School Wide Positive Behavior Support
SWPBS stands for School-Wide Positive Behavior Support.
We at Grant Middle School hope to encourage students to continuously make good behavior choices.
As a Full-Service Community School, our SWPBS approach includes all of our school partners:
- School-Based Health Center
- Family Resource Center with Clothing Bank
- YMCA
- Afterschool Activities
Our SWPBS relies on three primary tools:
- Accountability Cards
- Agendas
- ZAP (Zeroes Aren't Permitted)
Accountability Cards
The Accountability card assists students, teachers, and parents with monitoring daily behavior and biweekly academic performance. Each cycle is 3 weeks long. In your agendas, there are cards for each cycle that has places for positive and negative behavior signatures, bathroom breaks, and nurse visits.
After warnings and re-teach opportunities from your classroom teacher, the teacher might eventually go ahead and sign your card.
If you get three negative signatures, you will go to room 113 where you will be assigned lunch detention or a referral based on the number and type of signatures. If you get 6 signatures, you will be receiving ISS.
Signatures
What might you receive a signature for?
- Dress code violation
- Nuisance item - rubber band, phone out of your locker, passing a note
- Disrespectful or foul language
- Refusal to work
- Tardy
- Disruption or horseplay
- Food, gum, or a drink
- Unprepared
- Teachers will also be giving out positive signatures for SOAR behaviors.
If you get 3 positive signatures, there will be rewards from the school and teachers. Cards with no negative signatures at the end of each semester will mean bigger rewards such as reward days and other incentive items.
Positive Signatures
How can you get a positive signature? Here are some examples:
- Safe - you notify Mr. Roney that there might be a fight after school.
- Own it - someone got in trouble for something you did. You tell Mr. Roney that you were actually responsible.
- Achieve - you turn in homework early
- Respect - you find a wallet in the hall and you turn it into the office.
Zeroes Aren't Permitted (ZAP)
ZAP is available during the day & targets 6th grade students who are capable of doing the work but choose not to. It is available to any 6th grade student, including those who do not qualify for tutoring or are unable to attend before or after school tutoring. In ZAP, Students are able to make up work or take tests they missed when absent/tardy.
A student is referred to ZAP the day they do not have their homework. Students bring their lunch to the ZAP room to complete the assignment with teacher tutors, supplies, textbooks, and computers with internet access available. The student turns in the work for full credit.
ZAP has positively impacted our school because it holds students accountable, is a consequence students respond to, is immediate and timely, and students learn they are capable of being successful academically if they put effort into their education.
ZAP is a strong deterrent for many students: they will work in class when they know the consequence is ZAP and give up their free time at lunch and they make an effort to do homework and bring it to school. ZAP is also positive: students know they are welcome to come in when they need extra time or help from a teacher tutor. Many meet their friends in ZAP when working on group projects, others come for a quiet place to work, others said they like ZAP because it is the place they feel safe during lunch.
Agenda
Each student is issued a Grant Middle School Agenda. It contains valuable information such as contacts, calendars, all bell schedules, expectations on arrival/dismissal and attendance, school policies and so much more. It also contains the Accountability Card.