In Yesterdays News: City school pilots state behavior program Katie Landeck News Staff Writer #GARDNER — At the sound of the harmonica, the entire classroom of second grade students goes silent and directs their attention to the teacher. “We’re going to play a PAX game now,” she tells them, earning a small cheer from the students who are supposed to be reading quietly. The PAX Good Behavior Game is a program designed to teach students self-control, self-regulation and self-management. As of last week, all the teachers at Helen Mae Sauter have been trained in it. The Good Behavior Game is played during regular teaching time. The students are split into groups and monitored for “PAX” which are good behaviors and “spleems” which are bad behaviors for a set period of time. In the second grade class, there was one spleem when a student whispered during a period of silent reading, earning his team a strike on the board. However, at the end of the one minute period, all of them teams were under one strike, which means all of the teams were rewarded. In this case, the students were allowed to sit backwards in their chair for the rest of independent reading, which they thought was pretty cool. “They are all non material rewards,” said Principal Janet Smith. “And they love it.” As the pilot school for the state Department of Public Health’s test run of the progam, Helen Mae is commited to the program. The game teaches students life skills, Ms. Smith explained. Studies on the PAX program, which have tracked students until their mid twenties, show that after one year of playing this game in the classroom students are less likely to be disruptive, show aggressive behaviors and commit suicide. “It decreases all sorts of risks,” Ms. Smith said. “It helps students not just now but in the long term to manage their emotions better. I thought ‘how can we not do this?’” This is the year Helen Mae has tackled PAX as a school, however four teachers piloted it in their classrooms last year. Ms. Smith said the game substantially improved classroom behavior. “Teachers said they believe it gave them approximately an extra hour of teaching time a day,” Ms. Smith said. “Other teachers saw their classes in the hallway and said we want to try that too.” Ms. Smith said it was optional for teachers to participate in the program this year. However, every single educator in the school opted in. “We can always use more strategy,” said Ms. Smith. “We aren’t here to teach them just about academics, but also social skills. I think this program is really going to help them out in the long run.” The teachers who were trained last year have already implement PAX in their classrooms. The ones who were just trained are waiting for a DPH worker to come in and take baseline data before they start using the PAX program. As part of the pilot program, the DPH will monitor the success at Helen Mae and will be filming there in the future for a promotional video.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 16:01:30 +0000
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