About Coaches

Coaches are individuals who provide local technical assistance to PBS sites. Their backgrounds
typically include: behavioral specialists, AEA consultants, school psychologists, counselors,
social workers and, in some case, teachers. Their primary purpose is to build and sustain local
capacity. This is achieved through maximizing current competence, focusing on valued outcomes, emphasizing accountability, and building credibility.

Coaching involves active collaboration and participation. Coaches work with the school team during
the initial School-wide PBS training. They then meet with teams at their sites monthly. They provide telephone/email contact as needed. Coaches attend the state-wide PBS training meetings with their
teams. They provide prompts and feedback to the teams on their self-assessment, action planning,
activity implementation, and on-going evaluation.

What do coaches do?
As a starting point . . .
  • Work with the team during initial PBS training
  • Meet with new teams on monthly basis
  • Serve as a “positive nag”

The coach will . . .
  • Attend and participate in team meetings
  • Monitor and report on team efforts (team implementation checklist, schedule self-assessment survey, etc)
  • Make presentations on PBS
SWIS facilitation
  • Assist teams in using data
  • Keep faculty involved through regular data reporting

Coaches are also asked to be the communication link between the Alliance office and the team members. The administrator can not effectively be the coach.

The big picture . . .
The coach DOES NOT do everything but rather facilitates what needs to be done. Consider having co-coaches, or identifying the tasks to asking team members to take on some of those responsibilities.

Two kinds of coaches
External Coach
External coaches generally have several teams they are assisting. They are sometimes located outside the PBS school (such as the AEA). They attend all local PBS leadership team meetings.

Internal Coach
An internal coach is located in the PBS school and is part of the PBS leadership team. The internal coach works with the external coach in facilitating meetings and monitoring goals and actions of the leadership team.

For more information on coaching:
Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions (Volume 8, Number 3, Summer 2006, pages 165-173)contains an article entitled: Coaching Positive Behavior Support in School Settings: Tactics and Data-Based Decision Making by Terrance M. Scott and George Martinek.
Click here for link to web site

Coach Resources  •  Coaches/Team Functioning •  Coaches/Team Checklists •  Coaches/SWIS 
Coaches/Self-Assessment •  Coaches/Annual Planning Calendar •  Problem Solving