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Back to School with PAX Good Behavior Game
It is back-to-school season, and at the Center for Children, Families and Workforce Development (Center), we join parents, teachers, and children in launching the 2023-24 elementary school year. It takes much preparation to ensure a successful school year. Parents ensure their children’s backpacks contain the necessary school supplies, and they adjust their routines to accommodate the school schedule. Teachers ready their classrooms and the curricula, and administrators prepare their school teams. The Center has also been busy ensuring elementary schools succeed. Specifically, for the last five years, the Center has worked with teachers in 60 schools across Montana to develop tools and strategies to successfully manage their classrooms by implementing PAX Good Behavior Game (PAX GBG).
PAX GBG is a set of strategies that teach students self-regulation, self-control, self-management, and positive relationship skills. PAX GBG has proven to significantly improve classroom behavior and student emotional regulation when implemented well. Training and supporting PAX GBG can also increase teacher job satisfaction and teacher retention, and that’s good for Montana kids.
Like many other states, Montana faces a teacher shortage, and teachers are leaving the field due to the high pressure and demands of the job. A significant factor in teacher stress is managing student behavior. Many teachers report that students today lack the social skills to navigate a school setting. Teachers must adjust their strategies to include teaching self-regulation and delayed gratification using trauma-informed strategies. This approach lies at the heart of the PAX GBG.
But here’s the challenge: schools frequently adopt programs and provide initial training but not ongoing implementation support. Research shows that one-time training does not result in significant changes to instruction. This one-shot approach wastes time and money and, more importantly, leaves teachers feeling unsupported and undervalued. They don't have the support to implement well and don't see the results promised in training. Ongoing and consistent coaching via a team approach improves implementation. That's why the Center works to enhance teacher support by helping schools develop internal systems to monitor implementation, identify barriers, and provide job-embedded coaching.
This fall, Center coaches are hitting the road to provide refresher trainings in our PAX GBG schools. This training reminds teachers why the strategies work and reviews the basic steps to implementation. Throughout the year, Center coaches will continue to work closely with school leadership teams to identify their level of implementation, develop coaching plans, and build systems to collect and use data. These activities improve implementation, improve student behavior, and reduce teacher stress.
In reflecting on the Center’s PAX GBG coaching, an elementary school administrator stated, “We had really big, overwhelming behaviors this fall that have leveled out now, and this is the year we have had the most implementation of PAX.”
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