Northgate Middle School, which is a part of North Kansas City Schools has an extensive behavior rubric that combines PBIS, trauma-informed teaching, and Portrait of a Graduate.
Before we dive into the specific categories and behaviors, we first want to shout out how successful Northgate’s team has been at building a rubric that students and teachers want to use. In the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, students have already received TWO MILLION points. WOW!
Northgate utilizes the 3 Rs to develop a PBIS matrix that supports trauma-informed teaching: Respectful, Responsible, and Ready. They designed the matrix to highlight those categories with behaviors that relate to each – shown below.
They also have other categories including Greater Gator, which has behaviors that are still important but don't fall into the category of respectful, responsible, and ready.
They also have a catch-all section Other and have staff write comments when they give points from that category to make sure students understand why they earned those points.
The final category is the Portrait of a Graduate. A portrait of a graduate is a document or statement that outlines the qualities, skills, and characteristics that a school or institution hopes to instill in its graduates. It provides a clear vision of what it means to be a successful alumni from that institution.
The Portrait of a Graduate is unique to each institution. For Northgate, it includes:
By building it into their behavior rubric, students are reminded to live the values daily, and the staff is reminded to notice and redirect toward them. In Northgate Middle School’s Rubric, students receive points for demonstrating the listed characteristics, and the staff uses comments to detail exactly how students did so.
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