Research shows that just one teacher for one year can have a long-term impact on students using the Good Behavior Game, including children living in adversity or with difficult life histories. No program will work for every child in every circumstance all of the time, but the power of PAX GBG is that one teacher can make a big difference.
Starting PAX GBG
The PAXIS Institute provides PAX Good Behavior Game training and materials for schools and other settings. Every participating teacher or other adult will need a PAX kit. (There are various options for what the kits can contain.) Training can be delivered on-site either by PAX trainers or by local staff who are trained as PAX Partners. Alternatively, all users in a school or district can receive training at a destination event.
For kit and training costs, please visit www.paxis.org or call 877-GO PAXIS
Learning About PAX
PAX provides positive behavioral supports in the classroom. The better the supports are, the fewer the referrals and problematic behaviors that will need to be dealt with by other programs like Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), or by school-based, disciplinary or special ed intervention teams.
The Common Core seeks to improve students’ higher-order thinking skills. PAX provides the foundation for those skills, helping children to develop voluntary control over attention, an ability to minimize distractions, and a tolerance for delayed gratification. With PAX GBG, children learn to work well with others; the Common Core outcomes are predicated upon students’ ability to succeed at a group level as well as individually.
Cultural background can affect just about every important factor in classroom management, and in culturally diverse schools there is always a challenge to make sure instruction and programming really reach all the students they are intended to help. PAX has been effective in many cultural settings and with children of many ethnicities, because it is designed with the flexibility to fit the unique histories and cultures of each school, community, and student population. The Good Behavior Game’s essential outcomes are desirable for all students: the abilities to delay gratification, to work together, to withstand disappointment, to notice the good in self and others, and to achieve a sense of belonging and purpose.
To read more about PAX Good Behavior Game research, go to www.pubmed.gov and search “PeaceBuilders” (Dr. Embry’s earlier youth violence prevention program whose successes have informed PAX GBG), “Good Behavior Game,” and “evidence-based kernels.”
Funding PAX GBG
There are many funding sources—some of the best are local:
- Service clubs can easily sponsor a classroom and often an entire school
- Parent-teacher organizations
- Faith-based groups
- Local hospital board
- Local United Way chapter
You can send potential funders a link to the PAX GBG home page, which includes video testimonials, links to this FAQ page, and other information. Check the PAXIS website for other supporting materials.
If your school can bill for Medicaid services, the cost for implementing the game can be covered if there is a student with a diagnosed mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder. You can bill for the delivery and training of PAX GBG in the classroom that benefits that child. The game for children with these conditions is a therapeutic intervention.
With PAX GBG, you can do more with less. It is a cost-effective strategy to reduce multiple costly problems in your school or community, including bullying, drug use, and violence.
Consider this analogy: What is the most effective way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases? Wash your hands. What is the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones in a vehicle? Buckle your seatbelts. These are simple solutions with profound consequences. The core components of PAX are like washing hands and buckling seatbelts; they protect against the daily social dangers in schools, homes and communities that cause lifetime mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders.
If children are noticed by adults and peers mainly for bad behavior, those unwanted behaviors can become habits that grow worse when children reach adolescence. On the other hand, if adults and peers habitually notice the good in a child, that good grows for a lifetime and gives a child a sense of resiliency under adversity.