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PBIS Identifies Daily Student Behavioral Goals
PBIS starts by identifying the attributes you want to see your students demonstrate on a daily basis, such as responsibility, respect and safety. There is an underlying set of skills that impact whether students can understand and demonstrate these attributes. For example, self-management skills, such as time, task and responsibility management are critical if they are to behave responsibly. Without a strategy to teach, assess and track skill development, PBIS systems can degrade into an award system for students who already have the skills necessary to meet expectations rather than a system to instill those characteristics.
JAKAPA and your PBIS Programming
JAKAPA can be a great tool to help you strengthen your PBIS programming. We measure, train and track the foundational skills students need to achieve your PBIS expectations. By using JAKAPA for 10-15 minutes per day, you can close equity gaps and ensure your PBIS programming is targeting both skill development and recognition for engagement and growth.
What we Know about Incentives and Rewards
Research on incentives is very clear. When we are learning new behaviors, external rewards motivate us. However, when we already do a behavior because we have intrinsic motivation to do it, external rewards can actually demotivate us. We intrinsically do the behavior, but once the reward is introduced, we lose the intrinsic value of doing the behavior and expect a external reward or recognition. For example, the Teacher Incentive Fund was a national fund aimed at developing strategic compensation models for teachers. Many schools built compensation models that started paying teachers for things they already did. When the funding disappeared, teachers stopped doing those behaviors. They were also offended that they were no longer being paid and started complaining about the expectation to do the behavior, since it was no longer rewarded. Essentially, the compensation systems demotivated the exact behaviors they wanted teachers to exhibit. Students are no exception to this pattern. Impactful PBIS systems use extrinsic rewards to encourage students to behave differently than they have in the past. Once the behavior becomes automatic and students see the intrinsic benefits of being responsible or respectful, the rewards need to shift to different behaviors they need to develop. JAKAPA data can help students identify specific behaviors they find difficult or skills they need to develop, so your PBIS system can be strategic and develop a reward structure to celebrate student engagement in the development of those skills.
Steps to Integrate JAKAPA with your PBIS Programming
Step 1: Identify the JAKAPA’s skills that will influence a student’s ability to achieve your PBIS expectations for positive behavior.
Consider the words you chose for your matrix and identify the underlying skills that impact whether students are able to exhibit those behaviors. Here is an example from a school where we mapped JAKAPA skills to their PBIS matrix.
Sample PBIS Behaviors | JAKAPA Skills Alignment |
Be Responsible | Goal Regulation, Responsibility Management, Detail Management, Decision-Making, Self-Reflection, Teamwork, Stress Regulation, Confidence Regulation, Independence, Adaptability |
Be Respectful | Impulse Regulation, Optimism, Teamwork, Capacity for Trust, Ethical Capacity, Social Warmth, Anger Management, Expressive Communication, Perspective-Taking, Adaptability |
Be Safe | Impulse regulation, Anger Management, Rule Following, Perspective-Taking, Decision-Making, Information Processing, Stress Regulation, Independence, Adaptability |
Step 2: Create customized self and peer assessments
Our weekly challenge system will gather complete sets of data every five weeks as students work through weekly challenges focused on one of our sets of skills. You can add additional assessment points with customized assessments that are more targeted to your PBIS efforts. Create assessments with the skills you identified and administer them a couple of times per year to look for patterns and growth. When you select the dates to administer the assessments, they will automatically show up in your students’ accounts. This means you can set up periodic assessments at the beginning of the year and the program will automatically send the assessments during the window of time you specify. Students can simply click the link and go to the customized assessment. You can also assign customized peer assessments aligned to your PBIS matrix to student teams, clubs, classes or activities to help students reflect on how their behavior is viewed by others. This information is valuable to help students gain self-awareness and reflect on how they are leveraging their strengths in teams or in the classroom.
Ready to See What JAKAPA
Can Do for You?
"My JAKAPA demo quickly helped me understand how easy it would be to implement THE JAKAPA soft skill solution IN My school."
—Missouri Educator
Step 3: Find JAKAPA champions who will oversee student engagement with the JAKAPA Measure | Train | Track program
Engage your students in the JAKAPA program. Some schools use an advisory period as the place where students engage with JAKAPA daily. Some integrate JAKAPA into existing courses, such as CTE courses, English courses or other courses that all students take. Teachers can integrate JAKAPA data with their gradebook, so weekly points are automatically assigned for JAKAPA engagement. Identify how you will incentivize and reward students for participating in the program. You can award PBIS points for weekly challenge completion and tie incentives and rewards to engagement data. You can also set up friendly competitions among grade levels or departments and reward groups when they actively work on skill development. JAKAPA can also be a great intervention as part of a re-entry plan for students who are returning from a suspension or expulsion. It can be a restitution tool or a data conversation and goal setting can become part of re-entry counseling or restorative practices.
Step 4: Analyze your data
JAKAPA displays strengths and areas for growth, comparative data and growth data. It also displays engagement data for weekly challenges and JAKAPA usage. You can disaggregate groups by program, class or other parameters to better understand how your PBIS program is impacting skill development. Compare JAKAPA engagement with growth to gauge the impact it is having on skill development. Make JAKAPA a line item on your administrative team and teacher team agendas and review the data regularly to discuss patterns and gain insights. The data can help you better understand which students need additional support, so you can design rewards to incentivize them to develop their skills. You can also triangulate data with discipline and attendance data to look for patterns in skill deficits and poor behavior. JAKAPA data can help you see if the PBIS programming you are doing is working to develop skills rather than just rewarding students who already possess those skills.
Step 5: Celebrate with your community
Publish growth data on your annual report or on your website to show your community how you are working to teach students how to behave, so they will be more successful in school or at work. Use JAKAPA data in business advisory meetings to underscore your focus on developing the critical soft skills students need for success after graduation and showcase student skill growth and how it is impacting their academic outcomes and your discipline and attendance. Publicize your participation in the JAKAPA program with parents and help them understand how to support their children’s skill development in the home.
Step 6: Award elective credit
JAKAPA takes 10-15 minutes per day. In a calendar year, students earn enough seat time to earn ¼ credit. Ask your board of education to approve JAKAPA as a class and award up to a full elective credit for soft skills during high school. Having a credit-bearing elective aligned with your PBIS efforts can increase engagement and interest. Students will benefit from having soft skills on their transcripts as they compete for opportunities post-graduation, and it will show your community that you are serious about getting them ready with the skills they need to succeed.
Ready to Discover JAKAPA? Let's Dive In!
Congratulations on reaching this point! At JAKAPA, we are passionate about developing soft skills and are excited to share more with you. Explore the possibilities of implementing JAKAPA in your district by clicking here. If you’re eager to understand the inner workings of JAKAPA, click here. Prefer a hands-on approach? Engage with our clickable prototype by clicking here. Is JAKAPA the perfect fit for your district? Take the plunge and schedule a short demo with our team by clicking here. We can’t wait to connect with you!
