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Ask the ‘TASC is a PBIS advice column from the RSE-TASC Specialists


Question: What are some suggestions and ways to reinvent after 5+ years of implementing PBIS? Looking for ideas of keeping things fresh, creative, and new.


Response 1:

John McCabe,

Non District Specialist

I believe the best place to start a reinvention of PBIS is with the PBIS team. Not only does the research support the importance of the team but intuitively it makes sense. If we can lead by example and create a motivated, achievement-oriented team, we have a great advantage in successfully implementing a reinvention of PBIS.

First off, if you don’t have a PBIS team that is meeting regularly, don’t panic! It’s a good time to build a new team from scratch. The research on teams by Richard Hackman, who was a professor of psychology at Harvard University, is a great place to start. His studies on what makes teams effective are described in his book, Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems. Hackman found that there were six conditions that make teams effective. We will start with the first three conditions, as they are the most robust of the six research based conditions.

Real Team: When building a team, start with a strength-based approach. People on the team should operate from their strengths and not their titles. They should be able to work “interdependently” toward a common team goal. That means that each team member can work toward a common team goal independently using their skills .

Compelling Purpose: The team must have a compelling purpose that they have devised. Having a compelling purpose means having a common team goal that is of consequence and is achievable. The goal has to be big enough and significant enough to excite and drive the team as well as specific and task-based enough to ground the work, provide direct guidance to complete the goal, and produce an identifiable product or outcome.

Norms: Hackman says that teams should pick, “two things they will always do and two things they will never do.” This is his way of framing the norms of the group. Norms establish how the group will function and need to be explicitly stated when the group first starts. So if the group decides that it will always, “use data and thoughtful debate to make team decisions and never take important conversations out of the team,” then that is the norm and rule of group.

If the team is excited about the work they are doing, then they will be in a great position to get everyone in the school excited and motivated! Start with the team and create the conditions for success!

Response 2:

Andrew J. Ecker, 

Special Education School Improvement Specialist

First, congratulations on implementing PBIS for 5+ years!  This might be a great time for your PBIS team to identify and share (a) the student outcomes that have improved, and (b) the systems and staff practices that have been implemented to achieve these student outcomes.  Celebrate your students’ outcomes and your great work.

Second, it’s possible that your implementation led to the desired, and needed, student outcomes more representative of your students’ needs five years ago.  Let’s think back to spring 2012… WOW – a lot has changed since then!  The expectations and rules that your school developed may have been relevant then but not so much now.  That’s progress, and it’s a great challenge to be faced with.  Conversely, there may be new issues that the original matrix doesn’t include; e.g. appropriate use of social media in the classroom.  This could be an opportunity to survey students, families, staff, and community members on the expectations for the next five years.  Your team could look at this as a “matrix audit” to see which rules, settings, and locations you want to keep, change, and/or replace.  Lastly, many schools are now leveraging their school’s PBIS framework to proactively teach and respond to students’ needs in the areas of mental health, social-emotional wellness, and academic and cognitive skills.  For example, “being safe” may have originally meant “keeping hands and feet to yourself”, but could be expanded to teach mental health skills by adding that being safe also means “letting an adult know if you, or someone else, is sad”.

Read more about interconnecting PBIS with mental health supports here: https://www.pbis.org/school/school-mental-health/interconnected-systems.

It seems that your school well understands that sustained, improved student outcomes come from sustained fidelity of implementation.  Congrats on the student and implementation successes – past, present, and future!

 

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please email your question to: dlangley@pnwboces.org with the subject line “Ask the ‘TASC”