A schoolwide behavior support system can improve attendance and behavior by instructing students in a consistent manner, reaching out to students who struggle in behavioral areas, intervening with research- and evidence-based interventions, and recognizing students and classes that reach their attendance and behavioral goals.
Overview of the Principles and Practices
Principle 1: Consistently teach, model, and recognize appropriate and positive academic and social behaviors across all classrooms.
- Practice 1: Modify and reduce maladaptive classroom behavior through consistent teaching, modeling, and recognition of positive classroom behaviors.
Principle 2: Provide classroom instruction in self-monitoring and regulation, academic organization and study skills, goal setting, persistence, and healthy behaviors.
- Practice 1: Teach academic and healthy behaviors that support success in school.
- Practice 2: Embed the self-monitoring and regulation, academic organization and study skills, goal-setting, persistence, and healthy behavior skills into the academic courses students take throughout the middle grades.
- Practice 3: Provide students with opportunities to practice and employ these skills through service learning projects, as well as high interest and participatory electives with strong cognitive content like drama, debate, and robotics.
Principle 3: Establish processes for identifying problem behaviors early, diagnosing their causes, identifying e ective interventions, applying the interventions at the scale and intensity required, and monitoring their effectiveness.
- Practice 1: Implement an intervention framework generalized to student attendance, behavior, and course performance.
- Practice 2: Connect teachers to one another or to mentors to help with ongoing problem solving, student behavior, and any other classroom management needs.
Principle 4: Make the value of schooling personal.
- Practice 1: Engage students in activities that allow them to reflect on the influence school will have on their future life and goals.
Principle 5: Create a sense of belonging for all students.
- Practice 1: Include information on social integration in middle school transition programs.
- Practice 2: Carefully frame academic tasks to reduce the risk of stereotype threats.
Principle 6: Connect students’ academic success to effort.
- Practice 1: Set high expectations for students and clearly communicate those expectations and the belief in their potential to succeed when providing feedback to students.
- Practice 2: Eliminate the use of indiscriminate incentive programs and unearned praise.