My PBIS success story

By River Moore | May | June 2020

My name is River Moore. I just graduated and had a huge celebration for learning to handle my emotions and anger. I have always hated school, but this year has been a success! When I realized the summer was over and I had to go back to school, I didn’t want to because it was no fun. You have lots of work, you can’t relax and they make you write. I hate writing. I was nervous and didn’t want to meet any new people. The first thing I said to my teacher this year as I walked into the class on the first day of school was, “Oh, great, this day couldn’t get any worse.” I have high and low emotions. When my emotions went up, it was really hard to control them and I felt like I needed to hit myself or others. I felt lots of frustration when people weren’t being fair, or when they would say rude or mean things to me. I had hands-on a lot and would say mean things back to people. I had to have a check-in and check-out sheet. I had to go speak with Miss Brooks every morning before school started, and she would give me my paper, and I had to have good behavior from my teacher to get points. If I reached my goal of 80 percent good behavior for the day when I checked out with her, I got a small candy or prizes or something like that. I also had to go to a social skills class that taught me how to breathe and drink some water when I got frustrated, because I got too mad at people and couldn’t think clearly. Every day it was hard to control myself, but I really wanted to get all sixes (perfect score) when I turned in my paper. One day, I went in to see Miss Brooks, and she made me realize I had two perfect weeks in a row, so I got to pick out a big surprise and set a goal for how many weeks I thought I could get perfect behavior. I said I could do it for four straight weeks. That was two weeks before Christmas break and two after. But guess what, I did it! The thing that made me want to change was mostly that I love school now. I like social skills and hanging out with the teachers. I wanted to give meaning to my life. If you don’t go to school, life would be meaningless. I like to make friends and I know how to solve problems now. My favorite person at school is my teacher, Mrs. Cleveland. She helps me and loves me more than anyone loves me. She helps me get my work done and she is a nice teacher. I feel confidence in our classroom and I have fun learning. Miss Brooks helped me figure stuff out and filled in a little bit of my heart. Mr. Conolly (vice principal) gave me a little pressure, but he helped give me confidence. If I could give advice to other students who are in my past situation, I would tell them to calm down by breathing in and out three times. They need to find someone they can talk to about it, and try to get some water. Be confident and have fun in life. That is my story.

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River Moore is a student at Highland Elementary School in Standard School District