McNair Elementary School in the Hazelwood School District launched its second year of the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program with a school-wide assembly on the second day of classes.

“We are still working on school-wide behaviors and expectations,” said Counselor Andrew Harris. “Our goal for this year is to explicitly teach our five expectations plus doing a lot of modeling and role-playing, giving students examples and non-examples.” 

Students practiced a PBIS cheer incorporating the expectations and watched staff members act out both correct and incorrect examples of the behaviors. The McNair Wildcat Way to BE is to be responsible, to be respectful, to be cooperative, to be kind and to be safe.

“We can’t assume students know these,” Harris said. “We have to teach them the basics while keeping them simple.” 

When a staff member sees a student or a class showing good behavior, they earn a Paw, a ticket that has his or her name and class or class and grade level on it. Paws may be redeemed for class activities, such as having class outside and computer lab time or individual rewards like a “table-hopping” pass at lunch or the popular, “no-homework” pass.

Harris said that PBIS helps in the classroom by allowing more teaching time. When there are fewer distractions, students display more attention and are ready to learn.