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PBIS in general it is very important for decision makers to keep the context in mind and make choices that are

not only evidence based, but also context appropriate.

PBIS is practiced as a tiered system (OSEP, 2018). PBIS aims to help all students, and the tiered

approach is to ensure that each student receives the level of behavior support that they need. About 80% of

students fall into tier one, or universal practices—these are the general PBIS practices that all students receive

to establish as consistent, predictable school and class wide climate (Simonsen, 2015). This is everything from

teaching to enforcing the norms. Next is tier two, targeted practices, where specific groups of students who

need increased structure and support are given these additional supports on top of tier one (Simonsen, 2015).

This might look like small groups pulled out of the classroom once or twice a week to work on social

emotional skills. Finally tier three aims to support students who are not being adequately supported within tier

one and continue to have more extreme behavior issues (Simonsen, 2015). These practices would be more

intense and fit to the individual students needs. An example might be a daily check in with a teacher about

behaviors. No student is ever stuck in one tier, rather they can receive more or less supports as needed. With

all of this said, we have chosen focus on and train the teachers in a tier one heavy approach. The tiers are

definitely important, and there are definitely students at Occopata who would benefit from tier two or even

tier three interventions; however, because this system is totally new to these educators we have chosen to

begin by just implementing a school and class wide approach rather than flood the teachers with an

overwhelming amount of information. This relates to the idea above of making PBIS context appropriate—we

knew that if we tried to do too much it might not work at all and that this system is very different to anything

the teachers and students have seen before. However, if this project does expand and people are able to put

even more time and resources into it implementing systems for tier two and three supports could really help

make sure the system is able to reach and help every student.

PBIS doesn’t just focus on behaviors, but what causes and enforces these behaviors. To do so we

look at the “ABCs” of behavior. The “A” stands for antecedent, or what comes before the behavior that

“triggers” the behavior (Simonsen, 2015). The “B” stands for the behavior. And then finally the “C” stands for

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