Wirt County High School

Wirt High School in West Virginia launched its PBIS program in 2022 – in fact they recently hosted a webinar about high school PBIS.

When rolling out the PBIS program, they wanted to ensure it was relevant to their high school students. That’s why they focused on building their behavior rubric around life skills that will prepare them to succeed in any workplace:

CitizenshipLeadershipSelf-ManagementUnder each category listed above are rubric items that articulate the ways students can demonstrate those skills. For example, students can receive points for “acts of service” or “positive conflict resolution” under Citizenship, “accepting criticism” and “exhibiting teamwork” under Leadership, and “asking for help when needed” and “telling the truth” under Self-Management.

The goal of these rubric items is to recognize skills that students already exhibited every day and reinforce positive behaviors – all while preparing them for life after high school.

GPA and Attendance

The last category of the rubric is Bonus Points. Rubric Items in this section are awarded for attendance and behavior, which Wirt is aiming to increase through this initiative.

While they are only in their first months, attendance is already up by 4%.

Student & Teacher Buy-In

Wirt’s team developed their behavior rubric based on career readiness skills with contributions from teachers and students. Both the PBIS teacher team and student council brainstormed behaviors to be included on the rubric. They worked on this separately, and then a representative from the student council presented the student ideas to the PBIS team.

The result of this effort is the rubric you’ll see below. Now, 5 months in, their staff has given 15000 points to students!

Notably, their rubric is positive only, meaning students can’t lose points for negative behavior. Wirt’s team did this intentionally so students developed a positive association with their PBIS program built on LiveSchool.