The Talawanda Way: PBIS in a Secondary Building

Presenters

Rebekah Butz, Talawanda School DistrictFollow

First Presenter's Institution

Talawanda High School

First Presenter's Brief Biography

Rebekah served as an English teacher in a Juvenile Correctional Facility where PBIS was implemented for the first time in a JCF setting. She also worked in alternative education classrooms before moving into administration. At Talawanda High School, she serves as a PBIS team member and MTSS representative for the secondary educators in the district.

Second Presenter's Institution

Talawanda High School

Second Presenter’s Email Address

davies@talawanda.org

Second Presenter's Brief Biography

Throughout his 18 years in education, Scott has served as a middle and high school, school counselor as well as a middle and high school administrator across four states (CT, PA, IN, & OH). Scott believes that regardless of beliefs or behavior, all people are deserving of love and respect. He recognizes the power of “family” as it relates to relationships throughout the school building, striving to create an environment where faculty/staff are empowered and students are eager to engage.

Third Presenter's Institution

Talawanda High School

Third Presenter’s Email Address

alfonsic@talawanda.org

Third Presenter's Brief Biography

Christene has served as an English teacher for 25 years, a member of our high school’s PBIS team, strong believer in the power of positive interactions between students and adults. She’s an Ohio Writing Project teacher, working to raise the quality of writing and writing instruction in our state education system.

Document Type

Event

Primary Strand

Positive Behavior Interventions and Support

Relevance to Primary Strand

The Talawanda Way is one that promotes school wide expectations of respect and empathy. This is applied to both staff and students so that each person who enters our building experiences love and respect. Over the past several years, we have worked toward implementing practices that encourage a positive school climate. These include: teacher-to-teacher recognition of key practices, teacher-to-student recognition of key practices, administrator-to-teacher recognition of key practices, teacher support carts, and devoted time to recognizing positive interactions with students. We have a PBIS-dedicated professional learning community that is given one hour every month to address and inspire the staff.

The Talawanda Way recognizes the positives in the school while providing scaffolds and supports for students to reach higher. Our interventions and supports include:

• Clear and consistent building wide expectations with scheduled times to reteach as needed. (Tier 1)
• Tutorial period: Every Tuesday and Thursday students are given 30 minutes to work with individual teachers based on need. (Tier 1)
• Extra Time Extra Help: Small group (1-7 teacher-student ratio), academic skills, social emotional skills. (Tier 2)
• Student Assistance Program: Students are given an advocate that connects home and school regularly. Entrance to this program is dependent on health, attendance, academics, and behavior. (Tier 3)

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

Climate and Culture

Brief Program Description

The Talawanda Way is one that promotes school wide expectations of respect and empathy. This is applied to both staff and students so that each person who enters our building experiences love and respect. Over the past several years, we have worked toward implementing practices that encourage a positive school climate through our tiered systems of support.

Summary

Our team will interactively present the current PBIS practices we’ve implemented with our high school students and staff. An overview of our practices, interventions, and supports include:

Positive School Climate Practices:

• Teacher-to-teacher recognition – Teachers nominate colleagues

• Teacher-to-student recognition of key practices

• Administrator-to-teacher recognition of key practices

• Teacher support carts

• Devoted time to recognizing positive interactions with students.

• We have a PBIS-dedicated professional learning community that is given one hour every month to address and inspire the staff.

Our interventions and supports include:

• Clear and consistent building wide expectations with scheduled times to reteach as needed. (Tier 1)

• Tutorial period: Every Tuesday and Thursday students are given 30 minutes to work with individual teachers based on need. (Tier 1)

• Extra Time Extra Help: Small group (1-7 teacher-student ratio), academic skills, social emotional skills. (Tier 2)

• Student Assistance Program: Students are given an advocate that connects home and school regularly. Entrance to this program is dependent on health, attendance, academics, and behavior. (Tier 3)

Evidence

As intervention plans in the building develop and grow students have made significant academic progress. The graduation rate has gone from 92.7% (2019) to 96.6% (2021). In 2021-2022, students who were failing at least one core content class or were requested to be placed by parent/teacher, were placed in an intervention based course: Extra Time Extra Help (ETEH). Of the students in ETEH, 92% of credits attempted in semester 1 were earned. In semester 2, 87% of credits attempted were earned. In the 2021-2022 school year approximately 60 students were placed in our Student Assistance Program (SAP). In semester 1 of 2021-2022, 89.85% of credits attempted were earned through students in SAP. Every senior who was enrolled in SAP graduated.

Since beginning to focus on a building-wide positive mindset, the number of students given the consequence of out-of-school suspension has gone from 47 in Q1 SY21-22 to 11 in Q1 SY22-23. The top code of conduct violations occurring are far less significant (not reportable offenses). Rather they tend to be lower level offenses, mostly handled at the classroom level.

With a building-wide focus on creating positive interactions with students, the positive referrals for Q1 22-23 were nearly 4000 in a building of roughly 1000 students. The school completed ten positive referrals to every negative referral. Each student was tracked to make sure that all students received at least one positive referral in the first nine weeks of school. Within that positive referral breakdown, the subgroups matched statistically with the breakdown of the school population.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will be able to take away applicable ideas that can be implemented at the secondary level to build a positive school culture within the student body.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will be able to take away applicable ideas that can be implemented at the secondary level to build a positive school culture among the school faculty and staff.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will be able to observe and understand a successful tiered system of supports at the secondary level.

Learning Objective 4

Participants will be able to learn an intentional method of building Tier 1 supports and interventions for 9-12 students.

Recommended Citation

Butz, Rebekah, "The Talawanda Way: PBIS in a Secondary Building" (2023). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 97.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2023/2023/97

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.