Thunderbirds don't just fly...we SOAR!!

              

SOAR is a form of Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support and SOAR stands for Safe, Organized, Achieving, and Respectful. SOAR is a systematic school-wide approach that supports proactive strategies for defining, teaching, and supporting appropriate student behaviors to create a positive school environment. In the past, school-wide discipline has focused mainly on reacting to specific student misbehavior by implementing punishment-based strategies including reprimands, loss of privileges, office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions. Research has shown that the implementation of punishment, especially when it is used inconsistently and in the absence of other positive strategies, is ineffective. Introducing, modeling, and reinforcing positive social behavior through SOAR is an important step of a student's educational experience.

Teaching behavioral expectations and rewarding students for following them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehavior to occur before responding. The purpose of our school-wide SOAR program is to establish a climate in which appropriate behavior is the norm. Instead of using a punitive and piecemeal approach of individual behavioral management plans, a continuum of positive behavior support for all students within our school is implemented in areas including the classroom and non-classroom settings (such as the lunch tables, the playground, the walkways, the computer labs, classrooms, the bus, restrooms, etc.). At Cesar Academy, our staff uses a PBIS school-wide behavior matrix to define behavior expectations in each school setting.  We use the acronym Thunderbirds S.O.A.R. to outline our character values (S=Safe, O=Organized, A=Achieving, and R=Respectful) to regularly remind our students how they are to behave at all times in all settings. We also convey our school-wide behavior expectations to students via assemblies, video tutorials, classroom discussions, one-on-one counseling, recognizing adaptive behaviors and positive incentives such as PBIS Rewards points which can redeemed for prizes in our SOAR Store.