Participating Schools Beach Elementary (Fruitport) Beachnau Elementary (Ravenna) Bluffton Elementary (Muskegon) Campbell Elementary (Mona Shores) Cardinal Elementary (Orchard View) Churchill Elementary (Mona Shores) Edgewood Elementary (Fruitport) Edgewood Elementary (Muskegon Heights) Holton Elementary Lincoln Park Elementary (Mona Shores) Loftis Elementary (Muskegon Heights) Marquette Elementary (Muskegon) Martin Luther King (Muskegon Heights)

McLaughlin Elementary (Muskegon) McMillan (Reeths Puffer) Muskegon Heights Middle School Nelson Elementary (Muskegon) Nims Elementary (Muskegon) Oakview Elementary (Muskegon) Orchard View Early Elementary Orchard View Middle School Reeths-Puffer Elementary Roosevelt Elementary (Muskegon Heights) Shettler Elementary (Fruitport)

SPRING 2008 SPRING 2008 Welcome! Welcome to the Spring edition of the MAISD Michigan

Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi)

Positive Behavior Support (PBS) Newsletter. We would like to

begin by congratulating all of you for your efforts in providing a

positive behavior support initiative in your school this year. We

believe that your hard work will make a positive difference in

the lives of all of your students.

In this issue we will review highlights of the 2009 Michigan State

MIBLSi Conference, in Lansing Michigan. In addition, we will

acknowledge celebrations from our Muskegon MIBLSi and PBS

Participating Schools. Informational articles on Meeting Me-

chanics, Relationship Driven Classrooms, and The SWIS Big

Five will also be provided. We hope you have a great spring and

summer!

Steven Vitto, M.A. MIBLSI Specialist, PBS Newsletter Editor

Susan Mack, M.A. MIBLSI/PBS Coach Deanna Holman, MIBLSI Specialist

Latesha Johnson, PBS Newsletter Design Support

ISSUE #2ISSUE #2

Inside This Issue

PBS Celebrations 2

Tribute to Dr. Bernie Travnikar 3

Meeting Mechanics 4

Strategies for Defiance 4

MIBLSi State Conference Links 4

SWIS and the Big Five 4

Breaking Down the Walls 5

MiBLSi PBS MiBLSi PBS NewsletterNewsletter

Page 2

Celebration at

McLaughlin Elementary Principal: Alina Fortenberry

Under the leadership of principal Alina Fortenberry and Specialist, Timmy Smith, McGlaughlin conducted an all-school spirit award assembly to recognize students who earned Little RED’s certificates as well as out-standing students of the month.

Each class room at Mclaughlin nominates an outstanding student of the month and the office identifies an outstanding student of the school. All of these students’ efforts are acknowledged at a very spirited assembly where students are enthusiastically cheered on by their peers. Be-ing the most “outstanding student” is consid-ered a very special honor. This student is in-vited to an Optimists Club dinner with their family, and receives a special certificate, a T-shirt, and a $25 cash award. In addition to the student festivities, the MIBLSi team has been actively involved in using the Check-in, Check-out system and performing Meeting Mechanics on their targeted and intensive stu-dents. Congratulations McLaughlin for all your hard work this year!

PBS at Bluffton Principal: Jerry Johnson

Celebrating at

The Campbell Cafe Principal:Nate Smith

At Campbell school, student earn S’mores as acknowledgement for following the school-wide expectations. In addition, there monthly award assemblies, and each month the S’mores winner from each classroom, is identified as a camp leader, and invited to dine with the princi-pal, Nate Smith, at the at the Campbell Café. Campbell’s MIBLSi team has also stream-lined their meeting process and are using the Meeting Mechanics process to staff students in the tar-geted and intensive range.

Marquette Elementary

Principal: Gaye Monroe

Specialist: Andre Burke

At Marquette, students and staff celebrate good behavior monthly at all-school meetings and STARS lunches. Birthdays, academic growth, and STARS behavior successes or enjoyed and acknowledged by kids and teachers alike.

Churchill Elementary/

Mona Shores Principal: Mark Platt

The theme at Churchill is R.O.C.K.S! Really Outstanding Churchill Kids! The Rock Star awards are given to students that Stay positive, Take responsibility, Act respectfully, and are Ready to learn. The Churchill team has re-cently produced a “Churchill Rocks “video for teaching expectations. The video can be viewed on Teacher Tube. In addition, Chur-chill’s teaching and playground staff have been training in Systematic Supervision on the play-ground.

Tribute to

Bernie Travnikar

Providing an Overview of PBS for Muskegon’s “Specials” Teachers

Susan Mack and Steven Vitto, Muskegon MIBLSi oaches, and MAISD Behavior Consultants, recently provided a morning- long PBS overview training for all of Muskegon “Specials” Teachers (e.g., Art, Music, Gym, etc.). Due to their providing services at several schools, these teachers are often not available for initial PBS kick- offs, follow-up trainings, and staff meetings. In addition, some of these teachers are working in two or three different schools with different sets of expectations in each school. The training provided an overview of the basic elements of PBS, Systematic Supervision, and the F.A.S.T. program.

“To catch the reader's atten-tion, place an interesting sen-tence or quote from the story here.”

Page 3

As part of their first year in the MiBLSi project, Cohort 5 Leadership Teams have been spending their first year implement-ing school-wide systems for both behav-ior and reading. For school-wide read-ing, Cohort 5 schools are being trained on foundations of effective reading instruc-tion, communication and integration, maximizing classroom instruction, and explicit and systematic instruction. The training includes the Five Big Ideas of reading: phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, and com-prehension. The teams are also trained on the characteristics of at-risk learners and the instructional implications of these characteristics. As part of the training, the teams were also shown two video clips of Anita Archer demonstrating ex-plicit instruction, and were shown how to look at specific lessons within their core program to determine if the lesson was explicit enough. If the lesson was deter-mined not explicit enough, then sugges-tions were given on how to make it more explicit for at-risk learners. At the end of February-beginning of March, Cohort 5 teams completed a third day of school-wide training, in addition to a systems review training for both reading and be-havior.

In September, we were informed of the passing of Dr. Bernie Travikar. Bernie was a pioneer in the PBS movement and ac-tively supported school-wide positive be-havior support (PBS) initiatives in Michi-gan for many years. At the time of his death, Bernie was working with a number of schools in Michigan as a MIBLSi Exter-nal Coach. Prior to MIBLSi, Bernie was instrumental in bringing PBS to Muskegon and his support helped us to start our first school-wide PBS initiative at Beach Ele-mentary School in Fruitport, in 2002. Un-der the administration of Principal Julie VanBergen, Beach is still actively support-ing the school-wide movement and has participated as a Cohort 1 MIBLSi school.

To the MAISD Behavioral Support Team, Bernie was a friend and mentor. He will be missed!!

For more information on Bernie’s accomplishments and colorful life, see the following link:

http://www.bridges4kids.org/articles/10-08/BernieTribute10-7-08.html

At Moon School students receive Moon Beams for following the school-wide ex-pectations. Any students who earns Moon Beams can spend them on graduated items at the school store. The school store is open weekly and operated by fifth grade stu-dents. Big items include mp3 players and attending a basketball game with John Smith, the school specialist.

MIBLSI

Cohort 5 School-wide

Reading Training

Moon Elementary School Principal: Kristina Precious

Specialist John Smith

Oakview Kids Care Principal: Pam Varga

Specialist:Geoff Zietlow

At Oakview, students who have earned C.A.R.E. coupons are acknowledged and celebrated at classroom parties. Students also have the opportunity to earn CARE badges. Oakview is also actively using the Check-in Check-out system.

Meeting Mechanics By Susan Mack, M.A.

Meeting Mechanics is a 45 minute prob-lem solving process that has been adapted to address behavior problems, but can be applied to all team decision making ef-forts. Many MiBLSi schools are using Meeting Mechanics during their child study teams to address the needs of stu-dents with behavior and/or academic problems.

Meeting Mechanics is a cooperative, team approach that streamlines the steps of working through the problem solving process. It involves the use of a time keeper, recorder and facilitator to move through the FA/BIP procedure and finish with a completed action plan for those students who are in Tier Two or Tier Three in behavior or academics.

MAISD has been training many MiBLSi behavior specialists the Meeting Mechan-ics process. It is our goal that all MiBLSi schools will have one or two trained Meeting Mechanics facilitators to use during child study team meetings Partici-pants gain team based process skills that can be universally adapted to many prob-lems. For more information contact: Sue Mack 231-767-7259, or Steve Vitto, 231-767 – 7279

The School-wide Information System:

Using the Big Five Reports

The Schoo l -Wide Informat ion System (SWIS) is a web-based information system designed to help school personnel use office referral data to design school-wide and individual student inter-ventions. This data gives school staff the capability to evaluate individual student behavior, the behavior of groups of students, in specific settings, and behaviors occurring during specific time periods of the school day. SWIS reports indicate times and/or locations prone to elicit problem behaviors, and allow teachers and adminis-trators to shape school-wide environments to maximize students' academic and social achievements. Ann Todd –Commenting on the Big 5: “Spring is typically a time when problem be-havior incidents increase. Re-teaching the school-wide expectations to students and staff is an activity that can help reduce problem behavior incidents. If you have multiple years of SWIS data, use the multi-year average per day per month report to look at patterns and trends across the previous year(s). Congratu-late student and staff efforts and anticipate problems by examining the data. In addition to using the multi-year average per day per month report, use the other four reports to clearly define the problem, context, and stu-dents contributing to the problem. SWIS re-ports help to define the types of problems of concern, where the problems are occurring, when the problems are occurring, and who is contributing to the problem. The Big 5 reports are the first five report folders on the main menu. If you have difficulty summarizing the Big 5 reports, ask your SWIS Facilitator for support.”

2009

State MIBLSI Conference

Presentation Links Dr. Steve Goodman welcomed over 500 participants to The Fifth Annual 2009 MIBLSi State Conference. The conference gave participants the opportunity to attend over 49 pre-conference and breakout sessions relating to school-wide behavioral and literacy initiatives. featured guest presenters included: Dr Mark Shinn from National Louis University, Dr. Kent McIntosh from the University of Columbia, and Dr. Rob March, the director and founder of Effective Educational Practices (EEP). Theirs and many others’ presentations can be viewed and downloaded at the following link:

ht tp: / /www .cenmi .org /mib ls i /Presentations

Please send questions, comments, PBS photos, videos,

and celebrations to: svitto@muskegonisd.org

Page 4

NOT LOOSING SITE OF THE INTENT OF SWIS

The intent of SWIS is to collect data in the form of Office Disciple Referrals, analyze and have professional discussions around that data, and make data driven decisions that effect practice with the intent of reducing office referrals and increasing meaningful instructional time. Like any data collection system, integrity and fidelity may be compromised when data is disregarded or misused. If SWIS data is used as a means of evaluating teachers and principals, or comparing one classroom or school against another, educa-tors will loose trust and integrity will suffer. If the teacher in the highest referring classroom is judged rather than supported, it is likely that this system will begin to loose its value and be un-dermined in the process. If teachers hesitate to make office referrals due to fear of reprisal, then ultimately it is students who will suffer.

Be sure to checkout the

new MIBLSi Website!

www.cenmi.org/miblsi

Breaking Down The Walls:

Reaching The Challenging Child in The Classroom

Page 5

By Steven Vitto, M.A., Behavior Consultant

With the momentum of the Response to Intervention movement, there is a growing concern that teachers implement evi-denced based practices in their classroom. When it comes to academics and related instruction, teachers are generally open to modifying even long standing practices. However, classroom or behavior management is a whole other issue.

Even though we have accumulated an abundance of research on best practice or evidence based classroom management strate-gies, we often tend to let our emotions and our beliefs about discipline (or how we were disciplined) drive our behavioral man-agement practices. Why? For decades we have depended on a reactive or retributive system designed to change behavior through the use of punishment and exclusion. Ironically, and despite its broad-based use, we have growing evidence demon-strating that prevention, teaching replacement behaviors, and providing acknowledgement for the exhibition of desired behav-ior, is much more effective in changing behavior than just responding to misbehaviors- especially for students with chronic be-havioral challenges. If we, as teachers, are struggling with a particular student or a particular group of students, it may be dif-ficult for us to accurately and objectively assess the problem. Sometimes, our frustrations and failed attempts in reaching diffi-cult students clouds are ability to see them or the situation objectively. So, if we are committed to implementing best practice in our classrooms, we need to be prepared to answer some difficult but pertinent questions.

Would a visitor to your classroom be able to quickly determine your classroom expectations and procedures. Would the visitor see you giving more attention to negative behaviors than to positive behaviors? Would they see you smiling and relating to all students? For your most challenging students, would they see you being a model for the behaviors you expect? If a visitor to your classroom was to informally assess the quality of relationships with your challenging students what questions might they ask you? “Tell me about Johnny” (Would your description be negative?) “ How is your relationship with Johnny? “ (Would your response be, “We don’t have one.”?). "What do you like about Johnny?” (Would you struggle for a response?) “What are his strengths?” (Would you be at a loss to respond?)

If the student was questioned, how would the student respond? If you were to ask Johnny, “Do you like your teacher?” “Do you look forward to coming to this class? “ “Does your teacher like you?” Could a visitor guess by your behavior, that the two of you have a strained or “negative” history? Beyond using behavior data to demonstrate how “bad” a student is, have you honestly looked at the quality of your relationship with that student?

So why is my relationship with my challenging students so important? Why is his behavior my responsibility? If we were to make an analogy to a bad marriage, what would we expect to see? The research indicates that in a troubled marriage we would likely see a great deal of negativity, hostility, and emotionality. If we were to analyze the conversations or comments being made between the two partners, we would likely find an imbalance-i.e., a high rate of negative comments, with very few or no positive comments. If the marriage was really in trouble, we might see the individuals making little effort to connect, visibly antagonistic, and growing further and further apart. So, when we look at the intensive or chronically behavior challenged stu-dent in our classroom, have we become a partner to a “bad marriage” If the answer to this question is “yes” than we should not be surprised that the student’s behavior is not improving. Of course the distinction is, that in this “marriage,” we have to extend more effort than our partner. After all, we are the teacher. It is our responsibility to be the adult, the one who compro-mises, reaches out, the one who doesn’t take things personally, the one who gives the child a clean slate the next day no matter what happened yesterday. After a conflict with this child we need to be prepared to take steps to repair a potentially damaged relationship. So the evidence presents a tough pill to swallow, i.e.- in our most difficult teacher /student partnerships it is likely us that needs to change! If we think that punishing and excluding this student is going change him or help him grow and learn, then we are in serious denial. The first step to recovery is to be able to analyze where we are in the relationship, If we have got-ten to the point where we are more a part of the problem than the solution, it is time to change, Vincent Carbone, a well known behaviorist, has stated that if we are to be effective in teaching, then the child needs to see being with us as an improv-ing set of conditions. If the child sees their time with us as a worsening set of conditions then we will likely see escape/avoidant behaviors that may appear as defiance or bids for attention So before we throw in the towel on our most challenging student, we have to ask ourselves a final question. Is being with us an “improving set of conditions”?

If not, then it is us that needs to change before the child ever will!

Have a Great Summer!