Students at G.R. Hampton know the way to “bee” with the implementation of the school’s positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) system.
Known as the Cougar Bees, the school has developed a list of expected behaviors for various locations and in different scenarios throughout the building. Through the enforcement and achievement of positive behavior, the goal is to improve social competence and academic achievement for the students.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic put a temporary pause on in-person PBIS enforcement and the continued success of its implementation, schools are receiving recognition for their pre-COVID work towards meeting criteria and benchmarks.
Southeast South-Central Education Cooperative, which serves 21 public school districts, provided virtual recognition for success in 2019-2020 as school teams are working to complete fidelity documentation for 2020-2021.
G.R. Hampton was Knox County’s only school to achieve tier two status of being a silver level school. It was also one of only five schools in the education cooperative to achieve silver. In addition to having school-wide positive expectations and procedures in place (bronze level), the school demonstrated increases in the ways that it was supervising students, providing positive opportunities, and access to more academic supports.
On Thursday, G.R. Hampton received a banner presented by Cher Smith, district PBIS coach, on behalf of the education cooperative.
Dusty Phelps, behavior specialist for Southeast South-Central, said that focused persistence was evident from leadership all working together to keep good things going for students.
With a July 31 deadline approaching for submitting last year’s documentation, G.R. Hampton continues to work towards being the gold standard for PBIS. To earn gold recognition, a school must have an action plan in place that monitors the number of students successfully responding to interventions, utilize evidence-based interventions and other services with their PBIS implementation, and continue to decrease any discipline referrals.