Involving Youth and Community

Youth & Community

Because of the importance in involving school staff, family, youth and community partners
in the awareness and implementation of PBS strategies and frameworks, an Alliance partner,
the Iowa 4-H Youth Development Program with Iowa State University, University Extension has
been contracted to assist the PBS sites (starting with Cohort 1). Their task is to assist the eight demonstration sites' PBS Coaches and Leadership Teams in engaging multiple stakeholders in strengthening PBS concepts, strategies, and frameworks beyond the school day and school walls.

4-H Youth Development Specialists have been very successful in creating and identifying strategies
that can be implemented in schools using PBS frameworks that emphasize the importance of
meaningful youth and community involvement.

Examples include:
1) Recruit school, family, youth, and community representatives as active members of local PBS
leadership teams. Discuss potential responsibilities of school staff, parents, students, and community partners in their leadership and decision-making roles. Remember that people own what they help
to create so it is important to involve them from the beginning.

Active membership on a local PBS leadership team could include:

  a) Prioritizing behaviors to be targeted in school, home, and community settings

  b) Assisting in the creation of lesson plans to teach and role model appropriate youth behavior

  c) Teaching youth appropriate behaviors, and the importance of the behaviors, across multiple settings

  d) Developing ways to reward appropriate behavior that engage all stakeholders

  e) Creating a consistent consequence system for inappropriate behavior in school, home, and community settings

  f) Coordinating the development of a behavior tracking system for school, family and community use.

2) Create PBS school-based staff, volunteer, and visitor informational manuals that outline items such as the school's PBS expected core behaviors, reward system, and discipline referral system.


If you would like some examples of ways the 4-H Youth Development Specialists assisted the
Cohort 1 sites in linking with the community, click here.

Involving Youth and Community Support Materials