Positive Behavior Support Project (PBS) History

History

The PBS project began in 1999.  In the early years of the project, more focus was placed on supporting individual students when initially working with schools, as schools would often request assistance in this area.  However, the primary focus for the past 1-2 years has been on creating a positive school system so that there will be fewer students who need individual supports and that these individual supports will be more effective because they are implemented in a large system of School-wide support. 

For the first two years of the project (1999-2001), the major objective was to develop and implement a set of training modules on current principles and practices of positive behavior supports, with more content focused on individual supports.  Those modules are available for review.  Much of the training as it is presented today is based on these original modules which contain lots of useful information.   

During Year 3 of the project (2001-2002), the focus shifted from the development of the PBS Modules to providing training and technical assistance to schools implementing their own School-wide PBS systems.  In Year 4, (2002-2003) staff from the Illinois PBS project provided consultation and training to assist with the development of a larger infrastructure of technical assistance and training capacity in Delaware and share their training resources for working with school teams.  Training was provided by Illinois consultants to district level staff, considered PBS Coaches, as well as training provided directly to school teams in School-wide PBS.  The School-wide PBS professional development workshops were packaged into a Professional Development Cluster which was approved in summer 2002. 

In recent years and currently (2003-current), a primary goal became to increase local capacity to support PBS and increase the number of schools implementing School-wide systems.  The PBS Cadre of Coaches was developed and the project staff provide support to the district coaches who in turn train and support schools in their district.   Additionally, with the professional development and support structure for assisting schools to develop effective School-wide systems in place and the number of schools implementing School-wide PBS is increasing,  the training in supports for students with more significant behavioral needs was re-evaluated.  The content from the Illinois state project in Targeted and Intensive Team Training was revised and blended with material from the original modules on Functional Behavior Assessment, Behavior Support Planning, and Person-Centered Planning.  Again, the professional development materials focusing on PBS for individual students were packaged into a second Professional Development Cluster which was approved in summer 2005.  For more information on the trainings provided through the PBS project, check out PBS Professional Development.