The Simonian Center for Early Learning and the Sutton Elementary School are participating in an exciting and valuable new initiative; Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS).

What is Positive Behavior Interventions and Support?

PBIS is a proactive approach to improve safety and promote positive behavior. The focus of PBIS is prevention, not punishment. Using PBIS, our schools will teach students positive behavior strategies, just as we would teach about any other subject.

PBIS recognizes that students can only meet behavior expectations if they know what the expectations are. Everyone learns what’s considered appropriate behavior through the use of common language and explicitly taught expectations.

PBIS includes school-wide procedures and processes intended for all students and all staff in all settings. PBIS is not a program or a curriculum. It is a team-based process for systemic problem solving, planning, and evaluation. It is an approach to creating a safe and productive learning environment where teachers can teach, and all students can learn.

According to research, PBIS leads to a reduction in office discipline referrals, suspensions, and increases time on learning and academic outcomes as well as adds to an improved school climate and social-emotional well-being.

What is PBIS at our school?

The Simonian Center for Early Learning and Sutton Elementary School has adopted a unified set of behavioral expectations. You will see these expectations posted throughout the school and your child will be learning them during his or her first days at school. Our unified behavioral expectations, found in every classroom and non-classroom setting in the school, are as follows:

S: Stay safe. 

T: Treat others with respect.

A: Act responsibly. 

R: Remember kindness.

As part of our PBIS process, teachers and other staff members use evidence-based practices to increase student learning and decrease classroom disruptions. To promote student understanding of the expectations, our staff will provide: 

• Continuous opportunities for teaching and re-teaching of the school-wide expectations.

• Students with more praise than corrections

• Use of pre-correction, prompting, and redirection as we teach.

• Positive, immediate, frequent, and explicit feedback.

If you have questions about Positive Behavior Support, please feel free to contact Jessica Merriam (Principal of the Simonian Center for Early Learning) or Denise Harrison (Principal of Sutton Elementary School).  We look forward to a wonderful year of teaching your child!