There are still interventions that are done by administration (ex: Check In/Out, Behavior PTC’s, BIP’s, etc.) However, we wanted to shift the mindset from “progressive discipline” to “progressive interventions”. It was a big shift and we are still growing in this area.
Currently, we are one quarter in to fully implementing PBIS. It is WAY more than I anticipated and I know that this is going to be a several year journey. If you have any PBIS stories or best practices to share, please do so in the comments below!
