Sharing positive stories: PB4L School-Wide Conference 2017

PB4L School-Wide aims to help New Zealand schools build a culture where positive behaviour and learning is a way of life. The framework can be tailored to schools’ own environments and cultural needs.

This year’s PB4L School-wide Conference will take place at SkyCity in Auckland over 28–29 August and has the theme ‘Passionate, Positive and Purposeful’.

The conference team invites staff from any school in New Zealand, whether they are new to PB4L or already well into their School-Wide journey. The New Zealand Principals’ Federation is the lead partner this year and international experts including George Sugai, Terry Scott and Rob Horner are confirmed to speak on the first day of the conference.

A highlight from last year’s conference was a session led and facilitated entirely by students. ‘A seat at the table’ focused on student agency and decision-making within schools.

Participants of all ages left excited and challenged by the ideas generated. Read more about this in Education Gazette issue 95.2 

Diana Shepherd, the Ministry of Education’s PB4L national practice and implementation manager, says the feedback from this session was so positive that another session will take place this year.

“Since the conference, we’ve had some great feedback about this session – most participants found it very worthwhile."

“One thing that came out of the session was a realisation that there are a number of different ways in which schools include students in decision-making processes and operations. We also learned that not all students will want to share or lead in the same way,” she says.

Some new workshops will also feature in this year’s programme, including a presentation about Te Ara Hou: Māori Achievement Collaboratives (MACs) and a performance of ground-breaking theatre piece The White Guitar (yet to be confirmed).

Diana hopes the event will inspire and encourage teachers and school leaders.

“PB4L is about making positive changes to our learning environment and increasing our engagement with young people. Developing social competence is equally as important as developing academic competence."

“The purpose of this conference is to share and support each other’s implementation of PB4L and to tell the stories of the important work that schools have been doing,” she says.

Register for the conference on the PB4L website(external link)