Using Behavior Management and ESSER Funds to Recognize Positive Self-Care

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Dan Grabski

by Dan Grabski

Dan Grabski Product Manager

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This year, school districts around the globe are tasked with helping kids catch up, not just academically, but with personal development and soft skills too. Let’s take a look at how you can use behavior management tools and COVID relief funds to celebrate positive behavior in your district and put a stop to the negative.

Recognizing Positive Behavior

How does your district approach behavior management? Is it synonymous with “discipline”? If so, it’s time to flip that approach on its head.

Behavior management isn’t just about recognizing red flags. It’s about celebrating gold stars too. Recognizing good behavior serves as positive reinforcement, encouraging kids to do more of what they already excel at. Self-management, time management, emotional intelligence, and peer support are all skills that should be recognized. After all, they're signs a student is investing in their own mental health and personal development—which has perhaps never been more important than it is today.

One great option for tracking positive behavior is Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (also known as PBIS). If your district isn’t using it, there’s no better time to explore than now. You can learn about PBIS, as well as some general behavior management best practices, in this article: Has Your District Tried This Approach to Discipline?

Behavior Management in Skyward

Now that we’ve addressed the importance of recognizing all sorts of behaviors and skills, let’s look at how you can track this information in Skyward.

SMS 2.0
There are two main tools you can use to keep an eye on behavior:

1. PBIS: Take advantage of alternative behavior management techniques! You can create discipline graphs which show actions broken down by type (detention, in-school suspension, etc.). You can even view variables such as the time of day, offense type, location, and motivation, to look for trends. Find out how in this Quick Hits video.

2. Behavior trends: You can also keep track of building-level behavior trends by setting up a multiple discipline graphs report and scheduling reports to automatically send to administrators! Find out how in this Quick Hits video.

Qmlativ
In Qmlativ, there are also several tools to help you track students’ behavior:

1. Discipline: The Discipline module does what its name implies—tracks discipline. However, in the future, it will be expanded to track positive behavior as well. Stay tuned!

2. Student Interventions: Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS): This module is very flexible and can be set up to pull data from many other modules including but not limited to Discipline. You can use it to identify students who are struggling with their behavior and work with classroom teachers to provide assistance for the student. If additional supports are needed for the student, a more formal plan can also be put in place.

Using ESSER (COVID Relief) Funds

If you are searching for ways to help students who have fallen behind during COVID, funding is available! You can use ESSER (COVID relief) funds to help cover your district’s behavior management solutions (think MTSS, PBIS, etc.). The funds are there, and the tools are ready. The time to get started is now!