PBIS Classroom Rubrics

This document was created by Martin Schiltz for Davenport Community Schools. It is intended as a tool for use by teachers and teacher coaches (innovators, specialists, building administrators, AEA staff) to drive meaningful conversations about teaching practices, and to identify next steps towards improving the teaching, learning, and culture within classrooms in Davenport Community Schools. While not a secret, in it's current form it is not intended for sharing outside the school district.

This document draws from several primary resources, most notably the document "Supporting and Responding to Behavior: Evidence Based Classroom Strategies for Teachers" published by the Office of Special Education Programs and available at PBIS.org. These rubrics are intended as a companion to this document. The title of each rubric and the descriptions of proficiency in each conceptual area are pulled almost verbatim from this text. The descriptors for beginning, progressing, and exceeds categories are the creation of the author, based on a parsing of the target skill as desribed, as well as his own professional experience and study.

The rubrics also draw heavily from the concepts of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy, as described by Dr. Sharroky Hollie. References to the acronym "V.A.B.B" which stands for "Validate, Affirm, Build, and Bridge" are direct applications of concepts developed by Dr. Hollie. While it is stated at several points on the PBIS+ website, it is worth repeating here: PBIS is not fully implemented unless it is culturally responsive.

Lastly, this work is predicated on the research of Carol Dweck regarding growth vs. fixed mindsets. In other words, it is the author's presumption that all teachers have the capacity to change their practice to be more effective educators for the students in front of them. Secondarily, it presumes that students who struggle adapting to the behavioral expectations at school can be successful when their teachers adopt a growth mindset about them and change their practices accordingly.

Each rubric is presented in tandem with the corresponding strategy matrix from Supporting and Responding to Student Behavior, from PBIS.org. This document collects and synthesizes the research-supported best practices for effective classroom management. Each matrix describes clearly what the strategy is, and gives examples and non-examples of the strategy. However, the matrices do not provide a usable tool for coaches and teachers working to improve practice. The rubrics, therefore, have been written with the goal of providing teachers with a clearer idea of what to do next as they seek to develop their classroom management skills.

At this time, only rubrics for the first eight of these practices have been developed. This decision was made for a few reasons: 1) the skills described are easily observable, and therefore coachable, 2) the skills described are within the capabilities of most teachers to understand and implement independently without a great deal of additional training, and 3) the remaining management practices described in Support and Responding to Student Behavior can have a negative impact on classroom management if they are implemented incorrectly. For example, attempting to use the response cost strategy could have the effect of exacerbating student behavior if the teacher does not have the technical background and skill to use the strategy.

First and foremost, these rubrics assume that school-wide expectations for behavior are in place and being consistently reinforced and supported by school administration. It is very difficult to be an island when it comes to PBIS practices - consistency across the school makes everyone's job easier and PBIS practices more effective in supporting students in gaining mastery of academic and pro-social behaviors.

Each rubric describes a skill or strategy shown by research to be effective in supporting and/or responding to student behavior. The skills are deceptively simple - they are easy to understand conceptually, but much more difficult to put into practice consistently. Some of the teacher-behaviors described go against the parenting styles and internal schemas of student behavior many teachers hold implicitly. It is therefore very difficult for a teacher to accurately self-assess their proficiency in these skills without a third-party to provide objective feedback.

It is recommended that coaches help teachers to focus on developing only one or two of the skills described in the rubrics at any one time. For the purpose of this document, "coach" refers to anyone who may serve in that roll during the course of their work, i.e. teacher-innovators, principals, associate principals, district specialists, AEA staff, etc. Based on observations made using these rubrics, coaches could seek more explicit resources to share with teachers in order to learn and adopt the concepts. The rubrics are not intended to be stand-alone, but to indicate a direction in which teacher-learning should progress, and a measure of the success of that progression.

Alternatively, a building principal may select one or a few rubrics for all faculty in a building to focus on for a semester or year, providing whole-group PD regarding the selected rubrics, paired with individualized coaching, utilizing teacher innovators as well as peer-observations among teachers for feedback. This approach may be helpful in forming a sense of collaboration among staff, providing a common language with which to discuss the practice of teaching and a common goal to share amongst colleagues. This may also make the concepts represented here easier to adopt, as the creativity and resources of the whole group may be used to support teachers' adoption of these practices.

Lastly, these rubrics are not intended to be used in teacher evaluation, but rather as a roadmap to improve teacher skill. The author believes that teachers who improve skills in the areas described by these rubrics would also receive higher marks on any performance evaluation, but does not intend for rubric "scores" to be used for evaluation.

Office of Special Education Programs. (2015). Supporting and responding to student behavior: Evidence-based classroom strategies for teachers. Washington DC: Office of Special Education Programs. Retrieved from http://www.pbis.org/resources/supporting-and-responding-to-behavior-evidence-based-classroom-strategies-for-teachers

Hollie, Sharroky. (2011) Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning: Classroom Practices for Student Success. Shell Education. Huntington Beach, CA

Dweck, Carol S. (2006) Mindset : the New Psychology of Success. Random House. New York.