I like the title: Positive Behavior Support. I like the idea of teachers supporting positive behavior. I have often told new teachers that if they don't have a certain level of student behavior in the classroom, they don't have anything. In Utah, with our 40+ students per class, it only takes a couple of misbehaved students to turn the class into chaos. Then learning is destroyed, everyone leaves frustrated, and the teacher hates teaching. I'm not saying that the class should be perectly silent all the time; that's not conducive to teaching either. But the teacher needs to be the one in control of the class.
Learning is not only learning the content as listed in our lesson plan; learning is also about learning the behaviors that will allow optimal content learning. Every successful student has to learn social behavior such as learning to get along with people, taking turns, and basic kindness. Socialization is one of the primary tasks of the school. Students also must learn good classroom behavior such as not interrupting, respect for the teacher, and doing one's own work.
All of this seems like no-brainer observations, but I am amazed at how many high school students either don't know these basic ideas or refuse to learn them. I typically spend much of the first three weeks of school just training the students in basic classroom behavior. The ironic thing is that most teachers do the same.
This is where teachers need to use PBS and FBA. For chronically misbehaved students, the collaboration level of the FBA may be the only thing that will work. There is no question that poor behavior in students is more common and more severe than in the past. I do not teach Special Education of any type, but every year I have several students who are ADHD, bi-polar, or chronically depressed, and sometimes all three. If we as teachers hope to deal with these issues, a plan must be in place. The plan must include the observations of every teacher, the administrator, the counselor, and perhaps a special education teacher. Triggering antecedents must be indentified, and a plan of acceptable and alternative behavior adopted, and implemented.
In my experience, once the student realizes that all of his or her teachers are working together as a team, the student comes to realize that his or her poor behavior is simply unacceptable and will not be tolerated. However, the risk for high school students is the possibility of the student dropping out, hence, the need for, literally, positive behavior support. Behavioral correction should be done positively and firmly with the idea that at some point, the student will chose the rewards of acting approriately over the punishments of misbehaving.
