Bad behavior? Just cut it!

Sherman Avenue Elementary School is implementing a new district-wide behavior initiative called PBIS, positive behavior intervention support. The school’s PBIS team held a kick off celebration Monday to announce the new program to students.

“Basically it is a district-wide initiative and it’s in all of the schools, but every school has their own way of introducing it into their school,” counselor Peaches Turner said. “We want the students to have positive attitudes. We want them to support each other.”

One way the team got their point across was to change the words to the popular  O.T. Genasis song “Cut It” to reflect the actions students should take and what they should do about negative behavior.

“You cut the negative behaviors. You cut the bad attitudes. You cut the disrespect, the not listening,” Turner said. “If you walk in the classroom every child can give you the lyrics to the (original) song. They can sing it from the beginning to the end. With us knowing that’s something that they like, we decided to incorporate it.”

The Warren Central High School pep band, cheerleaders and three football players attended the celebration to get the children excited to act positively.

“They were very supportive,” Turner said.

As an incentive, athletic director Preston Nailor said all children who show positive behavior this week would receive a ticket to Friday night’s football game when Clinton comes to town to play Warren Central.

“You can only get this ticket if you do right,” Nailor said. “Friday is probably the biggest game on Coach Morgan’s schedule.”

Football tickets are not the only reward students can earn from good behavior. Students with good attitudes will receive small incentives throughout the week and those who maintain worthy conduct the entire month will be able to attend a larger scale activity.

“At the end of the month, those students without any write-ups or any disciplinary infractions, they will be able to attend the monthly PBIS activity,” Turner said.

“Our next one for November will be a pop party in which we will drink soda pop, pop balloons, have popcorn, popsicles, blow pops and pop rocks.”

For the month of October the school is having a sock hop. In an effort to raise money for the school’s fall harvest, scheduled for 10 a.m. Nov. 5 at the school, children without infractions can attend a sock hop for $1.

“All the students get to wear their crazy socks, and they go in the gym and dance around for a little while,” Turner said.

The new behavior support program is working in conjunction with the Leader in Me where students live by the seven habits of highly effective people and Sherman Avenue’s PAWS conduct program — prove you care, act responsibly, wise choices and show respect.

“Those are our school-wide expectations,” Turner said. “Everybody in the school is expected to do that at all times. It’s been around for a while.”

Turner is feeling positive about the new initiative, and she hopes all the adults at the school continue to stay positive because the children feed off of their attitudes.

“If we continue to be role models for them we’ll have a great year,” Turner said.