Salend, Chapter 7.

It feels like I’ve been hearing more and more about “Positive Behaviors Support Systems” these days.  In class, at seminars, within the schools – this type of behavior mangaement program seems to be all the rage among educators.  And to no fault – allowing the students to have appropriate behaviors modeled for them and be praised for appropriate behaviors seems to be a great way to encourage students in the inclusion classroom.

At our elementary school, the Positive Behavior Support System seems to be modeled in nearly every classroom.  There is definitely a need for an appropriate atmostphere and attitude if using such a system.  If everyone is not on board for creating a consistent policy with the school, there could be some major issues with requiring students to follow behavior expectations.

The Functional Behavioral Assessment seems to me must like a Individual Education Plan – with the assessments, collaboration of educators and family, and the goals set, it seems nearly identical.  I’m not exactly sure what the difference is supposed to be or if there even is one, truthfully.  It worries me that this sort of redundency in the education world tends not to be that effective, and that all the lingo used just helps to cover up somewhat superficially, not always getting to the root of the problem.  As a pre-service teacher, this may be unfair and naive of me to say, but this is just how is seems as of my present experiences.

I do, however, appreciate the many “self-assessments” that are included here.  One of the main examples which I could find in my own classroom is a self-created behavior checklist that a few of my students use.  They helped to create a list of actions that they should complete everyday, a self-assessment of sorts.  It tends to be more effective since the students themselves created the checklists – they are in a sense taking more responsibility for their own actions.

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