2021 marked the first year of Pītau-Allenvale's Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) journey.

PB4L School-Wide looks at behaviour and learning from a whole-of-school as well as an individual child perspective. It's not about changing the child but about making the environment, systems and day to day practice the best it can be to support our students to make positive choices about their learning and behaviour. PB4L School-Wide is based on the Positive Behavioural Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework developed at the University of Oregon in the 1990s. PBIS is now in thousands of schools across the United States and there are over 800 School-Wide schools in New Zealand.

At the end of 2020, we voted as an entire staff to become a "Positive Behaviour for Learning" School. A team to guide our PB4L journey was set up at the start of this year. School leaders, teachers, support staff and specialists are all represented in this team to reflect that a positive culture is something everyone in the whole school is part of creating. Throughout the year, the team has been attending workshops run by the Ministry of Education to first of all understand the evidence and philosophy behind PB4L and secondly to begin to plan how to tailor the PB4L framework to our school's unique environment and culture.  We have learnt that this will be more of a marathon than a sprint and we will be building our frame work over the next few years.

There is already so much to celebrate in our kura that makes it a great place to learn and teach so that was where we started. We talked with the whole staff about how a kura is an environment just like a river and like a river, our kura needs care and nurturing so that everything single inhabitant has the best chance to live and grow. Fun, passion, kindness, wellbeing, connection and teamwork were just some of the themes that we all valued to keep our environment healthy. What a great place to start from!

There are three tiers in the PB4L framework and we start with Tier One. So what is it? In a nutshell it is how all of us teach, show and acknowledge behaviours that demonstrate the values of our school. This will be our focus over the next few years. We are excited to be leading the way in implementing PB4L in a specialist school setting. Our process might be a little longer because we will need to add to the ingredients to get it right for our students. We believe our students are definitely worthy and deserving of the time and we are committed to giving them what they deserve. Watch this space!

“Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti arahia o tatou mahi
Let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.”

To learn more about the PB4L system go to: pb4l.tki.org.nz/About-PB4L