Learn how Central Middle rebuilt their school culture, focusing on positive behavior and student engagement.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
Becky Thal currently works as an edtech consultant in the field of marketing. Previous roles have included 5th grade math/science teacher and advertising executive. Becky is active in many online communities, as well as her local community. She is always open to collaborating on new projects! In her spare time, Becky enjoys trips to the beach, trying new restaurants, and attending her kids’ various sports games and events. She lives with her husband, three children, and Labradoodle, in New Jersey.
Like all schools across the US, the pandemic hit Central Middle School in Evergreen Park ESD 124, very hard.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
Like all schools across the US, the pandemic hit Central Middle School in Evergreen Park ESD 124, very hard.
Post-Covid, students were having a hard time learning to control their behavior. Every day they were riding an emotional roller-coaster of feelings, going from happy to sad, and from excited to angry, at a moment’s notice.
Christina Lavin, the school’s assistant principal, wanted to find a PBIS program that would help support these students. She knew they were good kids but they needed some direction and guidance. Many teachers in the school had been using another rewards system already, but it wasn’t middle-school friendly. As a group, they needed to find a program that was more geared toward their student population.
Christina is the first person to tell you she has a wonderful staff and supportive district administrators, which helps make her job a lot easier. When she decided she wanted to try LiveSchool at Central Middle, she first asked her team what they needed from her to make the program successful. Her staff asked for iPads to be able to award points more easily to the students, and Evergreen Park ESD 124 agreed to purchase them.
Once the staff was 100% on board, they made it a point to get the students' buy-in. But there was a lot of trial and error involved, and communication was, and still is, key. In collaborative environments, honest feedback hinges on the trust between all parties. This trust ensures that individuals can openly communicate what strategies are effective and which need improvement.
Christina's dedication to supporting her teachers and students is evident in her readiness to fulfill their requests. She happily accommodates their suggestions, such as organizing more reward assemblies, to ensure Central Middle maintains a cooperative and engaging learning environment.
The PBIS rewards system at Central Middle is based solely on positive behaviors. Anyone who walks into a classroom - including substitute teachers - can award students points. Students earn points for things like following directions, participating in a classroom discussion, having their Chromebook charged, and behaving appropriately in the hallways and cafeteria, just to name a few. The idea is to reward behaviors that coincide with the school’s SEL lessons and reinforce basic life skills.
Central Middle has a school store open on Fridays where students can redeem their points. The store offers everything from lanyards and t-shirts to candy and hot chips. In addition to physical rewards, however, they also offer social rewards, such as basketball with friends in the morning or the use of gaming computers at lunch. The staff frequently ask the students what they enjoy the most, and then they work to turn that into a reward.
One of the nicest things about the PBIS system at Central Middle is that all stakeholders are involved. There are staff members who manufacture fidget spinners with the 3D printer they have on-site, and those are used as rewards. Currently, there is an 8th-grade student who is in charge of running the store, and the plan is to have more students helping him soon. Even the school board has become actively involved. They are hoping to implement an incentive program where students who earn the most points win bigger prizes and are recognized at the district level for all of their hard work.
Christina Lavin utilizes a bulletin board as a central hub for disseminating information related to PBIS updates. She also created a newsletter that gets sent out to the teachers and students called “Lowdown with Lavin” which shows things like the leaderboards and what’s going on with the LiveSchool store. There are trivia questions in the newsletter that the students can answer to earn more points. She also includes what behaviors need to be worked on as a school, and what the challenges are for the week. Her next step is to get the parents involved with the updates.
Christina Lavin would like to see the next phase of the PBIS program involve community service and leadership. Central Middle is nearing a critical turning point in enabling students to help others. However, she acknowledged that before the students could assist others, they needed to develop emotional regulation and behavioral control for themselves. She feels the students are now just about ready to go out and help others.
She also thinks it would be great to create a LiveSchool student committee to run the program. Any initiatives that are student-led are always well received.
Christina hopes to also offer bigger incentives as rewards for the students, such as glow parties and field trips. Any opportunity to celebrate the kids and their successes is a win in her book!
Christina Lavin’s best advice is to just try everything to see what works for your school - and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Make every effort to support your staff first, and then the students, because they are all key components to making the PBIS program successful.
Her final piece of advice? Don’t forget to laugh! It’s easy to be angry and constantly focus on the negatives, but life is too short for that. Middle school is hard, but try to remember that the kids are going through a lot at this point in their lives.
If you can find humor in even the smallest things, it makes the job a lot more fun. Make it a point to laugh about something every day.
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