Pyramid of Behavior Interventions: Seven Keys to a Positive Learning Environment

As educators, we cannot change the students who come into our schools; what we can change is our approach to working with them. In Pyramid of Behavior Interventions, the authors ask educators to commit to proactively serving all students and anticipating their needs. This book will help teachers and school leaders transform the research on student behavior, response to intervention, and professional learning communities into practical strategies they can use to create superior school and classroom climates and cultures in which learning is primed to occur. The authors argue that students will experience frustration, confusion, and perhaps failure if they do not have clearly articulated routines, structures, and expectations for their learning environment. They use a three-tiered pyramid of behavior model as the basis for their continuum of effective schoolwide behavior support. They provide: Seven keys to a positive learning environment: common expectations, targeted instruction, positive reinforcement, support strategies and interventions, collaborative teams, data-driven dialogue, and a schoolwide systems approach Structures and strategies for schoolwide positive discipline Assistance to school teams to create and maintain core vision and values Tools to help develop data-driven dialogue with a focus on results Systems for providing pyramids of intervention to support behavior The authors use examples of real schools making a difference with real kids. They support these real-life examples with current research, especially the work around effective schools, PLCs, and positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS). The authors believe educators have a responsibility to teach and reach all students with expectations for social behavior as well as academics. They approach teaching students to manage their emotions and act appropriately and responsibly much like teaching academic skills. The authors present the concept of a behavior matrix to identify specific settings around the school and articulate the behaviors expected in those areas. The matrix includes: Common schoolwide expectations Positively phrased, global expectations Identification of specific settings Description of observable behaviors Use of age-appropriate language They then describe strategies for implementing the behavior matrix. They also include specific strategies for targeted instruction and positive reinforcement, specific support and intervention strategies, information on how to build data-driven dialogue within collaborative teams, and a detailed five-step approach for how staff can structure their schoolwide efforts.